_Map-Making in the Middle Ages._--In scientific matters the early middle ages were marked by stagnation and retrogression. The fathers of the church did not encourage scientific pursuits, which Lactantius (4th century) declared to be unprofitable. The doctrine of the sphericity of the earth was still held by the more learned, but the heads of the church held it to be unscriptural. Pope Zachary, when in 741 he condemned the views of Virgilius, the learned bishop of Salzburg, an Irishman who had been denounced as a heretic by St Boniface, declares it to be _perversa et iniqua doctrina_. Even after Gerbert of Aurillac, better known as Pope Sylvester II. (999-1063), Adam of Bremen (1075), Albertus Magnus (d. 1286), Roger Bacon (d. 1294), and indeed all men of leading had accepted as a fact and not a mere hypothesis the geocentric system of the universe and sphericity of the globe, the authors of maps of the world, nearly all of whom were monks, still looked in the main to the Holy Scriptures for guidance in outlining the inhabited world. We have to deal thus with three types of these early maps, viz. an oblong rectangular, a circular and an oval type, the latter being either a compromise between the two former, or an artistic development of the circular type. In every instance the inhabited world is surrounded by the ocean. The authors of rectangular maps look upon the Tabernacle as an image of the world at large, and believe that such expressions as the "four corners of the earth" (Isa. x. 12), could be reconciled only with a rectangular world. On the other hand there was the expression "circuit of the earth" (Isa. xl. 22), and the statement (Ezek. v. 5) that "God had set Jerusalem in the midst of the nations and countries." In nearly every case the East occupies the top of the map. Neither parallels nor meridians are indicated, nor is there a scale. Other features frequently met with are the Paradise in the Far East, miniatures of towns, plants, animals, human beings and monsters, and an indication of the twelve winds around the margin. [Illustration: FIG. 7.--Map of Albi (8th century).] [Illustration: FIG. 8.--Anglo-Saxon Map of the World (9th century).]