This doctrine was hailed with joy by multitudes; and we find in the works of medieval pilgrims to Palestine, again and again, evidence that this had become precious truth to them, both in theology and geography.

Even as late as 1664 the eminent French priest Eugene Roger, in his published travels in Palestine, dwelt upon the thirty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel, coupled with a text from Isaiah, to prove that the exact centre of the earth is a spot marked on the pavement of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and that on this spot once stood the tree which bore the forbidden fruit and the cross of Christ.( 31) (31) For the site of the cross on Calvary, as the point where stood "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" in Eden, at the centre of the earth, see various Eastern travellers cited in Tobler; but especially the travels of Bishop Arculf in the Holy Land, in Wright's Early Travels in Palestine, p.

8; also Travels of Saewulf, ibid, p.

38; also Sir John Mandeville, ibid., pp.

166, 167.