ABSTRACT
The medieval West knew nothing of the real Indian Ocean. As late as the mid-fifteenth century, the Catalonian mappemonde in the Biblioteca Estense in Modena shows utter ignorance of the Indian Ocean. The oneiric horizon reflects the psychological repercussions of the very structure of medieval trade; for the West was an importer of precious products from far-off places, which it thought of in part as real, in part fantastic, in part commercial. The opening of the Indian Ocean not only marked the end of a long period of ignorance but also destroyed the very basis for the myth of the Indian Ocean in the medieval mentality. The fecundity of the myth lay in the belief in a mare clausum, which made the Indian Ocean a repository of dreams, myths, and legends for the medieval mentality. This sea was the medieval West's closed world of oneiric exoticism, the hortus conclusus of an Eden in which raptures and nightmares were mixed.
