Cosmas Indicopleustes, Christian Topography (1897) Introduction.
INTRODUCTION.
----------------
SOURCES OF THE TEXT.
H E Christian Topography of Cosmas, surnamed Indicopleustes, or the Indian Navigator, has been preserved in two copies: one a parchment MS. of the tenth century belonging to the Laurentian library in Florence, and containing the whole work except only the last leaf; the other, a very fine uncial MS. of the eighth or ninth century, belonging to the Vatican library, and containing sketches drawn by Costnas himself, but wanting entirely the twelfth book, which is the last. There is, besides, in the Imperial library in Vienna, a Cosmas MS., but this contains only a few leaves of the Topography.
The existence of the work, which had been for ages forgotten, and the importance and interest of its contents, were first made known in the latter half of the seventeenth century by Emeric Bigot. This learned French scholar, while visiting Italy, extracted from the Florentine Codex a copy of the |ii Adulitic Inscriptions, and of passages relating to Ethiopia and India. These extracts were afterwards published in Thevenot's Relation de divers Voyages, accompanied with a translation into French. Twenty years later (1706), the work appeared in its complete form as exhibited in the Florentine Codex, collated with that of the Vatican. It was not, however, published separately, but was included in the second volume of the splendid work Nova Collectio Patrum et Scriptorum Graecorum, edited by Father Montfaucon, a Benedictine monk, celebrated for his profound knowledge of Patristic literature. The Greek text was illustrated by a learned introduction and a Latin translation of great elegance and accuracy. Notes were also added, chiefly to point out where discrepancies exist in the readings of the MSS. The present translation has been prepared from Montfaucon's text, as reprinted in the 88th volume of the Patrologia Graeca, printed at the Migne Press, Paris, 1864.
THE TITLE OF THE WORK.
In the Florentine Codex, the index of the work reads thus: Au#th h( bi/bloj Xristianikh_ Topografi/a periektikh_ panto_j tou~ ko&smou par' h(mi=n w)nomasme/nh . This Book named by us Christian Topography comprehensive of the whole world, Montfaucon entitles it: Cosmae Egyptii Monachi Christiana Topographia, sive Christianorum Opinio de Mundo: The Christian |iii Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk, or the Opinion of Christians concerning the World. As Cosmas all through the work keeps harping, with the most provoking reiteration, on his doctrine that the universe consists of only two places, namely, the earth which is below the firmament, and heaven, which is above it, the term Topography designates the treatise properly enough; though on turning to peruse it for the first time, we should from its title expect its contents to be very different from what they are found to be.
NOTICE OF THE WORK BY PHOTIUS, PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
Montfaucon does not seem to have been aware that a brief notice of the Topography is to be found in the Bibliotheka of Photius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, who was elected to that dignity in A.D. 858. Photius states that the work had for its title Xristianw~n bi/bloj , and was an exposition extending to the eighth book. He does not give the author's name, but states that he flourished in the reign of the Roman Emperor Justinus, and dedicated his work to a certain Pamphilus. He condemns it as being below mediocrity in style, and faulty in its syntax; and at the same time calls in question the author's veracity, saying that he makes up stories so incredible that he may fairly be regarded as a writer of fables rather than of facts. He then gives a very concise summary of the |iv contents of the Topography, and concludes with a reference to the last four books, which had from time to time been added to defend the doctrines set forth in those which had preceded.
THE NAME OF THE AUTHOR OF THE "TOPOGRAPHY."
A doubt long ago arose as to whether Cosmas was the proper or family name of the author of the Topography. Isaac Voss first started this doubt, and Fabricius subsequently gave currency to the opinion that Cosmas was so called because his work was devoted to a description of the Kosmos: just as the Abbot John of Sinai was called Climacius because he had published a work entitled Climax. In the absence of evidence, this must remain an open question.
BIOGRAPHY OF COSMAS.
The Topography fortunately contains passages which throw light on the personal history of its author, and enable us also to fix with certainty the date at which he wrote. He was most probably a native of Alexandria, and may have been of Greek parentage. His education was confined to the more elementary branches of knowledge, such as would fit him for the career he pursued in the earlier part of his life----that of a merchant. But though he was not instructed, as he tells us himself, |v in the "learning of the schools," yet so inquisitive was his turn of mind and so sharp his intellect that he eventually acquired such a knowledge of literature and science as raised him to the level of the culture of his time, and to his being accepted as a capable exponent and defender of the Christian faith.
The commercial pursuits of Cosmas carried him into seas and countries far remote from his home. Thus he tells us that he had sailed upon three of the great gulfs which run up into the earth from the ocean, namely, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and Persian Gulf. He sailed also upon that part of the Erythraean Sea which beyond Cape Guardafui stretches southward toward the outlying ocean, which in those days was regarded with terror and held to be unnavigable on account of the violent currents and dense and dismal fogs in which it was thought to be enveloped. When the ship which carried Cosmas was approaching this dread region of currents and fogs, a storm gathered overhead, and flocks of albatrosses, like birds of ill omen, hovered on the wing high above the mast. Dismay seized alike the passengers and the crew, and amidst outcries of "port the helm," the course of the vessel was reversed and she headed northwards. Cosmas does not say whether in the course of this voyage he reached India, which was his destination when he embarked. |vi If he did not, he must have made a second and more successful attempt; for no one, we think, who reads his eleventh book, in which he describes the island of Ceylon and the ports, commerce, and animals of India, can doubt that he writes about these places from personal knowledge of them.
One of the most interesting and instructive parts of the Topography is that in which Cosmas relates what he had heard and seen in the course of his travels in Ethiopia. By the name of Ethiopia he designates in a general way the vast region which stretches southward from Egypt down towards the equator; and from an incidental remark which he drops when treating of the Adulitic inscription on the throne, we learn that he had traversed it almost throughout its length and its breadth. Like Herodotus of old, he was ever athirst after knowledge, and when he was unable to visit places which lay in the vicinity of his route, he made inquiries about them from such persons as knew them and could be trusted to report things truly. The capital of Ethiopia at that time was Axum, an important centre of commerce, and also of religion and learning. It was one of the places which Cosmas, in pursuit of his calling, visited, and from one or two of his statements we may infer that he was well received at Court, and was permitted by the King, who professed the Christian faith and could speak Greek, to travel freely through his dominions. |vii
The seaport of Axum was Adule or Adulis, the modern Zulá or Thulla, situated near Annesley Bay and distant from the capital about one hundred and twenty miles or an eight days' journey. Cosmas found himself here in the year 525 A.D., at which time Elesboas, the King of Axum, was preparing an expedition against the Homerites in Arabia. Here, at the request of the Governor, Cosmas, along with his friend Menas, a monk of the monastery at Raithu, copied the famous Greek inscriptions on the marble tablet and the basanite throne, which lay together outside the town on the road which led to Axum.
Among other parts of Ethiopia which our traveller visited we may include the Aromatic country----that great projection on the east of the African Continent which terminates in Cape Guardafui. His description of this district (which supplied the Egyptians of old with their spices for embalming the dead), and of its products and its foreign trade, shows that it must have come from the pen of an eye-witness. He may also have proceeded to the north-west, and visited the kingdom of Meroe (now Khartum), for in that direction lay the seats of several tribes mentioned in the inscription on the throne. Montfaucon, in his Preface, credits him with the discovery, in the Abyssinian province called Agau, of the true source of the Nile. It was not, however, the source of the main stream |viii which he discovered, but that of the Blue Nile, which, a millennium afterwards, was rediscovered by the Portuguese, and more recently by the Scottish traveller Bruce. There was still another interesting locality which the traveller tells us he visited, and this lay on the other side of the Red Sea----the Desert, namely, of Sinai, where he found, strewn among the sands, fragments of rock covered with inscriptions which he took to have been carved by the Israelites when they were wandering in that wilderness.
Cosmas, when all his travels were over, returned to Alexandria, perhaps after paying a visit to Jerusalem; and, abandoning the secular life, retired to the seclusion of the cloister, where he devoted his leisure to the composition of works on descriptive geography, cosmography, and Scriptural exegesis. Of these, the Christian Topography alone is extant. The loss of the geographical treatise, as Montfaucon well says, is to be deplored with tears. It has been conjectured that the geographical passages in the Topography, as, for instance, the description of Ceylon in the eleventh book, are extracts from that treatise.
THE CHRISTIAN SECT TO WHICH COSMAS BELONGED.
In the days of Cosmas ecclesiastical controversies were rife, and professing Christians were divided |ix into numerous sects. That to which Cosmas most probably belonged was the Nestorian. To this point Photius makes no reference, and it has been equally overlooked by Montfaucon. The first who called in question the orthodoxy of our Monk was De La Croze, who, in his Histoire du Christianisme des Indes, adduced the following arguments to prove his Nestorian proclivities: ----1°, that Cosmas calls Patricius, who was the Archbishop of Persia when that country had been infected with Nestorianism, a divine man and an illustrious teacher; 2°, that Cosmas, in his list of heretical sects, names the Manichaeans, the Marcionists, the Eutychians, the Arians and the Apollinarians, but not the Nestorians; 3°, that in his exposition of Scripture, and in his system of the world, he always follows Theodosius of Mopsuestia and Diodorus of Tarsus, who were the principal teachers of the Nestorians; 4°, that concerning Christ and the Incarnation of the Word, he uses the same modes of expression as the Nestorians. We may add as a fifth argument the glowing terms in which Cosmas speaks of the wide diffusion of Christianity among the heathen nations of the east, which was mainly the work of missionaries from Persia, where Nestorianism reigned supreme. Only one passage occurs to throw some doubt on the certainty of this conclusion----that in which Cosmas addresses Mary as |x the Mother of God, an expression abhorrent to the Nestorians. Had Cosmas in his monastery relapsed into what was there considered orthodoxy?
THE DATE AT WHICH THE "TOPOGRAPHY" WAS WRITTEN.
We have already mentioned that the Topography has data from which the time when Cosmas wrote can be certainly determined. In the second book (p. 55), where he mentions his visit to Adulê, he observes that it was made when Elesboas the Axumite King was preparing an expedition against the Homerites in Arabia, and that this was at the beginning of the reign of the Roman Emperor Justinus, since which time some five-and-twenty years more or less had elapsed. Now, as it is known that the expedition was made in A.D. 522, and that Justinus was at that date in the fifth year of his reign, Cosmas must have been writing about the year 547. It is true that an indication which apparently conflicts with this appears in the tenth book (p. 351), where he speaks of Theodosius, the heretical Bishop of Alexandria, as residing at the time in Constantinople, and then on p. 353 refers to the death of his predecessor in office, Timothy the younger, as an event of recent occurrence. Now it is known that this Timothy died in 535, and was succeeded by Theodosius, who, after a brief |xi residence in his diocese went to Constantinople, whence he was banished in 536. The tenth book must therefore have been written in the year preceding. How, then, is this earlier date to be reconciled with the later? Montfaucon answers this question satisfactorily. Cosmas, he points out, in order to meet objections urged against his opinions, was in the habit of making additions from time to time to the number of its books. The earlier date thus probably indicates the time when he began to make such additions, and the later when he was making the last, or one of the last, recensions of his work.
OPINIONS OF THE LEARNED REGARDING THE "TOPOGRAPHY."
The condemnatory verdict of Photius upon the work of Cosmas has not been endorsed by modern opinion. The style of the Topography has no doubt the shortcomings which the Patriarch pointed out; but Cosmas, it is proper to remember, expressly disclaims all pretensions to the learning of the schools. He pleads that from his early years he had been so engrossed in business, and had been besides so much abroad, that he had found no spare time for studying rules of grammar and the art of composition; he could, therefore, only write in a homely style, without attempting any flights of rhetoric. Rhetoric, moreover would, he thought, be out of place in his books, since "he wrote for |xii Christians, who had more need of correct notions than of fine phrases." The style has, notwithstanding, some redeeming points. Cosmas, in spite of his loose grammar, seldom fails to make his meaning clear, or to put forward his arguments with sufficient point and force. Some passages, besides, which give us an insight into the depth and fervour of his faith, rise to an eloquence which suggests the belief that, had he cultivated the art, he might have shone in pulpit oratory.