We cannot well leave the subject of encyclopedic compilations without mentioning such gigantic thirteenth-century productions as the _Specula_ of Vincent of Beauvais,[461] the various writings of Albertus Magnus,[462] and the relatively less ambitious popularizations of Bartholomew Anglicus,[463] Brunetto Latino,[464] and others.[465] The _Opus majus_ of Roger Bacon is also encyclopedic in scope. These great works contain a wealth of reference the systematic study of which would unquestionably shed much additional light on the substance of medieval geographical knowledge. The innumerable pages of Albertus Magnus, indeed, show not a little originality; and Roger Bacon stands somewhat apart from his contemporaries as a fearless exponent of scientific method.[466] On the whole, however, there is no very essential difference between the geography of these men and that of their less well-informed and perhaps less diligent predecessors. This is one reason why we have felt justified in failing to treat them in detail. Another reason is that adequate treatment of the geography of the thirteenth-century encyclopedists would fill another volume at least the size of the present one. DANTE A figure, however, whom we cannot refrain from mentioning in this connection, though he lived after 1250 and though his genius far transcended that of any encyclopedist of any age, is Dante. Much of the information amassed by the laborious compilers of encyclopedic works (especially Brunetto Latino) was fused by the poet into the _Divine Comedy_ and molded into his various prose writings. The universality of Dante’s knowledge embraced the geography and cosmography of his age. Though we shall not attempt to deal with Dante’s geographical lore[467] in the pages which follow, it would be a serious mistake to omit all reference to one who flourished so soon after the end of our period and who, besides being a poet of all time, was an outstanding figure in medieval scholarship and, incidentally, in the history of medieval geography. The reader who wishes to investigate the geography of Dante and of the encyclopedists of the thirteenth century will find brief summaries and references in Notes 92–98 to the present chapter. _HISTORIES, CHRONICLES, SAGAS, EPIC POEMS_ The writings of the historians and chroniclers of the Middle Ages, though they do not as a rule include systematic expositions of geography, nevertheless often contain incidental geographical matter of no slight interest. The present section is devoted to a very few selected specimens of historical narrative of the Crusading age, whether prose or verse, that are of particular significance from the geographical point of view. OTTO OF FREISING