However this may be, there is no question that throughout a century or more before the age of the Crusades individuals not only among the laity but even in the monasteries were openly writing poems of earthly love and openly lauding the beauty of natural scenery in more or less the vein of the Romans.[287] This was but one aspect of the worldly tendency in Church and society which brought about the Cluniac and later movements of reform. _MATHEMATICAL GEOGRAPHY AND CARTOGRAPHY_ MATHEMATICAL GEOGRAPHY We may pass over the mathematical geography of the Christian period before 1100; no discoveries were made, nor were there any attempts to apply the results of older discoveries. Gerbert, indeed, in his _Liber de astrolabio_, gives a few details of the division of the earth’s surface into seven climates, details which he had probably derived entirely from Latin authors like Pliny and Martianus Capella.[288] Though Gerbert owed much to Arabic writers, he did not draw from them the semi-geographical portions of his writings. Certainly in the strict application of mathematical geography to the determination of positions—latitudes and longitudes—nothing was done in the West. Ptolemy was forgotten, and the labors of the Arabs in this field were as yet unknown. MAPS Though very few maps dating from these centuries are actually in existence, maps were then made in no inconsiderable numbers.[289] Three circumstances convince us of the truth of this statement. In the first place, we find frequent references to lost maps in contemporary literature. Then again, many of the cosmographies and encyclopedic works, such as those of Orosius, Isidore, and the Ravenna geographer, show undeniable indications that they were either compiled from maps or else were accompanied by maps as illustrations. And, finally, most of the examples of twelfth- and early thirteenth-century cartography can only have been derived from older models, some of which in the final analysis may well have been inspired by the cartography of the period of the Roman Empire.[290] With a few exceptions[291] the existing specimens of the cartography of Western Europe dating from before 1100 may be classified as regards form in four more or less well-defined groups, representatives of each of which are also found from the Crusading age and even later. The character of the maps was largely determined by the purposes intended to be served.[292] _Macrobian Maps_ The first group consists of outline diagrams illustrating Macrobius’ division of the earth’s surface into zones and is to be found in manuscripts from as early as the ninth century. This group cannot properly be said to include true maps.[293] _T-O Maps_