An Exotic Geographical Excursus: Chapters 273-378 of the Third Book of the Cronica Universalis by Galvaneus Flamma

Abstract

Chapters 273–378 of the Cronica universalis by the Milanese Dominican Galvaneus Flamma consist of a long geographical excursus – a sign of the author’s interest in the subject. This excursus describes places and cities (real or – for us – imaginary) of Asia, India, Africa, Northern Europe, and even Markland. The study of the sources used in the composition of the excursus allows us to observe first of all that Friar Galvaneus used ancient and medieval encyclopedic sources on the one hand, and written accounts of travelers in the East on the other. It is also possible that the author of the Cronica has resorted to oral testimonies of travelers and sailors. What emerges from this study is a modern image of geography: not only because of the sources cited (the ancient authors are often mediated by medieval works) but also for the places mentioned.

Les chapitres 273-378 de la Cronica universalis du dominicain milanais Galvaneus Flamma se compose d’un long excursus géographique – un signe de l’intérêt de cet auteur pour le sujet. Cet excursus décrit des lieux ou des villes (réels ou – pour nous – imaginaires) d’Asie, d’Inde, d’Afrique, d’Europe du nord, et même le Markland. L’étude des sources utilisées dans la composition de l’excursus nous permet d’observer d’abord que le frère Galvaneus utilisait des sources encyclopédiques anciennes et médiévales d’une part, et de l’autre part, des récits des voyageurs à l’Orient. Il est aussi possible que l’auteur de la Cronica ait eu recours aux témoignages oraux de voyageurs et de marins. Ce qui apparaît de cette étude est une image moderne de la géographie: non seulement grâce aux sources citées (les auteurs anciens sont souvent induits par des œuvres médiévales) mais aussi pour les lieux mentionnés.

Los capítulos 273-378 de la Cronica universalis del dominico milanés Galvano Flamma consisten en una larga digresión geográfica, señal del interés del autor por el tema. Esta digresión describe lugares y ciudades (reales o, para nosotros, imaginarios) de Asia, India, África, el norte de Europa e incluso Markland. El estudio de las fuentes utilizadas en la composición de la digresión permite observar en primer lugar que Fray Galvano utilizó por un lado fuentes enciclopédicas antiguas y medievales, y por otro relatos escritos de viajeros a Oriente. También es posible que el autor de la Crónica recurriese a testimonios orales de viajeros y marinos. Lo que surge de este estudio es una imagen moderna de la geografía: no solo por las fuentes que se citan (a menudo se accede a los autores antiguos a través de obras medievales) sino también por los lugares que se mencionan.

KEYWORDS:

• Galvaneus Flamma
• Cronica universalis
• Geography
• Geographical sources

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Galvaneus; la Cronica universalis ; la géographie ; les sources géographiques

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Galvano Flamma; Cronica universalis; Geografía; Fuentes geográficas

Acknowledgments

This contribution presents some early results emerging from the preliminary studies about the sources of the Cronica universalis, carried out in relation to its future publication. Much of the data briefly presented here will be discussed in detail in the critical edition. I would like to thank Professor Paolo Chiesa and the reviewers of this paper for their valuable advice and suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The numbering of the chapters from here on is that of the New York manuscript.

² A certain space is dedicated, for obvious reasons, to the origin and foundation of Milan (chs. 82–99).

³ It must be emphasized, however, that Galvaneus’s interest seems to be specially aimed at Italian geography, particularly that of Northern Italy. Ample space, in fact, is dedicated to the historical-geographical description of the cities in the northern part of the Italian peninsula.

⁴ The only exception to this unity is represented by chapters 336 (dedicated to the prophet Samuel), 337 (about the colonization of Anglia [England] by Brutus) and 338 (about Brennus, the leader of the Senones Gauls).

⁵ With the expression “for us imaginary places” we indicate all those places that, in the light of modern knowledge, are evidently fictitious (such as islands inhabited by imaginary animals and populations, and where prodigious phenomena occur) but that for the people of antiquity and Middle Ages they really existed and had a geographical location on Earth.

⁶ We classify some sources as “known sources whose author is not explicitly named” because Galvaneus perfectly knew their origin, but did not explicitly state where he got that information from or cite the author.

⁷ In particular, the identification of the places cited by Galvaneus and derived from Marco Polo’s Milione was carried out on the basis of the commentary notes accompanying the digital edition of the Latin translation of Polo’s work made by Francesco Pipino (see note 9).

⁸ I would like to thank the reviewers of this paper, who suggested the following identifications to me: Hesperides and Insule Fortunate (chs. 257 and 359), Canary Islands; Insule ubi nascuntur gyrifalchi et falcones (ch. 275), probably Iceland and Greenland; Marckalada (ch. 275), probably Labrador; Capraria (ch. 281), one of the Canary Island (maybe La Gomera); provintia Chenitis (ch. 283), maybe Chemmis island; Arenosum mare (ch. 289), Gobi Desert; montes Ubera Aquilonis (ch. 292), Riphean Mountains; Locach (ch. 298), Cambodia or peninsular Thailand; mons Adamantinus (ch. 335bis), Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka; Gades (ch. 355), Cadiz; Insulae ubi sunt mulieres monstruose (chs. 362–3), maybe Gorgades (Canary Islands); Insula ubi est os inferni (ch. 369), Mount Hekla in Iceland; Lapis ubi sedebat Iudas (ch. 370), maybe Rockall.

⁹ Marco Polo, Il Milione, in Giovanni Battista Ramusio. Dei viaggi di Messer Marco Polo viaggiatore veneziano (Navigationi et viaggi II, 1559), digital critical edition by Eugenio Burgio, Marina Buzzoni, Antonella Ghersetti. The so-called Redazione P, the Latin version prepared by the Dominican friar Francesco Pipino and perhaps used by Galvaneus is available at the following link: http://virgo.unive.it/ecf-workflow/books/Ramusio/testi_completi/P_marcato-main.html, accessed 14 June 2022.

¹⁰ Isidori Hispalensis Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. Wallace Martin Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911; anastatic reprint New York: 1988). Isidore’s work is also available online (https://www.mirabileweb.it/content.aspx?Info=Lessici_ml_list).

¹¹ C. Iulii Solini Collectanea rerum memorabilium, ed. Theodor Mommsen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895).

¹² C. Plinii Secundi Naturalis historia, ed. Detlef Detlefsen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1866–1882).

¹³ The Chronicon by Benzo of Alexandria is handed down in a single complete manuscript (the other existing ones are partial copies): Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, B 24 inf.

¹⁴ It is not easy to identify who magister Maynetus is. It can be assumed he was Maynus (or Magninus) de Maineriis, a cleric from the diocese of Milan and teacher of arts and medicine in Paris between 1326 and 1333, and appointed in 1346 as physician of the Visconti family (thus a contemporary of Galvaneus). On Maynus, see Olga Weijers, Le travail intellectuel à la Faculté des arts de Paris: textes et maîtres (ca. 1200–1500) VI (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 71–2. Thanks to some elements of this chapter of CU, it is possible to assume that the quote from a text by Maynus – if Maynetus can really be him – has reached the Milanese friar thanks to the mediation of Benzo of Alexandria’s Chronicon. In the Chronicon, however, such information not only does not occur associated with the name of Maynetus, but does not even appear: it is therefore possible that it was in the part of Benzo’s encyclopedia that has not come down to us and which, however, Galvaneus possessed.

¹⁵ In CU III 281, Galvaneus inserts a brief mention of a Terra delitiarum located to the East in which there would be the mythological trees of the sun and the moon. A more detailed description of such place – based in all likelihood on the Historia scholastica by Petrus Comestor and the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem – occurs in CU I 29.

¹⁶ Vincentius Bellovacensis [Vincent of Beauvais], Speculum naturale (Strasbourg: 1476). Galvaneus places the Terra refrigerii (the place where Christians will flee at the time of the last persecution of the Antichrist) to the Southeast, claiming to obtain the information from the sixteenth book of Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum. The reference to a Terra refrigerii in Vincent’s work, however, occurs in the fourth book and it is simply said that this land is located in one of the two temperate zones of the world.

¹⁷ The provincia Chenitis seems not to be attested in the sources consulted by us and by Galvaneus. This place is, however, described by the author as a fantastic place, populated by cynocephali, horned monkeys with eight eyes and eight feet, griffins, and dragons.

¹⁸ Petri Comestoris Scolastica historia: Liber Genesis, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis 191, ed. Agneta Sylwan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005).

¹⁹ The work, falsely attributed to Methodius, Bishop of Olympus, is published in Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen, ed. Ernst Sackur (Halle a.S.: Niemeyer, 1898).

²⁰ Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem, ed. Walther Walther Boer (Meisenheim am Glam, 1973).

²¹ Pseudo-Clement of Rome secundum translationem quam fecit Rufinus, Recognitiones, ed. Bernhard Rehm, Franz Paschke (1965), available online at www.brepolis.net.

²² The Chronicon by Benzo of Alexandria is the undeclared direct source of numerous quotes from authors cited by Galvaneus. This occurs, for example, in points 5, 6, 58, and 72, where the citations of ancient sources do not come from direct readings (even if Galvaneus could consult them directly) but from Benzo’s encyclopedic work. Here (and at point 85) the Milanese friar also adds to the group of sources taken from Benzo some passages from other works not mentioned in the Chronicon.

²³ Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. James Willis (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, 1983).

²⁴ Giovanni da Pian di Carpine, Storia dei Mongoli, eds. Paolo Daffinà, Claudio Leonardi, Maria Cristiana Lungarotti, Enrico Menestò, Luciano Petech (Spoleto: CISAM, 1989).

²⁵ Odorico da Pordenone, Relatio de mirabilibus orientalium Tatarorum, ed. Annalia Marchisio (Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2016).

²⁶ Hayton, Flos historiarum terre Orientis, in Recueil des historiens des croisades. Documents arméniens, vol. II (Paris: Imprimeríe nationale, 1906).

²⁷ Epistolae fratris Iohannis de Monte Corvino, ed. Anastasius Van Den Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana I, 1929, pp. 335–56.

²⁸ In the New York manuscript, chapter 335 is followed by a title without number (Civitas dicta Tampygui et de civitate Ugyn, “The city called Tampygui and the city of Ugyn”), which introduces a series of paragraphs separated by a line left blank, a sign that it might have been of a somehow provisional nature. After these materials the manuscript correctly resumes with the numbering of the chapters from 336. For convenience, in the text we will refer to this unnumbered chapter as 335bis.

²⁹ Orosio, Le storie contro i pagani, 2 vols., ed. Adolf Lippold (Roma: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1976).

³⁰ The Latin Josephus. I, Introduction and text. The Antiquities: books I–V, ed. Franz Blatt (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget København, E. Munksgaard, 1958).

³¹ Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De rerum proprietatibus (Francofurti: apud Wolfgangum Richter, 1601; anastatic reprint: Frankfurt a. M.: Minerva G.M.B.H., 1964).

³² Honorius Augustodunensis, De imagine mundi libri tres, Patrologia Latina 172, coll. 115–188, (Paris: 1854).

³³ Paolo Diacono, Storia dei Longobardi, ed. Lidia Capo (Roma: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1992).

³⁴ Papias, Elementarium doctrinae rudimentum, (Venetiis: 1496; available online at https://www.mirabileweb.it/content.aspx?Info=Lessici_ml_list).

³⁵ The Historia regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, with contributions to the study of its place in early British history by A. Griscom, together with a literal translation of the Welsh manuscript n. 61 of Jesus college, Oxford by R. E. Jones (Geneve, 1977).

³⁶ The reference here is to the city of Arim which, according to the Arab scientific and geographical tradition, stood at the intersection between the Equator and the central meridian (90 degrees east of the Fortunate Isles).

³⁷ Here and in chapter 365 Galvaneus devotes space to some Eastern islands, populated by monstrous women, satyrs and brahmins, and characterized by natural wonders. No source has been found for such information, which belongs to that imaginary and fantastic geography typical of the Middle Ages.

³⁸ Navigatio sancti Brendani, editio maior, eds. Giovanni Orlandi, Rossana Eugenia Guglielmetti (Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2017).

³⁹ On this subject, see Paolo Chiesa, “Galvano Fiamma e Giovanni da Carignano. Una nuova fonte sull’ambasceria etiopica a Clemente V e sulla spedizione oceanica dei fratelli Vivaldi,” Itineraria 17 (2018), pp. 63–108; and Alessandro Bausi and Paolo Chiesa, “The Ystoria Ethyopie in the Cronica Universalis of Galvaneus de la Flamma (d. c. 1345),” Aethiopica 22 (2019), pp. 7–57.

⁴⁰ The lists of sources that Galvaneus places in the opening of his major works record a copy of the Etymologiae in the convent of Sant’Eustorgio in Milan, where the friar resided; see Favero in Galvano Fiamma, Chronica pontificum Mediolanensium, ed. Federica Favero (Firenze: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2018), p. 51.

⁴¹ We likely still have today the manuscript that he consulted. This manuscript in all likelihood is the present-day Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 6815; see Favero in Galvano Fiamma, Chronica pontificum Mediolanensium, p. 42.

⁴² The Greek word for “sheep” and “apple” (μῆλον), in fact, is the same.

⁴³ Marco Petoletti, Milano e i suoi monumenti: la descrizione trecentesca del cronista Benzo d’Alessandria, (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2004), XXXII.

⁴⁴ On this topic, see Giulia Greco’s article, entitled “Asia through the Eyes of a Medieval Dominican Friar: Galvaneus de la Flamma’s Reuse of Travel Accounts,” which appears in this present issue of Terrae Incognitae (54, no. 3, 2022).

⁴⁵ In CU, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine is named Iohannes Cordalarius, Cordolarius, and Coroblarius, that is cordellarius, “characterized by the rope”, with clear reference to the belt of the Franciscan habit.

⁴⁶ These two places will be better discussed in the Commentary.

⁴⁷ Marco Polo does not consider the Brahmins one of the castes of the Hindu social system, but an ethnic group characterized by particular traditions and habits.

⁴⁸ Thus, at least, it can be hypothesized on the basis of the indication Hec tria supradicta capitula habui ex ore fratris Symonis ordinis fratrum Predicatorum («I got these three chapters from the mouth of Friar Simon of the Order of Preachers») in CU III 289.

⁴⁹ Such expression allows us to conjecture that Galvaneus was observing a south-oriented map, so the south east is placed “above”. See also Paolo Chiesa’s article entitled, “Two Cartographic Elements in Galvaneus de la Flamma’s Cronica universalis,” which appears in this present issue of Terrae Incognitae (54, no. 3, 2022).

⁵⁰ Odorico da Pordenone, Relatio de mirabilibus orientalium Tatarorum XXIII 9–10, p. 187.

⁵¹ I am very grateful to Professor Paolo Chiesa for having suggested this idea to me.

⁵² On Markland and on the importance of the presence of its name in CU, see Paolo Chiesa, “Marckalada: The First Mention of America in the Mediterranean Area (c. 1340),” Terrae Incognitae, 53:2 (2021), pp. 88–106.

⁵³ Chiesa, “Marckalada: The First Mention of America in the Mediterranean Area (c. 1340),” pp. 101–3.

⁵⁴ The date of birth of Benzo is not known. It is hypothesized that he was born in the second half of the 13th century and that he died after 1329 (Eugenio Ragni, “Benzo d’Alessandria”, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 8 (Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1966).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Federica Favero

Federica Favero studied at the University of Milan and the Società Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino in Florence. Her fields of study are the exegetical literature of the early Middle Ages, the late medieval Milanese chronicles, and the Latin language of Dante Alighieri. Among her publications are the critical edition of Galvaneus Flamma’s Chronica pontificum Mediolanensium (2018), studies about Galvaneus Flamma (2017; 2021) and Dante Alighieri (2022), and a large set of entries of the Vocabolario Dantesco Latino. [email protected].