a variety of ways that is
hopelessly confusing. Nor has the question of his place of birth ever been
satisfactorily settled, for both Positano and Amalfi claim this hero of
science for a son, although only in Amalfitan annals can the disputed name
be detected. Be this as it may, it was a citizen of this Costiera who has
ever been acknowledged as the inventor of the compass, though concerning
both himself and his alleged discovery there is a complete absence of any
contemporary record. Later writers have, it is true, always admitted the
honour on behalf of the Republic, and Pontano goes so far as to call
Amalfi _magnetica_ in compliment thereof, whilst during the later crusades
the Amalfitani, who were evidently convinced of the genuine nature of
Gioja's claim, had an heraldic figure of the mariner's compass emblazoned
on their banners. It seems a thousand pities to throw doubt upon so
picturesque a tradition, for the date of the invention of the compass has
been fixed as 1302, two years only after the holding of the famous Papal
Jubilee in Rome which Dante's verse has described for us. Nor can the
ingenious theory be upheld that the fleur-de-lys, the emblem of the French
kings of Naples, which still decorates the dial of the compass in almost
all lands, is in any wise connected with Carlo il Zoppo, the monarch to
whom Gioja is said to have dedicated his ingenious discovery. No, we have
little doubt that the compass, like so many of the scientific wonders that
crept into Europe before and during the time of the Renaissance, was
originally brought from the far East, a farther East than the argosies of
Amalfi had ever penetrated. The little magic box with its moving needle
was first used, it is now admitted, by the cunning merchants of Cathay
during their trading expeditions across the stony monotonous plains of
Central Asia that lay between the Flowery Land and the civilization of
Persia. From Cathay the use of the magnetic needle was introduced to the
Arab mathematicians of Baghdad and Cairo, and through them the secret of
the lodestone of China was conveyed to the coast towns of the Levant. At
Aleppo or Alexandria some astute trader of Amalfi--perhaps his name really
was Flavio Gioja--contrived to learn the new method of steering from some
Moslem or Jewish merchant, and he in his turn brought this novel and
precious piece of information back to the Italian shores. If, then, a
native of Amalfi did not evolve the idea of the