Perceptions of Hot Climate in Medieval Cosmography and Travel Literature

Abstract

This chapter examines how climate, especially hot weather in exotic locations, was viewed by European travellers and writers in the middle ages. The concept of nature in the middle ages can be approached in a variety of ways. Philosophically, the world as perceived in the middle ages can be described according to the tripartite conceptual elements of nature, art and chance. Accordingly, nature is that which is; it is the cause of motion and of rest in those things which exist per se and not through either chance or art. Art is anything that is done, acted or made by human activity. Chance is that which obeys its own laws. Speaking of the Moslems, whom Christian theological thinking regarded as heretical, Mandeville says that they abstain from wine because of the hot climate they live in, that they may not be endangered by the heat, and that in this they follow their master Mohammed.

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