The geographical interest of these figures and of investigations of this sort was not appreciated by the majority of the men of our age. The application of astronomical considerations to the problems of navigation was still in its infancy. The purpose of the investigator of the twelfth and early thirteenth century in finding geographical coöordinates was astrological. He wished to make use of them to transpose tables made originally for the meridian and parallel of one station to the meridian and parallel of another. Their influence on the cartography of the age was absolutely _nil_. It is probably safe to make the categorical statement that the maps and geographical treatises of the century and a half preceding the year 1250 were drawn and written with almost complete disregard of any astronomical considerations whatsoever. CHAPTER XI CARTOGRAPHY The maps of our period give us the most convincing possible illustrations of the geographical ideas that were current.[1127] Their bright colors, naïve legends, childlike but often skillfully drawn vignettes, and preposterous inaccuracy take us back into the atmosphere of a credulous and uncritical age. We can catch much more of the flavor of the popular geography of the Middle Ages by a hasty glance at one of the crude Beatus representations of the world than by plowing through many of the dry pages of compilations like the _De imagine mundi_. In this chapter there will be given a brief analysis of these maps as specimens of the cartographer’s art and an explanation of certain points which all, or most, of them have in common. _INACCURACY_ What strikes us first is their extraordinary inaccuracy. It is easy to laugh at this because subconsciously but inevitably we compare the outlines of seas, continents, and regions as represented in these maps with the outlines with which we have become familiar in modern atlases. We tend to forget that the contours of Europe, Asia, and Africa as we now know them are not images that have been stamped upon the minds of men at all times, that their accurate representation is the result of a series of long and laborious observations completed only at a relatively recent date. Hence it is somewhat unjust to reproach the medieval cartographer with his inaccuracy, for the reason that accuracy in the present-day sense was something impossible for him to achieve. The Greeks and Moslems, to be sure, had made far better maps than did the men of the Middle Ages; but, unfortunately, Greek maps had perished, few Arabic maps came through to the West, and the prevalent ignorance of Greek made it impossible for the Occidental scholar to gain inspiration from treatises on cartography written in that tongue. ACCURACY NOT DEEMED NECESSARY