200 miles in three days, an achievement which was impossible for the far more cumbersome European cavalry forces of the time.

the caliph was executed,

We shall be obedient, we too make our strength available.’

by the appearance in Europe of a seemingly authentic letter from Prester John himself. He described himself as the ruler of the Three Indias, which extended from the Tower of Babel to the rising of the sun; he gave an elaborate account of the marvels and riches of his kingdom, and declared his intention of visiting the Holy Sepulchre after defeating the enemies of Christ.

There is no proof of the skilfully presented and plausible modern assertions that St Brendan crossed the Atlantic to America, but it is certainly true that Irish monks sailed to many of the islands around the British Isles in search of solitude, while the evidence of Dicuil together with that from Scandinavian sources strongly suggests that Irish hermits, perhaps even as early as Brendan himself, had been in Iceland before the arrival of the Vikings in the middle of the ninth century.

Since medieval scholars also had access to the works of classical writers such as Macrobius and Martianus Capella, and, from the early twelfth century, to works produced in Moslem Spain and Sicily, there is plenty of evidence to show that the true shape of the earth could still be known and understood.

antipodes

Christian Topography a systematic world-view based chiefly on Biblical evidence and his own personal vision, but possibly also drawing on ideas from the fourth-century writer Theodore of Mopsuestia.

saw the classics as a source of great danger for Christians, while others, like Augustine and Jerome in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, felt that they should be studied only as an intellectual exercise, and not as an end in themselves.

Just as important, the growing mystification surrounding geographical knowledge meant that, in the absence of any opportunity to verify accounts of the world at first hand, it was exceedingly difficult even for a scholar of great determination and curiosity to discriminate between them.

The settlement within the empire of barbarian peoples from beyond the Rhine and the Danube, and their employment in the Roman army, blurred the distinction between Rome and the outside world, and prepared the way for the large-scale barbarian incursions of the fifth century, and for the subsequent collapse of the western Roman empire.

Written sources tell us thatVolvas wielded magical staffs (the Norse word völvaliterally means ‘staff-bearer’), and that they were gen-erally feared and considered dangerous because oftheir access to the supernatural. Yet archaeologically,graves containing their eponymous staffs are usuallyfound in distinctly well-to-do, elaborate burials (for adetailed discussion of such graves, see Price 2002),suggesting that such women were honoured andrespected

‘I saw her as a young, oldwitch, massive and somber’

She is also theone who displays the most violent behaviour. Sheencourages the girl to imbibe a drink to the pointof inebriation, muddling the girl’s wits, numbingher to the realities of her final moments.

suggest the fascinationwith slave girls may be something of a modernimposition on the ultimate reading of these sources.

‘When a great man dies, the members of his familysay to his slave girls and young slave boys: “whichof you will die with him?”’

Hilda Ellis (1969, 57) suggests that by choosing todie with her master, the slave girl earns the right tocall him her husband, thereby significantly improv-ing her social standing and position in the afterlife.

‘the slave girl whowanted to be killed’

schema

Though his women are silent, and he himself islikewise silent about their motivations and agency (ageneral issue discussed in Berkey 2013, 57), we cannevertheless be sure that, as living beings, theywould have had both.

and a slavevolunteers to die with him

accoutrements

karkaddan

The clergy also playedthe predominant role in pursuing and repressing subversive iueas. In 1660the only state without an official and active apparatus of censorship was theDutch republic

lebrating women’s coopera-tion, they acknowledged their contribution in achieving victory overBritain. Both sexes, noted Richard Dinsmore, ‘‘gloried in the appella-tion rebel.’’