Part 2
It is an interesting question whether the _King’s Mirror_ was inspired by any earlier work written along similar lines. Originality was a rare virtue in the middle ages, and the good churchmen who wrote books in those days cannot have regarded plagiarism as a mortal sin. The great writers were freely copied by the lesser men, thoughts, titles, statements, and even the wording being often taken outright. It is, therefore, difficult to determine the sources of statements found in the later works, as they may have been drawn from any one of a whole series of writings on the subject under discussion. The writer has not been able to make an exhaustive examination of all the didactic and devotional literature of the centuries preceding the thirteenth, but the search that has been made has not proved fruitful. There is every reason to believe that the author of the _King’s Mirror_ was an independent thinker and writer. He was doubtless acquainted with a large number of books and had drawn information from a great variety of sources; but when the writing was actually done he had apparently a few volumes only at his disposal. In the region where the work seems to have been composed, on the northern edge of European civilization, there was neither cathedral nor monastery nor any other important ecclesiastical foundation where a collection of books might be found.[3] It is likely, therefore, that the author had access to such books only as were in his own possession. But he came to his task with a well-stocked mind, with a vast fund of information gathered by travel and from the experiences of an active life; and thus he drew largely from materials that had become the permanent possession of his memory. This fact, if it be a fact, will also help to explain why so many inaccuracies have crept into his quoted passages; in but very few instances does he give the correct wording of a citation.
Footnote 3:
There must have been important collections of manuscripts at Nidaros (Trondhjem), where there was a cathedral and several monastic institutions. The _King’s Mirror_ was probably composed in Namdalen, about one hundred miles northeast of Nidaros. See below, pp. 59–60.
There can be no doubt that the author had a copy of the _Vulgate_ before him; at least one Biblical passage is correctly given, and it is quoted in its Latin form.[4] It has also been discovered that he had access to an Old Norse paraphrase of a part of the Old Testament, the books of Samuel and of the Kings.[5] It is likely that he was also acquainted with some of the works of Saint Augustine, and perhaps with the writings of certain other medieval authorities. Among these it seems safe to include the _Disciplina Clericalis_, a collection of tales and ethical observations by Petrus Alfonsus, a converted Jew who wrote in the first half of the twelfth century. The _Disciplina_ is a somewhat fantastic production wholly unlike the sober pages of the _Speculum Regale_; nevertheless, the two works appear to show certain points of resemblance which can hardly have been accidental. The _Disciplina_ is a dialog and the part of the son is much the same as in the _King’s Mirror_. In both works the young man expresses a desire to become acquainted with the customs of the royal court, inasmuch as he may some day decide to apply for admission to the king’s household service.[6] The description of courtly manners and customs in the earlier dialog, though much briefer than the corresponding discussion in the Norwegian treatise, has some resemblance to the latter which suggests a possible relationship between the two works.
Footnote 4:
See below, p. 237.
Footnote 5:
Storm, “Om Tidsforholdet mellem Kongespeilet og Stjórn samt Barlaams Saga”: _Arkiv for nordisk Filologi_, III, 83-88.
Footnote 6:
See _Disciplina Clericalis_, fabula xxiv: Migne, _Patrologia Latina_, CLVII, 698-700.
The Norwegian author may also have used some of the many commentaries on the books of Holy Writ, in the production of which the medieval cloisters were so prolific. Of the influence of Petrus Comestor’s _Historia Scholastica_ the writer has found no distinct trace in the _King’s Mirror_; but one can be quite sure that he knew and had used the _Elucidarium_ of Honorius of Autun. The _Elucidarium_ is a manual of medieval theology which was widely read in the later middle ages and was translated into Old Norse, probably before the _King’s Mirror_ was written.[7] But our Norwegian author was not a slavish follower of earlier authorities: in his use and treatment of materials drawn from the Scriptures he shows remarkable independence. Remarkable at least is his ability to make Biblical narratives serve to illustrate his own theories of Norwegian kingship. He was acquainted with some of the legends that circulated through the church and made effective use of them. He must also have known a work on the marvels of Ireland[8] and the letter of Prester John to the Byzantine emperor,[9] in which that mythical priest-king recounts the wonders of India. But the chief source of his work is a long life full of action, conflict, thought, and experience.
Footnote 7:
A fragment of the _Elucidarium_, comprising, however, the greater part of the work, is published in _Annaler for nordisk Oldkyndighed_, 1852 and 1853; in the former volume a Danish translation is given; the latter contains the Icelandic text.
Footnote 8:
See below, pp. 22–25.
Footnote 9:
See below, p. 101 (c. viii).
The importance of the _King’s Mirror_ lies in the insight that it gives into the state of culture and civilization of the North in the later middle ages. The interest follows seven different lines: physical science, especially such matters as are of importance to navigators; geography, particularly the geography of the Arctic lands and waters; the organization of the king’s household and the privileges and duties of the king’s henchmen; military engines, weapons, and armour used in offensive and defensive warfare; ethical ideas, especially rules of conduct for courtiers and merchants; the royal office, the duties of the king and the divine origin of kingship; and the place of the church in the Norwegian state.
In one of his earlier chapters the author enumerates the chief subjects of a scientific character that ought to be studied by every one who wishes to become a successful merchant. These are the great luminaries of the sky, the motions and the paths of the heavenly bodies, the divisions of time and the changes that bring the seasons, the cardinal points of the compass, and the tides and currents of the ocean.[10] In discussing these matters he is naturally led to a statement as to the shape of the earth. All through the middle ages there were thinkers who accepted the teachings of the classical astronomers who had taught that the earth is round like a sphere; but this belief was by no means general. Bede for one appears to have been convinced that the earth is of a spherical shape, though he explains that, because of mountains which rise high above the surface, it cannot be perfectly round.[11] Alexander Neckam, an English scientist who wrote two generations before the _King’s Mirror_ was composed, states in his _Praise of Divine Wisdom_ that “the ancients have ventured to believe that the earth is round, though mountains rise high above its surface.”[12] Neckam’s own ideas on this point are quite confused and he remains discreetly non-committal.
Footnote 10:
C. iv. See also Larson, “Scientific Knowledge in the North in the Thirteenth Century”: _Publications of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study_, I, 139-146.
Footnote 11:
_De Natura Rerum_, c. xlvi: Migne, _Patrologia Latina_, XC, 264-265.
Footnote 12:
_De Naturis Rerum_, 441.
But if the earth is a globe, there is every reason to believe in the existence of antipodes; and if there are antipodes, all cannot behold Christ coming in the clouds on the final day. To the medieval theologians, at least to the larger number of them, this argument disposed effectually of the Ptolemaic theory. Job does indeed say that God “hangeth the earth upon nothing,”[13] and this passage might point to a spherical form; but then the Psalmist affirms that He “stretched out the earth above the waters,”[14] and this statement would indicate that the inhabited part of the earth is an island floating upon the waters of the great Ocean, by which it is also surrounded. This belief was generally maintained in the earlier centuries of the classical world, and it had wide acceptance in the middle ages. There were also those who held that beyond and around the outer Ocean is a great girdle of fire. It is likely, however, that many believed with Isidore of Seville that it is useless to speculate on subjects of this sort. “Whether it [the earth] is supported by the density of the air, or whether it is spread out upon the waters ... or how the yielding air can support such a vast mass as the earth, whether such an immense weight can be upheld by the waters without being submerged, or how the earth maintains its balance ... these matters it is not permitted any mortal to know and they are not for us to discuss.”[15]
Footnote 13:
_Job_, xxvi, 7.
Footnote 14:
_Psalms_, cxxxvi, 6.
Footnote 15:
_De Natura Rerum Liber_, c. xlv: Migne, _Patrologia Latina_, LXXXIII, 1015.
There can be no doubt that the author of the _King’s Mirror_ believed in the Ptolemaic theory of a spherical earth. In speaking of our planet he uses the term _jarðarbollr_,[16] earth-sphere. In an effort to explain why some countries are hotter than others, he suggests an experiment with an apple. It is not clear how this can shed much light on the problem, but the author boldly states the point to be illustrated: “From this you may infer that the earth-circle is round like a ball.”[17]
Footnote 16:
See c. xix.
Footnote 17:
See c. vii.
Toward the close of the medieval period there were certain thinkers who attempted to reconcile the spherical theory with the belief that the inhabited part of the earth is an island. These appear to have believed that the earth is a globe partly submerged in a larger sphere composed of water.[18] The visible parts of the earth would rise above the surrounding ocean like a huge island, and the Biblical passages which had caused so much difficulty could thus be interpreted in accord with apparent facts. It is quite clear that the author of the _King’s Mirror_ held no such theory. In a poetic description of how the eight winds form their covenants of friendship at the approach of spring, he tells us that “at midnight the north wind goes forth to meet the coursing sun and leads him through rocky deserts toward the sparse-built shores.”[19] The author, therefore, seems to believe that the earth is a sphere, that there are lands on the opposite side of the earth, and that these lands are inhabited. He also understands that the regions that lie beneath the midnight course of the sun in spring and summer must be thinly populated, as the sun’s path on the opposite side of the earth during the season of lengthening days is constantly approaching nearer the pole.
Footnote 18:
Ruge, _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, 97.
Footnote 19:
C. v.
But while the author seems to accept the Ptolemaic theory of the universe, he is not able to divest his mind entirely of current geographical notions. There can be no doubt that he believed in the encircling outer ocean, and it is barely possible that he also looked with favor on the belief that the whole was encompassed by a girdle of fire. On this point, however, we cannot be sure: he mentions the belief merely as one that is current, not as one accepted by himself.[20]
Footnote 20:
C. xix.
It was commonly held in the middle ages that the earth is divided into five zones, only two of which may be inhabited. This was a theory advanced by a Greek scientist in the fifth century before our era,[21] and was given currency in medieval times chiefly, perhaps, through the works of Macrobius.[22] At first these zones were conceived as belts drawn across the heavens; later they came to be considered as divisions of the earth’s surface. It will be noted that our author uses the older terminology and speaks of the zones as belts on the heaven;[23] it may be inferred, therefore, that he derived his information from one of the earlier Latin treatises on the nature of the universe.[24] For two thousand years it was believed that human life could not exist in the polar and torrid zones. Even as late as the fifteenth century European navigators had great fear of travel into the torrid zone, where the heat was thought to grow more intense as one traveled south, until a point might be reached where water in the sea would boil. The author of the _King’s Mirror_ seems to doubt all this. He regards the polar zones as generally uninhabitable; still, he is sure that Greenland lies within the arctic zone; and yet, Greenland “has beautiful sunshine and is said to have a rather pleasant climate.”[25] He sees quite clearly that the physical nature of a country may have much to do with climatic conditions. The cold of Iceland he ascribes in great part to its position near Greenland: “for it is to be expected that severe cold would come thence, since Greenland is ice-clad beyond all other lands.”[26] He conceives the possibility that the south temperate zone is inhabited. “And if people live as near the cold belt on the southern side as the Greenlanders do on the northern, I firmly believe that the north wind blows as warm to them as the south wind to us. For they must look north to see the midday and the sun’s whole course, just as we, who dwell north of the sun, must look to the south.”[27]
Footnote 21:
Parmenides of Ela (ca. 480 B.C.). Nansen, _In Northern Mists_, I, 12.
Footnote 22:
See below, p. 147 (c. xix). Cf. _Ibid._, 123.
Footnote 23:
C. xix.
Footnote 24:
Probably from the writings of Isidore, who speaks of the zones as belts on the heavens. _Etymologiae_, iii, c. xliv; xiii, c. vi; _De Natura Rerum_, c. x.
Footnote 25:
C. xix.
Footnote 26:
C. xiii.
Footnote 27:
C. xxi.
On the questions of time and its divisions the author of the _King’s Mirror_ seems to have had nearly all the information that the age possessed. He divides the period of day and night into two “days” (_dægr_) of twelve hours each. Each hour is again divided into smaller hours called _ostenta_ in Latin.[28] Any division below the minute he apparently does not know. The length of the year he fixes at 365 days and six hours, every fourth year these additional hours make twenty-four and we have leap year.[29] The waxing and waning of the moon and the tidal changes in the ocean are also reckoned with fair accuracy.[30]
Footnote 28:
C. vi.
Footnote 29:
_Ibid._
Footnote 30:
_Ibid._
Medieval scientists found these movements in the ocean a great mystery. Some ascribed the tides to the influence of the moon;[31] others believed that they were caused by the collision of the waters of two arms of the ocean, an eastern arm and a western; still others imagined that somewhere there were “certain cavern-like abysses, which now swallow up the water, and now spew it forth again.”[32] The author of the _Speculum_ has no doubts on the subject: he believes that the tides are due to the waxing and waning of the moon.[33]
Footnote 31:
The Venerable Bede held that the moon is in some way responsible for the tides. _De Natura Rerum_, c. xxxix: Migne, _Patrologia Latina_, XC, 258-259; see also _ibid._, XC, 422-426 (_De Tempore Ratione_, c. xxix).
Footnote 32:
Alexander Neckam, _De Naturis Rerum_, 138.
Footnote 33:
C. vi.
In his discussion of the volcanic fires of Iceland he shows that on this subject he was completely under the influence of medieval conceptions. He has heard that Gregory the Great believed that the volcanic eruptions in Sicily have their origins in the infernal regions. Our author is inclined to question, however, that there is anything supernatural about the eruptions of Mount Etna; but he is quite sure that the volcanic fires of Iceland rise from the places of pain. The fires of Sicily are living fires, inasmuch as they devour living materials, such as wood and earth; those of Iceland, on the other hand, consume nothing living but only dead matter like rock. And he therefore concludes that these fires must have their origin in the realms of death.[34]
Footnote 34:
C. xiii.
The author has a suspicion that earthquakes may be due to volcanic action, but he offers another explanation, though he does not give it as his own belief. Down in the bowels of the earth there is probably a large number of caverns and empty passages. “At times it may happen that these passages and cavities will be so completely packed with air either by the winds or by the power of the roaring breakers, that the pressure of the blast cannot be confined, and this may be the origin of those great earthquakes that occur in that country.”[35] In this theory there is nothing new or original: the belief that the earth is of a spongy constitution and that earthquakes are caused by air currents is a very old one, which can be followed back through the writings of Alexander Neckam,[36] the Venerable Bede,[37] and others, at least as far as to Isidore.[38] The elder Pliny, who wrote his _Natural History_ in the first century of the Christian era, seems to have held similar views: “I believe there can be no doubt that the winds are the cause of earthquakes.”[39]
Footnote 35:
_Ibid._
Footnote 36:
_De Naturis Rerum_, 158.
Footnote 37:
_De Natura Rerum_, c. xlix: Migne, _Patrologia Latina_, XC, 275-276.
Footnote 38:
_De Natura Rerum_, c. xlvi: Migne, _Patrologia Latina_, LXXXIII, 1015. See also _The Christian Topography_ of Cosmas (written about 547), 17-18; Cosmas scoffs at the theory.
Footnote 39:
_Naturalis Historiae_, I, 201 (ii, c. lxxix).
The chapters that deal with the northern lights are interesting because they seem to imply that these lights were not visible in those parts of Norway where the _King’s Mirror_ was written. The editors of the Christiania edition of this work call attention to the fact that there have been periods when these phenomena were less prominent, and suggest that there may have been such a period in the thirteenth century.[40] The author discusses these lights as one of the wonders of Greenland, and the natural inference is that they were not known in Norway. But it is also true that he speaks of whales as if they were limited to the seas about Iceland and Greenland, which is manifestly incorrect. It is likely that the author merely wishes to emphasize the fact that the northern lights appear with greater frequency and in greater brilliance in Greenland than anywhere in Norway. He gives three theories to account for these phenomena: some ascribe them to a girdle of fire which encircles the earth beyond the outer ocean; others hold that the lights are merely rays of the sun which find their way past the edges of the earth while the sun is coursing underneath; but his own belief is that frost and cold have attained to such a power in the Arctic that they are able to put forth light.[41] In his opinion cold is a positive force as much as heat or any other form of energy. To the men of the author’s time there was nothing strange in this belief: it seems to have been held by many even before the thirteenth century that ice could under certain conditions produce heat and even burn.[42]
Footnote 40:
P. ix, note.
Footnote 41:
C. xix.
Footnote 42:
Thus Solinus (pp. xxxiv, xxxvii, 236) says “the sea-ice on this island ignites itself on collision, and when it is ignited it burns like wood.” See Nansen, _In Northern Mists_, I, 193. Adam von Bremen (_Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum_, iv, 34) writes: “they report this remarkable thing about it that this ice appears so black and dry that, on account of its age, it burns when it is kindled.” _Ibid._ The same belief appears in a German poem _Meregarto_: “Thereby the ice there becomes so hard as crystal, that they make a fire above it till the crystal glows.” _Ibid._, I, 181.
Among the author’s scientific notions very little that is really original can be found. It is Riant’s belief that he drew to some extent from Oriental sources, the lore of the East having come into the North as the spoil of crusaders or as the acquisitions of Norwegian pilgrims.[43] It may be doubted, however, whether the Saracenic contribution is a real one: almost everything that the author of the _Speculum Regale_ presents as his belief can be found in the Latin scientific manuals of the middle ages. He alludes to the writings of Isidore of Seville, and there can be little doubt that he was acquainted with the ideas of the great Spaniard, though he does not accept them all. His ideas as to the shape of the earth and the probable causes of earthquakes may have been derived from the writings of the Venerable Bede, or from one of his numerous followers. The divisions of time are discussed in many of the scientific treatises of the middle ages, but the division of the hour into sixtieths called _ostenta_ is probably not found in any manual written before the ninth century; so far as the writer has been able to determine, _ostenta_, meaning minutes, first appears in the works of Rabanus Maurus.[44]
Footnote 43:
Riant, _Expéditions et Pèlerinages des Scandinaves en Terre Sainte_, 440-441.
Footnote 44:
Rabanus Maurus died in 856.
The discussion of these scientific notions has its chief value in showing to what extent the Norwegians of the thirteenth century were acquainted with the best theories of the age as to the great facts of the universe. The author’s own contribution to the scientific learning of his time lies almost exclusively in the field of geography. “Beyond comparison the most important geographical writer of the medieval North,” says Dr. Nansen, “and at the same time one of the first in the whole of medieval Europe, was the unknown author who wrote the _King’s Mirror_.... If one turns from contemporary or earlier European geographical literature, with all its superstition and obscurity, to this masterly work, the difference is very striking.”[45] This is doubtless due to the fact that our author was not a cloistered monk who was content to copy the ideas and expressions of his predecessors with such changes as would satisfy a theological mind, but a man who had been active in the secular world and was anxious to get at real facts.
Footnote 45:
Nansen, _In Northern Mists_, II, 242.