Hic Sunt Leones et Dracones…

In ancient Roman times wilderness was abhorred and feared. Today we create national wild parks.

In ancient maps from the Roman era, regions about which no information could be found were identified by the inscription "Hic sunt leones et dracones" (Here are lions and dragons). The reason for the inscription was to warn potential travellers of dangers they may stumble upon in the unmapped areas. But the epithet had further meaning. It denoted the much feared wilderness, which was regarded as the opposite of civilisation per se. Hence, also the structure of a classical circus-performances where civilised soldiers fought under-favoured barbarians and wild animals, who were supposed to devour the others (e.g. the Christians and the criminals).

Wilderness - a classic Christian troupe

As opposed to the civilised greeks and Romans, the Jews and later the Christians developed the idea of the desert as the primary and proper location for the righteous Judeo-Christian life. The desert was the Sabbath where Prophets might encounter Yahweh, it was the place where John the Baptist spent his life and it was the location from where the evangelical mission of Jesus both reached out and took its beginning. In practice, the desert became the place where people sought refuge from persecutions, but also where ascetics and hermits sought refuge from politics, the hippodromes, the public baths, the marketplaces and the brothels plus the encroaching demands of their kin and clan. The desert and its wilderness was a site for both divine epiphanies and contests with demonic temptations. For most of the European Christian History, wilderness from time to time played this role.

Wilderness - a Romantic idea

This idea of the wilderness as a favoured location resurfaced in a more generalised sense in the Romantic period in the works of philosophers (Alexander von Humboldt), theologians (Søren Kierkegaard), poets (William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge), painters (Caspar David Friedrich) and social activists (Henry David Thoreau). Added to this must be the changed style of living introduced by a philosopher like Rousseau and practical gardeners, like those who planned and executed masterpieces such as the romantic English gardens. "In wildness is the preservation of the world" was the dictum as formulated by Thoreau.

Ascetic wilderness and modern environmentalism

It is generally forgotten that many of these philosophers and artists had a very thorough scriptural and theological education to fall back upon and that much of their work was inspired by the first Christian Monks, the Egyptian desert fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries. Today most environmentalists believe instead that their great romantic fathers took their inspiration from a much more secular, university-based culture.  They think that environmentalism as per se is ecocentric (and not anthropocentric).  This must be regarded as opposed to the Judeo-Christian belief in human beings ordained masters of the universe.

One of Thoreau's disciples was John Muir who through direct activism helped to save some of the great wilderness areas of North America, the the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and Yosemite Valley. Muir was also the founder of the Sierra Club, which is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. His writings and philosophy strongly influenced the formation of the modern environmental movement. What is less well-known is that he grew up amongst Scottish immigrants who wanted to recreate the primitive church and that he lived as a lay preacher before he entered university.  The deserts of the Old testament were never far from the imaginations of the first American conservationists who organized the movement to "save" wilderness", it is claimed in new path-breaking research. It seems the idea of wilderness as the place where God may be encountered still lurks behind their legacy.

Reference: Cultivating Wilderness: Environmentalism and Legacies of Early Christian Asceticism. By Judith Adler. In: Comparative Study of Society and History, 2006 p.4 - 37.