Imagining Subterranean Peoples and Places in Medieval Latin 00 Literature 105
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
applyparastyle “fig//caption/p[1]” parastyle “FigCapt” Mediaevistik 32 . 2019 105 2020 Scott G. Bruce 00 Sunt altera nobis sidera, sunt orbes alii: Imagining Subterranean Peoples and Places in Medieval Latin 00 Literature 105 118 Owing to the enduring popularity of Jules Verne’s science fiction story Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), modern readers have taken for granted a hollow, habitable 2020 core beneath the earth’s crust as a time-honored, though scientifically implausible, setting for speculative fiction.1 Verne’s fantastic tale of Professor Otto Lidenbrock’s descent into the Icelandic volcano Snæfellsjökull and his perilous adventures under- ground featuring forests of giant mushrooms and prehistoric monsters remains the most widely read work of nineteenth-century “subterranean fiction.” In 1926, the story was reprinted in a three-part serial in the widely-read American science fiction maga- zine Amazing Stories (Fig. 1). Throughout the twentieth century, it spawned a host of imitators, from Edgar Rice Burrough’s Pellucidar series (1914‒1963) to C. S. Lewis’ Narnian chronicle The Silver Chair (1953), as well as a successful 1959 film adaptation starring James Mason and Pat Boone. The notion that the earth was both hollow and habitable predated Jules Verne by at least two centuries. In 1665, the German Jesuit and polymath Athanasius Kircher (1602‒1680) published his lavishly illustrated, two-volume Mundus subterraneus, an 800‒page potpourri of scientific knowledge and folkloric accretion about the geography and ecology of subterranean realms, with long digressions on the existence of under- world megafauna, like giants and dragons, and some first-rate speculation on the site of lost Atlantis.2 Like the hero of Verne’s story, Kircher was intrigued by the possibility that volcanoes provided gateways to the lightless world below. In 1638, he had himself lowered into the active crater of Mount Vesuvius in the Gulf of Naples, because, in his own words “[a]fter having searched out the incredible power of Nature working in sub- terraneous burrows and passages, I had a great desire to know whether Vesuvius also had not some secret commerce and correspondence with Stromboli and Aetna.”3 (Fig. 2) Historians of science have typically situated Kircher’s work at the beginning of a tradition of critical inquiry into what we would now call the geological sciences, but his indebtedness to the Hebrew scriptures and to ancient literature on the topic of sub- terranean worlds suggests that these parts of his magnum opus are better understood as a summa of premodern speculation about people and places that may exist below the earth’s surface. In fact, Mundus subterraneus stands at the end of an even longer tradition of imagining what lies beneath the earth's crust that dates back to the Greeks and the Romans, who did much to inform medieval thinkers and story-tellers. It is the purpose of this paper to examine evidence from Latin literature of the Euro- pean Middle Ages for the idea that the earth was both hollow and habitable.4 It begins The online edition of this publication is available open access and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2020 Scott G. Bruce https://doi.org/10.3726/med.2019.01.04 106 Mediaevistik 32 . 2019 Fig. 1: Amazing Stories (June 1926), featuring Part 2 of a three-part serial of Jules Verne’s novel, here entitled “A Trip to the Center of the Earth.” with the ancient notion that the territory below the earth’s surface belongs primarily to the spirits of the dead. Following the maps of the netherworld left by Greek and Roman poets and Hebrew prophets, Christian thinkers likewise imagined a vast subterranean Mediaevistik 32 . 2019 107 Fig. 2: Cross-section of Vesuvius in Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneanus. realm populated by departed souls.5 While the idea of an infernal underworld domina- ted the premodern subterranean imagination, beginning in the twelfth century stories featuring underworld inhabitants also appeared in collections of wonders and in works of hagiography. Two of these stories, the first about green children who emerged from a cave in Suffolk, England, and the second about a pygmy who cursed an ancient king of the Britons, are well known; another, expressive of the fear among Christians that their Muslim adversaries made use of underground caves and passageways, has thus far escaped critical attention. While unrelated to one another, these anecdotes provide compelling evidence that twelfth-century thinkers writing in Latin had active and vivid ideas about the world below. 1. Descensus ad infernos Ancient notions about the geography of the afterlife did much to inform medieval thinkers about the possibility that there was more than loose soil and hard rock beneath their feet. Drawing on the traditions of the Greeks enshrined in the works of Hesiod and Homer, Roman authors claimed that human souls departed from their corpses 108 Mediaevistik 32 . 2019 upon death and migrated to a realm of their own, invisible to the eyes of the living. The location of the kingdom of the dead was a matter of some debate, but most authorities situated it below the ground and identified particular rivers, caves, and volcanic craters as possible entrances. Under extraordinary circumstances, heroes like Odysseus and Aeneas braved the threshold of this kingdom to obtain information that only the dead could know, but ordinary mortals could not enter until their souls left their bodies. Medieval monks first encountered Roman literature as children in the classroom.6 A ninth-century schoolbook from the abbey of Reichnau claimed that “[l]ittle chil- dren, of course, read Virgil for the reason that the great poet, the most renowned and best of all, when absorbed by tender minds, may not be easily obliterated by forgetful- ness, because according to the dictum of Horace: A jar will keep for a long time the scent in which it was steeped when it was new.”7 Owing to the central role played by the Aeneid in the medieval curriculum, Virgil’s account of Aeneas’ intrepid descent into the underworld was the most widely read story about the ancient land of the dead among monastic readers in the Middle Ages.8 After making the appropriate sacrifices to the goddess Night, to her sister Earth, and to Persephone, the unwilling bride of Hades, Aeneas drew his sword, plucked up his courage, and raced after his guide, the Sibyl of Cumae, as she “plunged wildly into the open cave” (tantum effata furens antro se immisit aperto) that led down to the realm of spirits and silent shadows, where they would learn things that were “buried in the deep earth and the darkness” (pandere res alta terra et caligine mersas).9 Medieval monks dismissed literal readings of the pagan rituals that attended Aene- as’s journey below, but they found confirmation that the dead dwelled underground in an ancient authority even more powerful than Virgil’s poetry: the Hebrew scriptures. In the Old Testament, the abode of the dead is called She’ol, which the translators of the Septuagint later rendered into Greek as Hades (ᾅ δ η ς) and Jerome, later still, into Latin as Hell (infernus).10 In the Hebrew scriptures, She’ol is depicted as a grim and lifeless place below the earth described variously as a grave, a tomb, and most often a pit.11 There the souls of the dead abide bereft of the qualities and ambitions that they possessed in life: “Their love, their hate, and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun … for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.”12 She’ol was presumably the subterranean abode from which Saul ordered the witch of Endor to raise up the ghost of the prophet Samuel.13 Only the mercy of God could deliver his followers from this place of anguish. As the psalmist exclaimed with relief: “For great is your mercy upon me and you have plucked my soul from the very depths of Hell” (de inferno extremo).14 These ancient ideas about the realm of the dead informed patristic discussions about the location of Hell and ultimately reinforced the prevailing view that it was situated below the surface of the earth. Augustine (354‒430) was initially equivocal on the question. In Book 19 of his magisterial treatise Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, written in the 420s, he imagined Hell in terms of the condition of the sinner’s soul rather than its physical location after death: “The wretchedness of those who do not belong to this City of God will be everlasting. This is called the ‘second death’ be- cause the soul cannot be said to be alive in that state, when it is separated from the life Mediaevistik 32 . 2019 109 of God, nor can the body, when it is subjected to eternal torments.”15 But a few years later, on the eve of his own death in 430, the bishop of Hippo wrote in his retrospective Retractions that upon further consideration he firmly believed that Hell is located un- der the ground.16 Gregory the Great (ca. 540‒604) was less equivocal than Augustine. In the final book of his Dialogues, which appeared in 594, the pope told stories about the fate of the souls of ordinary Christians to a young disciple named Peter. When Pe- ter asked his master if Christians should believe that Hell is located above the earth or beneath it, Gregory replied with recourse to Psalm 85: “For there are some who believe that Hell is in a certain part of the world, while others believe that it is under the earth.