Note 151 — PREFATORY NOTE. (continued 2)
Reading edition
These texts are Ezekiel v. 5 and xxxviii. 12. The progress of geographical knowledge, evidently, caused them to be softened down somewhat in our King James's version; but the first of them reads, in the Vulgate, "Ista est Hierusalem, in medio gentium posui eam et in circuitu ejus terras;" and the second reads in the Vulgate "in medio terræ," and in the Septuagint ἑπι τὁν ὁμφαλὁν τἡς γἡς. That the literal centre of the earth was meant, see proof in St. Jerome, Commentar. in Ezekiel, lib. ii., and for general proof, see Leopardi, "Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi," pp. 207, 208. For an idea of orthodox geography in the middle ages, see Wright's Essay on Archæology, vol. ii., chapter "On the Map of the World in Hereford Cathedral." For an example of the depth to which this idea of Jerusalem as the centre had entered into the thinking of the great poet of the middle ages, see Dante, Inferno, Canto xxxiv.:
"E se' or sotto l'emisperio giunto, Ch' è opposito a quel, che la gran secca Coverchia, e sotto 'l cui colmo consunto Fu l'uom che nacque e visse senza pecca."