Note 87 — Chapter II · 1295-1487.
Reading edition
“In Christian Europe the earliest mention of the use of the magnetic needle occurs in the politico-satirical poem, called La Bible, by Guyot, of Provence, in 1190, and in the description of Palestine by Jacobus, of Vitry, Bishop of Ptolemais, between 1204 and 1215. Dante (in his Parad. xii., 29) refers, in a simile, to the needle (ago) ‘which points to the star.’”
“Navarrete, in his Discurso histórico sobre los progresos del Arte de Navegar en España, 1802, p. 28, recalls a remarkable passage in the Spanish Leyes de las Partidas (II. tit. ix., ley 28), of the middle of the thirteenth century: ‘The needle, which guides the seaman in the dark night, and shows him, both in good and bad weather, how to direct his course, is the intermediary agent (medianera) between the loadstone (la piedra) and the north star.’ ... See the passage in Las Siete Partidas del sabio Rey Don Alonso el ix. (according to the usually adopted chronological order, Alonso the Xth). Madrid, 1829. t. i. p. 473.”—Humboldt: Cosmos. Otté’s trans. vol. ii. p. 629, and note.