Attitudes toward Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 461

on a level of precision insufficient to make the tracing of his route obvious, but
just enough to encourage their readers to think that there is sufficient internal
evidence to give them a sporting chance of solving the puzzle of where he went.
The titles of works published by Freshfield are typical: “The Pass of Hannibal” (1883)
and “Further Notes on the Pass of Hannibal” (1886) (both in the Alpine Journal), and
his topic Hannibal Once More (1914). DeBeer himself could not resist the temptation,
producing Alps and Elephants: Hannibal's March (1955).
The Roman opinion of mountains remained almost consistently negative. They appar-
ently never acquired a taste for mountain scenery, as the Greeks did. The implicit dual-
ism in the attitudes of these two peoples toward mountains became part of the legacy
for Western Europe (Nicolson 1959). Ultimately, as we know, the spirit of the Greeks,
who worshipped their gods on Mount Olympus, and the Children of Israel, who lifted
up their eyes to the everlasting hills, would triumph, but not before several centuries of
antipathy toward mountains had passed.
From Medieval Fears to Romantic Enthusiasm
During the Middle Ages, mountains in Europe were primarily viewed as haunts of de-
monic beings such as dragons and witches. Medieval people, like their Roman prede-
cessors, paid little attention to the grander aspects of nature, and there are few fa-
vorable references to mountains in either their literature or their graphic art (Mathieu
2006). What does exist is often distorted by allegory, abstraction, and moralization.
Dante made mountains the guardians of hell, yet the central topic of the Divine Comedy,
the Purgatorio, describes the ascent of a mountain leading to the earthly paradise on its
summit and Paradiso or Heaven beyond (Freshfield 1881; Noyce 1950; Schama 1995).
Dante's ambivalent view of mountains reflects the fear and fascination characteristic-
ally evoked by sacred places charged with a power that can be experienced as both de-
monic and divine (Otto 1950). Records of Celtic beliefs preserved by monks in Ireland
strongly suggest that, before Christianity took over Europe and demonized natural sac-
red sites central to the practice of pre-Christian religions, the Celts viewed the Alps and
other European mountains in a positive, divine sense as the palaces and abodes of their
gods (Bernbaum 1997).
Following conversion to Christianity, Europeans tended to regard mountains as dan-
gerous places, sacred in a predominantly negative, demonic sense (Bernbaum 1997).
As a consequence, medieval travelers disliked mountains, but nevertheless traversed
them regularly. To ease the journey, Alpine villages provided inns and supplied guides;
churches and hospices were constructed along the most popular routes. Pilgrims on
their way to Rome from western and northern Europe favored the Great St. Bernard
Pass, where a monastery has stood since A.D. 812, and a hospice since 859 (Coolidge
1889). Although August was considered the best month for mountain travel, the passes
were attempted at all seasons (Tyler 1930). Master John de Bremble, a monk of Christ
Church, Canterbury, England, who had been sent to Rome on business, sent a letter
home describing his passage of the Great St. Bernard in February 1188: