Bibliography

The most evident cases of a direct and explicit opposition of north and south are found in texts from or about Scandinavia. Even in this context, though, there is a notable difference between the portrayal of north and south. The opposition is characteristically established through reference to Song of Songs 4:16, but the exegetical logic as applied to north is not mirrored with the south. A particularly rich example of this sort of spatial interpretation is found in the life of Cnut by Ælnoth of Canterbury.6See generally, Gelting, ‘Two Early’, esp. 38–43, and Aidan Conti, ‘Ælnoth of Canterbury and Early Mythopoiesis in Denmark’, in Saints and their Lives on the Periphery: Veneration of Saints in Scandinavian and Eastern Europe (c. 1000–1200), ed. Haki Antonsson and Ildar H. Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 189–206; on the literary context and the problematic relationship of historiography and hagiography, see Mortensen, ‘Mythopoiesis’, esp. 247–52. He begins the life with a brief history of the northern kingdoms, which combines an ethnographic account of the impact of the northern climate on its inhabitants with a story of their conversion to Christianity. The nature of the north, barren both of life and amenities, explains not only the inhabitants’ tenuous grasp of true religion, since they sully it by eating illicit foods during fast days (even Lent!), but also the belatedness of their conversion, for the doctors of the faith were reticent to travel to a land so scarce and so innately barbaric.7Ælnoth, 1, ed. Gertz, 82–5; cf. Gelting, ‘Two Early’, 43–9. This ethnography blends seamlessly into a biblically charged commentary on the spiritual condition of the region, as Ælnoth continues:

The south receives no analogous treatment. Ælnoth uses this negative portrayal as the backdrop for an exhortation to the religious life, here drawing upon Song of Songs. Although people of this region are rarely touched by the warmth of faith:

This asymmetry of north and south is no mere quirk of Ælnoth’s history. We find the same sort of asymmetry in other authors as well. This is evident in the chronicles written from the northern frontier region of the Elbe, where again a literal north is contrasted with a figurative south through the exegetical trope of freezing and thawing.12Fraesdorff, Norden, 162n265. Without using the specific terms north or south, Thietmar of Merseburg (d. 1018) describes the northern reaches of Scandinavia, which he identifies with Scythia, through its distance from the sun, a chill that is reflected in the character of the inhabitants.13Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronicon 7.37, ed. Robert Holtzmann, MGH SS, n.s. 9 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1935), 444; Fraesdorff, Norden, 248. More clearly, in the later twelfth century, Helmold of Bosau (d. post 1177) applies the language of Song of Songs directly to a reconciliation between the Danes and Slavic Rani through a marriage alliance: ‘there was great joy for all peoples of the northern nations, cheer and peace arose together, and that icy cold of the north was changed into the gentle breeze of the south’.14Helmold of Bosau, Chronica Slavorum 2.110, ed. Bernhard Schmeidler, MGH SS rer. Germ. 32 (Hannover: Hahn, 1937), 217–18: ‘et facta est leticia magna omnibus populis borealium nationum, iocunditas et pax simul orta est. Et mutatum est gelidum illud frigus aquilonis in lenes austri flatus’. Fraesdorff, Norden, 162, 325. Helmold’s continuer Arnold of Lübeck (d. ca. 1214) concludes his chronicle with a similar evocation of Song of Songs to memorialise the progressive conversion of the north.15Arnold of Lübeck, Chronica Slavorum 7.20, ed. I. M. Lappenberg, MGH SS rer. Germ. 14 (Hannover, 1868), 295; Fraesdorff, Norden, 324. Just as with Ælnoth, the opposition of north and south, cold and warm, provides a biblical framework to describe the peoples of the north. But once again, the south in question is wholly tropological, denoting the spiritual condition of the Church and its peace that is brought to the people of the north.

This trope is not restricted to authors writing from the north. Peter the Venerable, for example, appeals to the same stereotype in his letter to Sigurd I of Norway so that he can undermine it in praise of Sigurd’s support for crusading. Peter follows precisely the same formula, beginning with an description of the remote and inhospitable north, ‘on the outermost edges of the globe and under the frozen axis of the world’.16Peter the Venerable, Epistola 44, ed. Constable, 1:141: ‘in extremis finibus orbis atque sub gelido axe saeculorum’. He then notes the analogous spiritual distance from the south so that it can be subverted, since God has ‘nevertheless tempered the northern cold, with the southern warmth of his spirit, so much in you’ that again the refrain of Song of Songs 4:16 can be said of Sigurd.17Peter the Venerable, Epistola 44, ed. Constable, 1:141: ‘meridiano tamen sui spiritus calore, in tantum uestrum aquilonale frigus temperauit’. In all of these cases, the north is understood in reference to the literal condition of the northern part of the world where the frigid nature of the landscape imputes an equivalent frigidity to the spiritual life of its inhabitants. The south, on the other hand, refers only to a new spiritual condition brought to the self-same inhabitants. It once again inheres to the north as its contrary, and represents the allegorical and tropological reading of the gentiles joining the Church and of sinners turning their lives to good works. Indeed, Peter’s letter goes on to praise Sigurd’s services to the Church, establishing its protection and supporting its expansionist efforts.

What is more, any notion of a proper spatial distinction between a pagan north and a Christian south is undermined through the spatial context of crusading in the second half of the letter. Peter praises Sigurd ‘for driving back the enemies of the cross of Christ from land and sea, not only in your parts, but also at the remotest ends of the south and east’.18Peter the Venerable, Epistola 44, ed. Constable, 1:141 (emphasis added): ‘inimicos crucis Christi, … non tantum in uestris, sed etiam in remotissimis meridiei et orientis finibus, … terra marique … reppuleritis’. In Ælnoth the south lacks literal substance in part because of a previously established spatial logic. Ælnoth’s ethnography begins with Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, after which the Franks, Gauls and Saxons submit to the Roman Empire and the Christian religion. Naturally, the relevant spatial dichotomy here is not between north and south but between north and west. Hence, he contrasts ‘almost all the kingdoms of the west’, who submitted to Christian laws through the Roman Empire, and ‘those nations which stand on the other side of the Franks or Gauls and Saxons in the northern regions’, who received signs of the faith later.19Ælnoth, 1, ed. Gertz, 82: ‘fere omnia occidentis regna’; ‘nationes ille, que ex aduerso latere Francorum seu Gallorum Saxonumque aquilonalibus consistunt partibus’. This initial framing belies a simple narrative of north against south. The narrative is grounded on actual European geography, rather than merely a spiritual geography, just like Peter’s letter is ultimately framed around a global geography. As such, it is not clear that we should read the subsequent north-south opposition back into this north-west opposition. Instead, it seems perfectly acceptable to interpret both Ælnoth and Peter as using different spatial frameworks to different ends.

When these authors do make allusions to the south, it is most often only a south relative to European geography and as such this region is not usually described as ‘south’ or situated within a broader analysis of space. Both Sigebert and Orderic make allusions to Italy as a different region from the Carolingian heartlands to its north, but their framing of this distinction is not very explicit. In Orderic, the evidence is particularly ambiguous. His account of Odo of Bayeux’s abortive attempt to win the papacy clearly describes how Odo and Hugh of Chester together abandoned their possessions in the west (in occiduis climatibus) to go to the lands beyond the Po.22OV, 7.8, ed. Chibnall, 4:40–1. But Orderic never describes that land beyond the Po as southern. Rather, as in the case of his frequent references to the Italian Normans, he simply refers to Italy according to the name of the relevant region or regions.23E.g., OV, 3.–, 7.7, ed. Chibnall, 2:126–7, 4:36–7. While it is not unreasonable to suppose that there is some notion of a ‘southern Europe’ behind Orderic’s presentation of Italy, he does not describe it in these terms. This is strikingly similar to the presentation of European geography by Robert the Monk, who describes French crusading contingents as coming from the north and south of the extreme west. These ‘western European’ crusaders then leave their homes (suis sedibus) and cross the Alps, to be directed through Italy to Rome.24Robert, Hist. 2.1–2, ed. Kempf and Bull, 13, cited above p. 000. In both cases, Italy is portrayed as in some sense not ‘western’, but the authors do not thereby identify it with the south.25See also Wolever, ‘Post-Carolingian Geographies’, 171–2. People do not reach the south when they leave the west, they reach Italy.

The case of Sigebert is likewise ambiguous, but for different reasons. Like Orderic, Sigebert normally refers to Italy simply by the relevant toponyms.26E.g., Sig., Chron. 910, 1013, MGH SS 6, 345, 355. There are, however, one or two indications of the broader spatial organisation of Europe. The one explicit presentation of north-south relations within Europe comes near the end of the Chronicle when, in 1110, he records a comet with its tail pointing to the south (ad austrum). Unlike the majority of the signs scattered throughout the work, Sigebert offers an interpretation of this event, explaining that ‘by this sign the future campaign of King Henry V against Italy was foretold’.27Sig., Chron. 1110, MGH SS 6, 372: ‘hoc signo portendi futuram regis Heinrici quinti expeditionem Italiam versus’. As with Orderic, the relative geography here makes sense because the author is writing from north-western Europe. The relative nature of this geography is underscored when compared with Romuald of Salerno’s account of the very same comet in his Chronicle. Although Romuald does not gloss the sign like Sigebert, the subsequent year poignantly begins with the same invasion of Italy by Henry V. Despite these similarities, Romuald provides a notably different description of the comet. Instead of having its tail pointing to the south, he notes its position around the northern axis of the sky (a parte septemtrionali circa polum).28Romuald, 204–5. The change of perspective from a campaign in the south to an invasion from the north is thus evident. Even for Romuald, however, the south remains relative. Although he has no signs associated with the south alone, the two signs that involve the south are both related to events in the south of Italy specifically.29Romuald, 170, 186. As with Ælnoth, there appears to be a general problem for these authors that the south about which they are speaking does not embody any particular geographical south: it is instead understood relative to whatever geography they are discussing at the time. As such, even with our Italian author, there is little basis on which to provide the south with a solid foundation for historical analysis.

The origins of this perception may lie in early ties between Cluny and a Spanish royal family. Although there is some dispute over the exact nature of the relationship, as the idea that Alfonso VI of Castile-Léon (1072–1109), for example, paid a considerable yearly tribute to Cluny during the abbacy of Hugh of Semur (1049–1109) has recently been drawn into question, no one doubts the links between Cluny and northwestern Iberia, which extend back to at least the abbacy of Odilo (994–1049).32Iogna-Prat, Order and Exclusion, 28, 336; Lucy K. Pick, ‘Rethinking Cluny in Spain’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 5, no. 1 (2013): 1–17; Patrick Henriet, ‘Cluny and Spain before Alfonso VI: remarks and propositions’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 9, no. 2 (2017): 206–19. Crucially for Cluniac awareness of Spain, between 1022 and 1025 Sancho III of Navarra, Alfonso’s grandfather, sent a group of Spanish monks to Cluny with the aim of instituting Cluniac reforms at San Juan de la Peña, creating a direct institutional relationship.33Peter Segl, Königtum und Klosterreform in Spanien: Untersuchungen über die Cluniacenserklöster in Kastilien-León vom Beginn des 11. bis zur Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts (Kallmünz: Lassleben, 1974), 32–6; Iogna-Prat, Order and Exclusion, 336. Glaber himself records the presence of possibly the very same Spanish monks at Cluny around 1030 and, as France notes, his interactions with these monks certainly help to explain Glaber’s own unusual interest in and knowledge of Islam.34Glaber, Hist. 3.3.12, cf. 4.7.22, ed. France, 114–15, cf. 206–7; France in Glaber, Hist., liii–iv; Segl, Königtum, 39n195. What is more, Glaber pays particular attention to Africa, which appears to be largely synonymous with Islam in his mind.35Glaber, Hist. 1.5.17, 2.8.18, 4.7.22, cf. 2.7.13, ed. France, 32–3, 82–3, 206–7, cf. 74–5, esp. n2.

Even before these Spanish connections, Islam had already found a place in the institutional consciousness of Cluny as a result of the abduction of Abbot Maiolus (954–94) by Muslims in 972, a story that would be retold repeatedly across his hagiographies and holds a prominent place in Glaber’s history.36Scott G. Bruce, Cluny and the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet: Hagiography and the Problem of Islam in Medieval Europe (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2015), esp. ch. 2; Iogna-Prat, Order and Exclusion, 324–6; Glaber, Hist. 1.4.9, ed. France, 18–23. Furthermore, when Odilo commissioned a Cluniac rewriting of the earliest Pavian hagiography around 1010, one of the new inclusions was a religious discussion between Maiolus and his captors. Odilo had a hand in at least one other version of this story in 1033 and we must suppose that he was at least indirectly involved in Glaber’s version as well.37Bruce, Cluny, 53–7. As the development of this hagiographical tradition shows, both Islam and Spain were present issues for the monks of Cluny through the middle of Odilo’s abbacy.

This nexus of ideas around Spain, Africa and Islam seems to have had a broader impact on the perception of the world among Cluniac authors for at least the next century. We can already see the crystallisation of such a spatial dynamic at work in Glaber’s famous description of the world as represented by Christ on the cross.38For a wider discussion, see Wolever, ‘Post-Carolingian Geographies’, 163–7. Glaber inverts the standard allegorical tropes by describing how, since Christ was oriented westward on the cross, the north and west were favoured by his face and right hand, where the east and south, facing his back and left hand, remained immature and barbaric. This prophesied the state of the world in Glaber’s day:

This Cluniac development saw its apotheosis in the twelfth century through the work of Abbot Peter the Venerable. Taking on the role of a Church Father, Peter not only wrote tracts against the Petrobrusian heretics, Judaism and Islam, but was also instrumental in commissioning the first Latin translation of the Qur’an in 1142.44Peter the Venerable, Epistola 111, ed. Constable, 1:298. See generally Iogna-Prat, Order and Exclusion; Burman, Reading the Qur’ān, chs 1–3; Hernández and Tolan, eds, The Latin Qur’an. Throughout these writings, Peter developed a geography of Christianity and its antagonists, chief among them being Islam. This is evident in his Contra sectam sive haeresim Saracenorum, produced near the end of his life in the late 1140s and 1150s. In the prologue he describes the Islamic conquests:

The introduction to Contra sectam was, for Peter, merely a re-articulation of one part of his broader conception of the world. He had already developed a clear taxonomy and geography of world religions as early as the 1130s in his Contra Petrobrusianos.49Iogna-Prat, Order and Exclusion, 116–17. To show that Christians alone still offer ‘sacrifices’ to God, he describes how there are four main sects in the world: Christians, Jews, Muslims and pagans.50Peter the Venerable, Contra Petrobrusianos haereticos 161, ed. J. Fearns, CCCM 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), 94–5. The Jews, we are told, had inhabited Jerusalem, albeit not for the last 1100 years. Islam by contrast has a far greater reach: ‘almost the entire east and the African region, deceived by that vile Mahumeth for nearly 550 years, is subservient to these and innumerable superstitions’.51Peter the Venerable, Contra Petrobrusianos 161, CCCM 10, 94: ‘Cumque hiis et innumeris superstitionibus tota pene orientalis et Affricana regio ab illo nequam Mahumeth decepta per quingentos et fere quinquaginta annos inseruiat’. Finally, Peter does not forget the geography of the post-Carolingian north, explaining that pagans are ‘few in number and unknown to the world, since they are hidden away in the extreme ends of the north and under the frozen pole, and, as it is said, inhabit places near the Meotide swamps’.52Peter the Venerable, Contra Petrobrusianos 161, CCCM 10, 94–5: ‘[Pagani] pauci et orbi terrarum incogniti, cum in aquilonis extremis finibus atque sub gelido axe lateant, et loca, ut fertur, Meotidis paludibus uicina inhabitent’. Thus Peter develops a complete world geography, with the Muslims in the south and east, the pagans within a markedly diminished north and Christianity implicitly remaining in the west. Though, as he underscores in Aduersus Iudeorum inueteratam duritiem, only two have any real geopolitical significance: the Christians and Muslims, ‘who rule almost the whole world’.53Peter the Venerable, Adversus Iudeorum inueteratam duritiem 5, ed. Y. Friedman, CCCM 58 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), 147: ‘qui uel Christiani uel Sarraceni toti pene mundo imperant’.

There is more to this picture than a mere religious and geopolitical taxonomy, Peter is also attentive to its historical development. Returning to where this book started, with the letter to John Komnenos, Peter extols the significance of John’s kingdom, exalted over all Christian princes and established in the middle of east, west and north (aquilo).54See p. 000 above. ‘Whence in times past (olim) with the northern barbarians, but also with the last (ultimis) and worst enemies of the Christian name, the Arabs, encroaching on the south and west, as if to assault parts of your kingdom, [God] has never yet permitted them to be overthrown’.55Peter the Venerable, Epistola 75, ed. Constable, 1:208: ‘Vnde olim aquilonalibus barbaris, sed et ultimis ac pessimis Christiani nominis inimicis Arabibus, in occiduas et meridianas plagas irruentibus, regni uestri partes etsi oppugnari, nunquam tamen expugnari permisit’. There is a strange mismatch in the use of directions here. John’s kingdom is described as sitting between east, west and north, while the enemies of Christianity are described as attacking from the north and against the south and west. The omission of the east in his description of the Arabs is particularly telling. The absent east is really a substantive absence as it is the implicit location from which the Arabs emerged. This is highlighted also by the use of east, west and north in the description of the kingdom, for John faces both the northern and eastern enemies, standing between them and the west. Likewise, the opposition of olim and ultimus not only evokes the changing geopolitical situation, but also reemphasises the same disparity between Peter’s lack of concern for the few pagans still living on the edge of Scythia and what he perceives as essentially the rival of Christendom.

While the remainder of Europe, especially from the turn of the twelfth century, was hardly ignorant of the Islamic conquest and control of Africa, the spatial narrative exemplified in the writing of Peter the Venerable and Rodulfus Glaber does not seem to have had widespread influence beyond Cluny.56See Mauntel, Erdteile, 441–5, esp. 441n1887. William of Malmesbury, for instance, describes the conquest much in line with Peter’s in Contra sectam, although in his case drawn from Alcuin.57On the early medieval context, see Mauntel, Erdteile, 438–41. After noting that Charlemagne’s generals freed much of Spain from the Muslims, he explains that those same Muslims ‘still rule the whole of Africa and a great part of Asia Major’.58WM, GR 1.91.2, ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, 134–5: ‘tota dominantur Affrica et Asia Maiori maxima ex parte’. Alcuin, Epistola 7, ed. Ernst Dümmler, MGH Epp. 4 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), 32; cf. Tolen, Saracens, 72–8. William is more optimistic about the situation, describing the recent conquests of Muslim lands by Christians, including a ‘great part of Asia’ by the crusade.59WM, GR 1.92, ed. and trans. Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom, 134–5: ‘magnam partem Asiae’. Orderic Vitalis likewise describes the Islamic conquests as an aside to his story of the translation of the body of St. Mark. He explains that, although the evangelist was interred in the east, his body was translated to Aquileia ‘on account of the incursions of pagans, who covered the entire east like locusts, and conquered the greatest part of the world to the south and north’.60OV, 2.15, ed. Chibnall, 1:188–9, my trans.: ‘propter incursiones paganorum qui totum orientem ut locustae operuerunt, sibique maximam partem mundi ad austrum et ad aquilonem subegerunt’. It is for this reason that, although he was commissioned as the ‘leader of the southern climate’, now ‘the natives of Venice and the western people rejoice that they held the body of the blessed evangelist’.61OV, 2.15, ed. Chibnall, 1:189, my trans.: ‘meridiani climatis principatum’; ‘Venetiarum indigenae et occidentales populi habito corpore beati aeuangelistae gratulantur’. Although the phrasing is somewhat ambiguous, Orderic still seems to understand the Islamic conquests as fundamentally covering the east, and the north and south here as simply regions of the greatest part of the world: Asia.62Cf. Isi., Etym. 14.2.2, and Hon., Im. mun. 1.7, ed. Flint, 52. This would of course cover the correct geographical south for Mark, since Alexandria lay within Asia.63Orosius, 1.2.8, ed. Zangemeister, 5; Hon., Im. mun. 1.17, ed. Flint, 57. But neither William nor Orderic show the same consistently expansive geographical vision that we find among Cluniac authors, nor the same focus on Spain and the south or Africa as centres of Islamic activity.

With the Arabic translation movement, another perception of Africa emerges. The role of North Africa in the movement of Arabic scholars and learning into Europe extends as far back as the arrival of Constantine the African (d. ca. 1099) at Montecassino around 1076.64See, e.g., Monica H. Green, ‘Gloriosissimus Galienus: Galen and Galenic Writings in the Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Latin West’, in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Galen (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 324–36, and Erik Kwakkel and Francis L. Newton, Medicine at Monte Cassino: Constantine the African and the Oldest Manuscript of his Pantegi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019). In his earliest biographies, written at Montecassino in the early decades of the twelfth century, Peter the Deacon provides a rather fabulous story of Constantine’s education.65Two versions of this biography survive, both likely written by Peter the Deacon, which differ only slightly in their details. The one in his De viris illustribus Casinensibus 23, PL 173, 1034–5, the other in the Chronica monasterii Casiniensis 3.35, MGH SS 34, 411–12. He left his native Carthage, we are told, to study in Babylon, presumably Cairo in reality, though his subsequent departure to Egypt in the De viris illustribus suggests that this might not have been clear to Peter.66Peter the Deacon, De viris illustribus 23, PL 173, 1034B. The Chronica monasterii Casiniensis (1.21, MGH SS 34, 66–7) does link Babylon and Africa earlier in the text: ‘Saraceni a Babylonia et Africa venientes Siciliam occupaverunt et Panormum ceperunt’ (Muslims coming from Babylon and Africa captured Sicily and took Palermo). There he learned the liberal arts as well as necromancy and the physica of the Chaldeans, Arabs, Persians, Egyptians and Indians. After this, Peter the Deacon tells us, he travelled to India, Ethiopia and Egypt to learn their respective arts. The perception of Africa in this story, however, is not so entirely positive. When Constantine, ‘master of east and west’, returned to Africa and the Africans saw that he was so learned in the studies of all nations they tried to kill him, forcing Constantine to flee to Salerno.67Chronica monasterii Casinensis 3.35, MGH SS 34, 412, trans. Kwakkel and Newton, Medicine at Monte Cassino, 196: ‘Quem cum vidissent Afri ita ad plenum omnium gentium studiis eruditum, cogitaverunt occidere eum. Quod Constantinus agnoscens clam navem ingressus Salernum advenit’ (When the Africans saw that he was so deeply learned in the fields of study of all nations, they conceived the idea of killing him. Learning this, Constantine secretly embarked on a ship and came to Salerno …). We find a much more positive view of the learning of Africa, on the other hand, in John of Salisbury’s Metalogicon. Here John provides the first direct account of Aristotle’s newly translated Posterior Analytics, describing the great subtly and difficulty of the work. He explains that the art of demonstration, the most difficult of all forms of reasoning, is employed almost exclusively by mathematicians (mathematici). This poses a particular challenge to the Latins, who do not value the study of geometry. The peoples of Spain and Africa, by contrast, still apply geometry to astronomy, as also do the Egyptians and some Arabians.68John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 4.6, ed. J. B. Hall and K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, CCCM 98 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 145: ‘huius quoque disciplinae non est celebris usus apud nos, nisi forte in tractu Hibero, uel confinio Africae. Etenim gentes istae astronomiae causa, geometriam exercent prae ceteris. Similiter Aegyptus, et non nullae gentes Arabiae’ (The application of this discipline [geometry] is not widespread among us, expect perhaps in the region of Spain or the adjoining area of Africa. Since for the sake of astronomy those peoples pursue the study of geometry above other disciplines. Similarly for Egypt and some of the peoples of Arabia). But once again, this awareness of Africa is neither equated with the south, nor tied into a broader spatial narrative.

The role of the south remained tenuous and varied therefore in the minds of early twelfth-century authors. Even when used in relation with the north, it lacks a literal substance of its own, inhering instead in the north as its spiritual opposite. But this is not the usual case. Most western European authors simply ignore the south. They implicitly divide Italy from western Europe, but few describe Italy as southern. With the rise of Islam, the position of Africa and the south within western consciousness becomes increasingly linked to the spread of Islam. Yet, even here there are important asymmetries. In the elaborate treatments of the subject by Peter the Venerable, where both east and south are discussed, the east maintains primacy in the relationship. It is the place from which Islam emerged and the focal point of attention after the First Crusade. Although this situation would change in the coming centuries, with Nubia and Ethiopia becoming increasingly present to western consciousness from the late twelfth century and especially in the fourteenth century, we do not seem to be able to read this backwards into the first half of the twelfth century.69Hamilton, ‘Impact of the Crusades’, 23–4; Hamilton, ‘Continental Drift’; Rouxpetel, L’Occident au miroir, 107–15. Rather, like the kingdom of John Komnenos, Latin historians of the first half of the twelfth century seem to be facing only north, east and west.

Over the last two decades, scholarship has increasingly questioned the idea that medieval ideas of space can be dismissed as ‘merely geographical’, a point that I have emphasised repeatedly through a close analysis of the ongoing arguments within the twelfth-century geographical tradition.78See also Gautier Dalché, ‘Représentations géographiques de l’Europe’; Oschema, Bilder von Europa, passim. Even in areas where the geography was based almost entirely on classical precedents, medieval authors were engaged not only in clarifying the complications and contradictions of this tradition, but also in actively restructuring it. Nevertheless, the use of space in medieval history-writing often continues to be addressed very narrowly in terms of specific geographical excursus or maps within historical texts.79Kempshall, Rhetoric, 305–7; Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, 154–5, 174–7; Guenée, Histoire et culture historique, 20–2, 166–78; Gautier Dalché, ‘L’espace de l’histoire’, 287–300. Given this focus, it remains the prevailing view that medieval historians remained fundamentally ambivalent towards historical space.80Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, 176; cf. Gautier Dalché, ‘L’espace de l’histoire’, 299, and above p. 000. But as we have seen, far from being constrained by the ‘tyranny of chronology’, authors of the early twelfth century were deeply conscious of the importance of space in their conception of history and the world.81Guenée, Histoire et culture historique, 22. Stepping beyond the narrow focus on specific geographical inclusions alone, we can identify a broader discourse on space among these twelfth-century authors.82E.g., Fraesdorff, Norden.

The cardinal points provided a basis for just such a spatialising discourse among Latin authors across the central Middle Ages. These geographical processes were entangled with a broader conception of the world and a set of value judgements as well as deeply ingrained literary tropes about its regions. We find significant spatial inflections even in the history of an author so paradigmatically bound to chronology as Sigebert of Gembloux.83Cf. Gautier Dalché, ‘Perception et représentation de l’espace’, 295. This very often took place at a pre-theoretical level, where this vocabulary served as a medium through which to discuss broader historical concerns. Even something as basic as identifying heavenly signs, found among even the most annalistic chronicles, allowed the authors to take part in this broader spatial discourse. It could be used to castigate individual figures, as we find in the investiture polemics, or it could involve a broader argument around the spatialisation of the forces of good and evil in the world, as we find in both Sigebert and Romuald.

This discourse could also involve explicit theorisation about the role of space in the world and its history. In the writings of authors like Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury and Guibert of Nogent, we find newly emerging models for the assessment of the cardinal regions of the world. The early twelfth century saw the reappearance of a classical medical and ethnographical tradition. Latent in the writings of classical and late antique authorities like Lucan, Vegetius or Isidore and explicit in the translation of ancient Greek and more contemporary Arabic texts, from the early twelfth century we see an increasing interest in characterising the nature of peoples and, among certain authors, the development of a specialised medical vocabulary for doing so. While the history of climatic determinism in this early period remains largely unclear, the interaction of these medical ideas with the cardinal points in historical texts suggests that this development was entangled within a broader set of interconnected interests.84For the later medieval diffusion, see Biller, ‘Proto-racial’. The etymology of Normannus, for example, shows how ideas of climatic determinism could be caught up in a broader set of concerns around the nature and position of an individual gens within the context of western Christendom. It was similarly connected to a broader, informal culture of ethnic stereotyping.85Weeda, Ethnicity in Medieval Europe; Weeda, ‘Characteristics of Bodies’; Weeda, ‘Fixed and Fluent’, 95–6. It shows how these ideas about the nature of a given gens could be diffused more widely within a literary environment. These ideas could equally serve a rhetorical purpose for authors like William and Guibert, who use classical, medicalised vocabulary as a way to elevate the language of their crusade accounts. From the twelfth century this discourse increasingly became part of their broader spatial vocabulary. It allowed Norman authors to qualify and contest their putatively barbaric nature, even turning the climatic categories to their advantage through the promotion of the Danes as chivalric heroes, and it likewise allowed Guibert to promote the superiority of the Western Church over the Eastern.

This brings us back to the spatial construction of the world by Latin authors of the early twelfth century. The expansion of Christendom was, by the turn of the twelfth century, no longer compatible with the image of the world that had prevailed since the ninth. This increasingly prompted, or forced, authors to renegotiate the categories into which the world was supposed to fit. According to the Carolingian conception of the world, the north was the last pagan holdout and the central region from which the evils of the world arose, a view which prevailed at least through the eleventh century.86Fraesdorff, Norden, 129–43; Gabriele, ‘Frankish Kingship’, 29–30; Wolever, ‘Post-Carolingian Geographies’. By the twelfth century this was changing. Through the conversion of northern peoples, and the newly established prominence of the Normans within Latin society, the north could be recaptured as a positive region conducive to desirable, or at least reformable, martial characteristics. Indeed, the Normans would go so far as to promote their northernness as a feature that distinguished them as a preeminent European gens. More radically still, with the crusade, the traditional axis of apostolic development, from the divine east to the gentile west, was overturned.87Lapina, Warfare and the Miraculous, 131–2; cf. Mauntel, ‘Competing with the East’, 22–6. The east became the region mired in heresy, while the west stood as a bastion of orthodoxy. Through the memory of the First Crusade, the west became a locus of Christianity and Christian activity, an idea that began to disseminate through histories of the early twelfth century and provided the basis for William of Mamesbury’s nascent notion of a community of western nations.

These developments have often been understood as the beginning of a narrative of later medieval development. The early interest in the east that we find with Guibert or Anselm of Havelberg anticipates the concerted interest of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century figures like Jacques de Vitry or Riccoldo de Monte Croce.88Rouxpetel, L’Occident au miroir, ch. 2; Akbari, Idols in the East, chs 1–2. But it is important to remember that as much as this period anticipates future develops, it also falls at the end of another narrative. In as much as authors of the first half of the twelfth century broke away from a post-Carolingian conception of the world, we must also recognise significant continuities. Despite a growing interest in east and west with the crusade, it still bears more in common with the context of the Great Schism or even Carolingian-Byzantine relations than it does the evangelistic or settler context of the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The case of Anselm of Havelberg is especially clear. His Anticimenon is a dialogue between Anselm and a Greek theologian about the two Churches. Guibert is likewise writing specifically in the context of a Latin west and Greek east. His assessment of the eastern world is as much about the Eastern Church itself as it is about Islam and their mutual Asiatic instability makes the Greeks just as culpable, in Guibert’s view, for the present state of affairs.

More importantly, a broadly post-Carolingian concern over the north remained dominant until at least the middle of the twelfth century. As we have seen, it remains the site of overwhelming interest for historians, to the exclusion of other regions. For Sigebert, even in spite of the awkward position of Islam, the north remains his central subject of concern. It is the one region as yet untouched by the light of Christ and the one area still threatening the order of the Christian world. Likewise, for Romuald, the northern position of the Germans is highlighted through the Henrys’ attempts to intercede in Italian affairs. For Orderic, it is the Normans’ northern propensity for violence and conquest that forms the central problem of his history. It is not until the 1160s, with authors like Stephen of Rouen, that Norman historians no longer feel the need to address the north as a problem, but can use it instead as an argument for Norman superiority over the French. Obviously, this does not imply a complete change in the conception, but where Orderic feels bound to address the sinister north, Stephen does not. The north is, therefore, the region that continues to receive the most clear and evident value judgements during this period.

Along with this modern use of the north, our present conception of western identity rose to prominence in largely the same window between the 1890s and 1930s, and was based to some degree on the same contradictions of early twentieth-century white supremacy.96Bonnett, Idea of the West, 14–37. The nineteenth-century backdrop to ideas of the West, however, reveals a familiar looking post-Carolingian conception of western Europe. Its deeper origins lie in French and British anxieties around the integration of Russia into a European community after the reforms of Peter the Great.97Varouxakis, ‘The Godfather’, 411–41; Georgios Varouxakis, ‘When did Britain join the Occident? On the Origins of the Idea of “the West” in English’, History of European Ideas 46 (2020): 563–81. In contrast to our post-Cold War division of Europe, the ancient and medieval perception of Russia and modern Eastern Europe as fundamentally northern still held sway well into the nineteenth century. It was only after the Napoleonic wars and Congress of Vienna that the notion of Eastern Europe began to emerge and it did not achieve common currency, much less dominance, until at least the 1860s.98Lemberg, ‘Zur Entstehung des Osteuropabegriffs’, 60–2, 82–5; Varouxakis, ‘When did Britain’, 568–70; Varouxakis, ‘The Godfather’, 420–1. It is in this context that the West, properly so called, arose in large part as means to distinguish Russia from the union of western European nations.99This point is made especially clear by Comte’s main English disciple: Richard Congreve, ‘The West’, in International Policy: Essays on the Foreign Relations of England (London: Chapman and Hall, 1866), 15: ‘With reference to the general direction of European policy the exclusion of Russia is a cardinal point; and Russia herself has greatly facilitated its acceptance and practical adoption, were the statesmen of the West alive to the opportunity she has given them …’. See Varouxakis, ‘When did Britain’, 575–6. It is at this time that August Comte, inspired by his study of medieval Catholicism, would develop his famous law of the three states of human civilisation: theological, metaphysical and positive.100Varouxakis, ‘The Godfather’, 425–6; on the influence of medieval Catholicism, see Comte’s letter to John Stuart Mill from July 14, 1845, in Auguste Comte, Correspondance générale et confessions, vol. 3 (Paris: Mouton, 1977), 62. Within this model, he proposes a union of European nations, centred of course on France and founded explicitly on the Romano-Catholic synthesis under Charlemagne, that was supposed to serve as the vanguard of positive history.101This is evident already in the subtitle to August Comte, Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme: Ou Exposition sommaire de la doctrine philosophique et sociale propre a la grande républic occidentale composée des cinq populations avancées, française, italienne, germanique, britannique, et espagnole, toujours solidaires depuis Charlemagne (Paris: Carilian-Goeury, 1848). A paradigm example of this medieval unity of action that Comte seeks to recapture is likewise the crusades.102Comte, Discours, 79: ‘La seule opération capitale que l’Occident ait jamais accomplie en commmun s’exécuta évidemment sous l’impulsion française, dans les mémorables expéditions qui caractérisèrent la principale phase du moyen’. Compare the English translation of 1865: August Comte, A General View of Positivism: Or, Summary Exposition on the System of Thought and Life, Adapted to the Great Western Republic, Formed of the Five Advanced Nations, The French, Italian, Spanish, British, and German, Which, Since the Time of Charlemagne, Have Always Constituted a Political Whole, trans. J. H. Bridges (London: Trübner, 1865), 89: ‘On the one great occasion of united political action on the part of Western Europe, that is, in the crusades of the 11th and 12th century, it was evidently France that took the initiative’. It is perhaps no coincidence, then, that the notion of the West would go on to gain general currency at a high point of fond reminiscence about the crusades, which crystallised in anglophone discourse around Allenby’s entrance into Jerusalem in 1917.103Eitan Bar-Yosef, ‘The Last Crusade? British Propaganda and the Palestine Campaign, 1917–18’, Journal of Contemporary History 36, no. 1 (2001): 87–109. Nor was this connection lost on contemporary medievalists, as when Otto of Freising describes the conquest of Jerusalem, his English translator, Charles Mierow, draws the same connection, noting that Jerusalem has been ‘again regained by Allenby’.104Mierow in Otto of Freising, Chronica, 409n29: ‘Jerusalem was taken by Saladin (Salāh-ad-Dīn) in 1187, regained for a short time in the Fifth Crusade, lost once more in 1244, and again regained by Allenby’. So if these ideas seem familiar to us, this may be as much a result of our own appropriation of the Middle Ages in the construction of our modern identities.