407 97 62MB
English Pages 352 [349] Year 2019
This volume provides a comprehensive Companion to the seven most significant English mappae mundi. It begins with a survey of the maps’ materials, types, shapes, sources, contents, conventions, idiosyncrasies, commissioners and users, moving on to locate the maps’ creation and use in the realms of medieval rhetoric, Victorine memory theory and clerical pedagogy. It also establishes the shared history of map and book making, and demonstrates how pre-and post-Conquest monastic libraries in Britain fostered and fed their complementary relationship. A chapter is then devoted to each individual map, and an annotated bibliography of multilingual resources completes the volume.
A Critical Companion to English A Critical Companion to English
Mappae mundi (maps of the world), beautiful objects in themselves, afford modern viewers unique insights into how medieval scholars conceived the world, and their place within it. They are a fusion of geographic, historical, legendary and theological material. Their production reached its height in England in the twelh and thirteenth centuries, with such well-known examples as the Hereford Mappa Mundi, the maps of Mahew Paris, and the Vercelli map.
of the TWelfth AND Thirteenth Centuries
DAN TERKLA is Emeritus Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University. NICK MILLEA is Map Librarian at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Contributors: Nathalie Bouloux, Michelle Brown, Daniel Connolly, Helen Davies, Gregory Heyworth, Alfred Hia, Marcia Kupfer, Nick Millea, Asa Simon Miman, Dan Terkla, Chet Van Duzer.
Cover design: www.stay-creative.co.uk
OF THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
Cover image: Munich Map. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Clm 10058, fol. 154v. By permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.
Edited by Dan Terkla and Nick Millea
A CRITICAL COMPANION TO ENGLISH MAPPAE MUNDI OF THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
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BOYDELL STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE ISSN 2045–4902 Series Editors Professor Julian Luxford Professor Asa Simon Mittman This series aims to provide a forum for debate on the art and architecture of the Middle Ages. It will cover all media, from manuscript illuminations to maps, tapestries, carvings, wall-paintings and stained glass, and all periods and regions, including Byzantine art. Both traditional and more theoretical approaches to the subject are welcome Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editors or to the publisher, at the addresses given below Professor Julian Luxford, School of Art History, University of St Andrews, 79 North Street, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, UK Professor Asa Simon Mittman, Department of Art and Art History, California State University at Chico, Chico, CA 95929-0820, USA Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK Previously published titles in the series are listed at the back of this volume
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A CRITICAL COMPANION TO ENGLISH MAPPAE MUNDI OF THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
Edited by Dan Terkla and Nick Millea
THE BOYDELL PRESS
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© Contributors 2019 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2019 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978 1 78327 422 2 The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mount Hope Ave, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper
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CONTENTS List of Illustrations Contributors Acknowledgements Preface
vii xi xiv xv
Introduction: Where to Fix Cadiz? 1 Dan Terkla
1 Making Manuscripts and Mappae Mundi 20
2 Books and Maps: Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury and
3 Books and Maps: Anglo-Norman Durham and
4 The Munich Map (c. 1130): Description, Meanings
5 The Sawley Map (c. 1190) 112
6 The Vercelli Map (c. 1217) 127
7 In the Company of Matthew Paris: Mapping the World
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Michelle P. Brown
Geospatial Awareness 44 Dan Terkla Geospatial Awareness 68 Dan Terkla and Uses 92 Nathalie Bouloux Alfred Hiatt
Asa Simon Mittman
at St Albans Abbey 147 Daniel K. Connolly
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8 The Psalter Map (c. 1262) 179
9 The Duchy of Cornwall Map Fragment (c. 1286) 197
10 The Hereford Map (c. 1300) 227
11 Digital Mapping, Spectral Imaging and Medieval
Chet Van Duzer Dan Terkla
Marcia Kupfer
Mappae Mundi 253 Helen Davies and Gregory Heyworth
Annotated Bibliography (1987–2018) Nick Millea Index
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267 301
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ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
I Anglo-Saxon Map. London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B V, fol. 56v. Granger Historical Picture Archive. By permission of the British Library, © British Library Board. II Munich Map. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10058, fol. 154v. By permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. III Sawley Map. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66, p. 2. By permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. IV Vercelli Map. Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli, Rotoli figurati, 6 [Mappamondo]. Photograph by Lazarus Project. Reproduced by permission. V Matthew Paris, Mappa mundi. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, fol. viiv. By permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. VI Psalter Map. London, British Library, Additional MS 28681, fol. 9r. By permission of the British Library, © British Library Board. VII Duchy of Cornwall Map. London, Duchy of Cornwall Office, Maps and Plans 1. © The Duke of Cornwall 2019. VIII The Hereford Mappa mundi. The Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral and the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust. IX The Gough Map. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gough Gen. Top. 16. In natural light. Courtesy of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. X The Gough Map after hyperspectral imaging, showing results of pigment diversity estimation. Image used with permission of David Messinger and Di Bai.
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ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURES Preface
1 Ecumene geographically aligned. Created by Michael Athanson, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Reproduced with permission. xviii 2 T-O schematic map. Created by Michael Athanson, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Reproduced with permission. xix 3 Mappa mundi owning institutions in England. Created by Michael Athanson, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Reproduced with permission. xxiv 1 Making Manuscripts and Mappae Mundi Michelle P. Brown
1.1 Babylonian Map of the World from Sippar, Southern Iraq. London, British Museum, Middle East Department, BM no. 92687. Author’s photograph. 1.2 Peterborough Diagrammatic Map. London, British Library, Harley MS 3667, fol. 8v. Author’s photograph. 1.3 Middle section of the Aslake Map. Author’s drawing.
21 29 42
4 The Munich Map (c. 1130): Description, Meanings and Uses Nathalie Bouloux 4.1 Schematic of the Munich Map (relevé schématique), Patrick Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio mappe mundi’ de Hugues de Saint-Victor (Paris, 1988), Plate 2, p. 83.
95
5 The Sawley Map (c. 1190) Alfred Hiatt
5.1 Easter Tables Map, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 6018, fols 63v and 64r. Reproduced by permission.
117
6 The Vercelli Map (c. 1217) Asa Simon Mittman 6.1 Panorama, detail of Lesbos. Vercelli Map. Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli, Rotoli figurati, 6 [Mappamondo]. VMappa mundi_011_UVPass_adj. Photograph by Lazarus Project. Reproduced by permission. 128 6.2 Vercelli Map with digital reconstruction of the Circle of the Ocean, superimposed onto the Hereford Map. Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli, Rotoli figurati, 6 [Mappamondo]. Photograph by Lazarus Project. Reproduced by permission. 131 6.3 Cardinal Guala Bicchieri’s Traveling Chest. Abbey of Sant’Andrea di Vercelli. Museo Civico d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Madama, Turin. By permission of the Creative Commons license 2.0, Belgium (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). 136
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6.4 Panorama, detail of unlabeled European cities. Vercelli Map. Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli, Rotoli figurati, 6 [Mappamondo]. VMappa mundi_011_UVPass_adj. Photograph by Lazarus Project. Reproduced by permission.
142
7 In the Company of Matthew Paris: Mapping the World at St Albans Abbey Daniel K. Connolly
7.1 Matthew Paris, Three Holy Faces. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, fol. viir. By Permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 148 7.2 John of Wallingford, Climate Map. London, British Library, Cotton MS Julius D VII, fol. 46r. By permission of the British Library, © British Library Board. 150 7.3 Anonymous, Prefatory mappa mundi. New College Library, Oxford, MS 274, prefatory map © Courtesy of the Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford. 151 7.4 Chasuble with mappula, England or Sicily, late twelfth century, Treasury of Notre Dame, Bayeux. After MarieMadeleine Gauthier, Highways of faith: relics and reliquaries from Jerusalem to Compostela, trans., J. A. Underwood (New York, 1986), illus. 18. 161 7.5 Lambert of St Omer, Map of Europe. Ghent University Library, MS 92, fol. 241. By permission of the Creative Commons license 2.0 Belgium (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). 163 7.6 Anonymous copy of Lambert of St Omer’s ‘sfera geometrica’ or mappa mundi, second half of the twelfth century. Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 1 Gud. Lat., fols 69v, 70r. By permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel. 165
8 The Psalter Map (c. 1262) Chet Van Duzer
8.1 List Map, Psalter Map verso. London, British Library, Additional MS 28681, fol. 9v. By permission of the British Library, © British Library Board. 8.2 Psalter Map, detail of monstrous peoples, southern Africa. London, British Library, Additional MS 28681, fol. 9r. By permission of the British Library, © British Library Board. 8.3 Mappa mundi, Macrobius’ Commentarii in somnium Scipionis. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS latin 15170, fol. 125r. By permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. 8.4 Psalter Map, detail of Europe. London, British Library, Additional MS 28681, fol. 9r. By permission of the British Library, © British Library Board.
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180 187
192 194
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ILLUSTRATIONS
9 The Duchy of Cornwall Map Fragment (c. 1286) Dan Terkla
9.1 Duchy of Cornwall Map, framing to illustrate stitching holes for binding. London, Duchy of Cornwall Office, Maps and Plans 1. © The Duke of Cornwall 2019. Framing created by the author and Spencer Sauter of [email protected]. 202 9.2 Hemel Hempstead manorial records. London, Duchy of Cornwall Office, DOC/MR/HH1. © The Duke of Cornwall 2019. 204 10 The Hereford Map (c. 1300) Marcia Kupfer 10.1 The Hereford Mappa mundi. The Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral and the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust. 10.2 Drawing of the Hereford Triptych, by John Carter. London, British Library, Additional MS 29942, fol. 148r. By permission of the British Library, © British Library Board. 10.3 Author’s landmass schema for the Hereford Map. Created by Bradley Ireland. 10.4 Author’s diagram of the inversion operative in the Hereford Map. Created by Spencer Sauter, [email protected].
226 228 230 243
11 Digital Mapping, Spectral Imaging and Medieval Mappae Mundi Helen Davies and Gregory Heyworth 11.1 Vercelli Map, detail of Spain, pre-imaging. Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli, Rotoli figurati, 6 [Mappamondo]. Image by the Lazarus Project, MegaVision. RIT, EMEL. Courtesy of Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli. Photograph by Lazarus Project. Reproduced by permission. 262 11.2 Vercelli Map, detail of Spain, post-imaging by Helen Davies. Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli, Rotoli figurati, 6 [Mappamondo]. Image by the Lazarus Project, MegaVision. RIT, EMEL. Courtesy of Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli. Photograph by Lazarus Project. Reproduced by permission. 262 The editor, contributors and publishers are grateful to all the institutions and persons listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.
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CONTRIBUTORS Nathalie Bouloux is Maître de Conférences-HDR at the University of Tours, associated with the Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance. Her research focuses on representations of space, specifically cultural geography of the ninth through the fifteenth centuries, space, territory and humanist geography. She has published several articles and is the author of Culture et savoirs géographiques en Italie au XIVe siècle (Turnhout, 2002). Her ‘L’espace habité’ appears in La Terre: connaissance, représentations, mesure (Turnhout, 2013), edited by Patrick Gautier Dalché. Along with Georges Tolias and Anca Dan, Bouloux edited Orbis disciplinae: hommages en l’honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché (Turnhout, 2017). Michelle P. Brown, FSA, is Professor Emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is also a Visiting Professor at University College, London, and at Baylor University. She was formerly the Curator of Medieval and Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library and has published, lectured and broadcast extensively on medieval cultural history and medieval manuscript studies. The Lindisfarne gospels: society, spirituality and the scribe (Toronto, 2003) remains a definitive study of a singular medieval treasure. Daniel K. Connolly is an Assistant Professor of Art History and Director of the Flora Kirsch Beck Art Gallery at Alma College, Michigan. His research focuses on medieval experiences of time and space and their manipulations in artworks that encouraged imagined pilgrimage. He is the author of The maps of Matthew Paris: medieval journeys through space, time and liturgy (Woodbridge, 2009). Helen Davies is a PhD candidate at the University of Rochester in the Department of English. She is currently an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Digital Humanities. As the graduate student coordinator for the Lazarus Project, she helps organize projects with this multispectral imaging team. Helen’s work has recently appeared in The Medieval Cultures of the Irish Sea and the North Sea (Amsterdam, 2019), and she has a forthcoming essay in the Journal of the Early Book Society (co-authored with Alex Zawacki).
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Helen is completing a dissertation which draws on her ongoing editing and recovery of the Vercelli Mappa Mundi. Gregory Heyworth is Associate Professor of English and Textual Science and director of the Lazarus Project at the University of Rochester (New York). He is a medievalist and founder of the discipline of textual science, which combines paleography, codicology and bibliography with material, imaging and data science. Heyworth’s research lies primarily in the recovery of damaged manuscripts and cultural heritage objects using spectral imaging and machine learning, in the history of the book and cartography and the classical influence on medieval literature. With the Lazarus Project, he works to recover manuscripts, maps and paintings in collections around the world and to make them available to scholars and the public. Alfred Hiatt is a Reader in Medieval Literature in the Department of English at Queen Mary, University of London. He works on maps and geographical thought and on the reception of classical geography in the Middle Ages. He is the author of The making of medieval forgeries: false documents in fifteenth-century England (London, 2004) and Terra incognita: mapping the Antipodes before 1600 (Chicago, 2008). Marcia Kupfer contributes to the study of medieval art as an independent scholar based in Washington, DC. Her book, Art and optics in the Hereford map: an English mappa mundi, c. 1300 (New Haven, 2016), received a prize for exemplary scholarship from the Historians of British Art. She is working on a sequel that situates cartographic representation in a larger matrix of medieval spatial practices and is co-editing a collection of essays on a related theme, The visualization of knowledge in medieval and early modern Europe. Nick Millea has been Map Librarian at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, since 1992. He served as Bibliographer on Imago mundi: the international journal for the history of cartography (2005–10, 2012–15) and authored The Gough Map: the earliest road map of Great Britain? (2007). He is also a founding member and co-convenor of The Oxford Seminars in Cartography, and chairs BRICMICS (British and Irish Committee on Map Information and Cataloging Systems). Most recently, he has curated the Talking Maps exhibition at the Bodleian Library (2019–20) with Jerry Brotton, Queen Mary, University of London. They have written the exhibition’s complementary books: Talking maps and 50 maps and the stories they tell, both from Bodleian Library Publishing. Asa Simon Mittman is Professor and Chair of Art and Art History at California State University, Chico. He is author of Maps and monsters in medieval England (New York and London, 2006) and, with Susan Kim, of Inconceivable beasts: the wonders of the East in the Beowulf manuscript (Tempe, AZ, 2013). He has published numerous articles on cartography and
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monstrosity and marginality, co-edited the Research companion to monsters and the monstrous (New York, 2012) with Peter J. Dendle and co-edits biennial ‘Mappings’ issues of Peregrinations: journal of medieval art and architecture. He is the founding president of MEARCSTAPA. Dan Terkla is Emeritus Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University, a British Academy/Newberry Library Fellow (2008), a J.B. Harley Fellow (2008) in the History of Cartography and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (1998–). He has published studies of medieval French drama, Arthurian romance, the Bayeux Tapestry and medieval maps. He co-edited New research on the Bayeux Tapestry: the proceedings of a conference at the British Museum (2011) and co-edited and contributed to The Bayeux Tapestry: new interpretations (2009). He now focuses on the history of cartography; co-organizes annual ‘Mappings’ sessions at the ICMS (Kalamazoo, Michigan) and the ICM (Leeds, England) and co-edits biennial ‘Mappings’ issues of Peregrinations: journal of medieval art and architecture. Chet Van Duzer is a Research Fellow at the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University and a board member of the Lazarus Project at the University of Rochester, which brings multispectral imaging to cultural institutions around the world. He has published extensively on medieval and Renaissance maps. He is the author of The world for a king: Pierre Desceliers’ map of 1550 (London, 2015); and Apocalyptic cartography: thematic maps and the end of the world in a fifteenth-century manuscript, which he co-authored with Ilya Dines (Leiden, 2016).
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
D
an Terkla would like to thank friends, colleagues and institutions for their support and encouragement during the years it took to bring this Critical companion to fruition: the J.B. Harley and Newberry Library/British Academy fellowships, the Marc Fitch Fund, Illinois Wesleyan University’s Faculty Development Committee and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for financial assistance; Michelle P. Brown for invaluable and good-natured paleographical teaching at the London Rare Books School; Paul Harvey for sage advice and critical reading, to say nothing of delightful evenings in London; Rosalind Caird and Dominic Harbour, formerly of Hereford Cathedral, the former for inspiring conversations in situ and the latter for indefatigable enthusiasm and that huge ring of cathedral keys; Jerry Brotton for epistolary support; Tim Hardy and Alison Skilbeck for putting up with a pesky, long-term(s) lodger; Elizabeth Lomas at the Duchy of Cornwall Office (London) for bidden and unbidden help with the Duchy of Cornwall Map fragment; Caroline Palmer for raising the idea of creating this collection and for always knowing what to do; Jon Recchia for diligent copy-editing; and to Mr. Smooth, my co-editor, for his hard work, calm presence and level-headedness. I dedicate this Companion to my companion, Stacey, for her patient support, counsel and belief in me and this book. Nick Millea would like to extend thanks to friends and colleagues for their support over the duration of the work on this Companion: to the Bodleian’s collections for their unrivalled bibliographical and research depth, along with those dedicated fellow members of the Library’s Map Section, and to Martin Kauffmann, Head of Early and Rare Collections, for his continuous encouragement; to all those whose help and guidance proved invaluable during my stints as Bibliographer for Imago mundi; to Jerry Brotton and Paul Harvey for their unstinting support as academic referees for this Companion; and to my co-editor for always being there to listen and to enlighten especially in times of snow blockades (Oxfordshire) and tornadoes (Illinois); and finally to my wife Alice and daughter Evelyn for putting up with me and my editorial absences since this project came to life.
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PREFACE
A
s its title states, A critical companion to English mappae mundi of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is about world maps from the medieval Christian West, but just what is a mappa mundi? Indeed, what is a map? Where did the ‘mappa mundi’ label originate, and does it have only one meaning? Are there different types of medieval world maps? If so, what do they look like? What sizes are they? What shapes? What information do they include – and exclude? Who made them? Who used them – and for what purposes? In their landmark first volume of The history of cartography, J. Brian Harley and David Woodward write that ‘maps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes or events in the human world’.1 In other words, every map’s content, configuration and unique combination of words and images shows us our world and our place(s) in it and reveals the ways in which we conceptualize and have transformed that world. Maps, then, are for much more than way-finding. Harley and Woodward’s definition is as true of maps made of pixels as it is of medieval maps lettered and painted on animal skins, textiles or walls. The world maps studied here have not only endured, which is marvelous enough, but they belong to what is ‘undoubtedly the most idiosyncratic, even spectacular, map genre of all times’.2 These complex representations of the world and its history attract, fascinate and puzzle twenty-first-century viewers. Contributors to this Companion approach their study maps as spectacles, in the late medieval understanding of the word. That is, they are ‘means to seeing’ that allow us multidimensional sights of the world that
1 J. Brian Harley and David Woodward, The history of cartography, volume one: cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago and London, 1987), p. xvi. 2 Catherine Delano-Smith and Roger J.P. Kain, English maps: a history (London and Toronto, 1999), p. 37. As an indication of how problematic such definitions can be, see J.H. Andrews, ‘Definitions of the word “map”, 1649–1996’, which includes 321 possibilities. Submitted to MapHist on 3 February 1998. See MapHist discussion papers: http://www. maphist.nl/discpapers.html [Accessed 1 November 2018].
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they graphically represent.3 By guiding readers through what might seem rather odd images of the medieval world, we offer insights into the ways in which it was conceptualized, theologized, memorized and understood. In doing so, we aim to increase readers’ interest in these maps, alleviate some of their puzzlement and prepare them to re-encounter these idiosyncratic marvels on their own.4 As Alessandro Scafi reminds us, there were a variety of formulations of ‘world map’ in the western Middle Ages: ‘orbis pictus, orbis terrarum descriptio, forma, figura, pictura, tabula, and imago mundi’.5 The most commonly used, ‘mappa mundi’, is usually translated as ‘world map’ or, more precisely, as ‘map of the world’. The derivation and etymology of ‘mundi’ is straightforward enough: it is the genitive singular of the Latin ‘mundus’, ‘world’, and so translates as ‘of [the] world’. ‘Mappa’ is more complicated. It seems to derive from classical Latin ‘mappa’, meaning ‘towel or ‘napkin’. According to Quintilian, the Roman rhetorician, a mappa was ‘a cloth with which the signal for starting was given to racers in the circus’.6 This ‘signalcloth’, this ‘mappa’, was the ancient analog of the starting pistol used at track and field events. In post-classical Latin, ‘mappa’ became the name for what we now call a map, most likely because some maps were painted on cloth. The English ‘map’ probably resulted from an eleventh-century shortening – in linguistic terms, a clipping – of ‘mappa’.7 And so, rather delightfully, the cloth that set runners in motion flutters behind maps that have enticed untold numbers of viewers into and around their varied representations of the world for over a thousand years.8 Mappae mundi are most often circular, although the surfaces on which they were most commonly painted, pages in books, are rectangular or square. The pentagonal Hereford Map is unique among extant examples. Its shape results from the map being drawn and lettered on a single calfskin, with the calf ’s neck and shoulders forming the map’s rounded ‘V’ apex. The more common circular format derives from map designers representing in two dimensions a three-dimensional object on which human history takes See the Oxford English dictionary (OED) for this and other definitions of ‘spectacle’. For a detailed history of world maps, see chapter one in this Companion. 5 Alessandro Scafi, ‘Defining mappaemundi’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 345–54, here p. 345. 6 Quintilian claims the word is Punic in origin. On that and the above, see ‘mappa’ in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin dictionary (Oxford, 1879). 7 For more etymological details, see ‘map’ in the OED: http://www.oed.com.proxy.iwu. edu/view/Entry/113853#eid38013833 [Accessed 1 November 2018]. 8 Map scholars differ on spelling, with some using what Alessandro Scafi calls ‘hybrid’ forms, mappamundi and its plural, mappaemundi, and others hewing more closely to Latin grammar with mappa mundi and mappae mundi. In this Companion, we use these latter forms for ‘map of the world’/‘world map’ and ‘maps of the world’/‘world maps’. See Scafi, ‘Defining’, p. 345. Note that the editor of The Hereford world map uses what Scafi calls the ‘wholly Englished’ versions, ‘mappamundi’ and ‘mappaemundi’, without italicizing them, even in the title of Scafi’s chapter, p. 345. See Scafi, ‘Defining’, pp. 346–51. Contributors to this Companion hold to a broad understanding of the label. 3
4
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place: the earth, which they knew to be round. There are also oval maps, like the one from Sawley Abbey (Plate III), as well as rectangular and square mappae mundi, like the Anglo-Saxon Map (Plate I) and Matthew Paris Map (Plate V), all of which are painted on rectangular pages. Fewer in number are the almond- or mandorla-shaped (from Latin ‘amandola’, ‘almond’) world maps, which are also most often painted on rectangular or square surfaces.9 The almond or mandorla outline most likely derives from the early twelfth century, perhaps from Hugh of St Victor’s practice of drawing mappae mundi in the shape of Noah’s ark so as to create visual metaphors for his abbey students – maps as salvific vessels that one could ‘sail’ to spiritual restitution.10 The mandorla also gives shape to the radiant outlines surrounding Christ’s body in Ascension scenes and the Virgin’s body in Assumption scenes, thereby providing another metaphorical layer for the so-called Ranulf Higden maps, which are most often cited as exemplars of this design.11 There are multiple types of medieval world maps, with six garnering the most scholarly attention: (1) encyclopedic maps, (2) tripartite maps, (3) fourth continent or quadripartite maps, (4) schematic maps, (5) verbal or list maps and (6) zonal maps.12 There are numerous variations on and hybrids of these formats, each of which shows the viewer a different perspective on the world. Zonal maps show the entire northern and southern hemispheres, while the other types show different conceptions of the ecumene (Figure 1), the inhabited world, comprising the landmasses of Asia, Europe and Africa.13 Schematic maps are diagrammatic, often just circular diagrams that provide a minimum of information. They can be tripartite ‘T-O’ maps (Figure 1), showing the circular world touching the end points of the ‘T’ that diagrams the aqueous features separating the landmasses.14 Verbal or list maps often employ this format, with informational text filling the three regions.15 Fourth continent or quadripartite maps show Asia, Europe and Africa in the northern hemisphere and a fourth landmass in the south,
Another name for this shape is ‘vesica piscis’, Latin for ‘fish bladder’. Harley and Woodward, History, pp. 312–13. 11 As an example, see London, British Library (BL), Royal MS 14 C IX, fols 1v–2r. The map is positioned horizontally over two pages, with its eastern edge on the far left of fol. 1v. 12 Circular tripartite maps are also known as ‘T-O’ or ‘Y-O’ maps, because their prominent aqueous features are so arranged: the cross-bar of the ‘T’ and arms of the ‘Y’ represent the River Don on the left and River Nile on the right. The vertical leg represents the Mediterranean Sea. See below. 13 ‘Ecumene’ is also spelled ‘oecumene’, ‘oikoumene’ and ‘oikumene’. These landmasses do not correspond exactly to the shape or coordinates of what are now known as continents. The English ‘continent’ first appeared in The cosmographical glasse (London, 1559), written by the Norfolk cartographer and physician William Cunningham. 14 For example, a schematic map from Isidore of Seville’s De natura rerum: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.2. 20, fol. 16r. 15 For example, the Psalter Map’s verso: BL, Additional MS 28681, fol. 9v. 9
10
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1 ECUMENE GEOGRAPHICALLY ALIGNED. CREATED BY MICHAEL ATHANSON, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, OXFORD. REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION.
sometimes inhabited by the Antipodeans.16 Zonal maps divide the world horizontally into the ancient world’s five or seven climata bands. They provide little or no geographical or historical information.17 Encyclopedic maps like the Anglo-Saxon, Vercelli (Plate IV), Sawley, Munich (Plate II), Psalter (Plate VI), Duchy (Plate VII) and Hereford (Plate VIII), provide the most information about the ecumene and the people, places and events of history. Each is recognizably conventional in form and unique in its idiosyncratic word-and-image array of the locations in which human history took place. This type receives the most scholarly attention. Western medieval mappae mundi are not all oriented (from Latin ‘orior’, ‘to rise’; ‘oriens’, ‘rising sun’); that is, they do not all ‘point’ eastward, although that is the most common alignment. (Zonal maps, for instance, are aligned north or south.) East’s cartographical dominance results from its cultural significance and symbolic importance. The sun rises in 16 ‘Antipodeans’ derives from the Greek ἀντίποδες and then Latin ‘antipodes’, ‘those who dwell on the opposite side of the earth’, ‘having the feet opposite’. See OED. For an example, the Silos Beatus Map: BL Additional MS 11695, fols. 39v–40r. 17 For example, William of Conches’ zonal map: Paris, Bibliothèque Geneviève, MS 2200, fol. 34v.
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2 T-O SCHEMATIC MAP. CREATED BY MICHAEL ATHANSON, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, OXFORD. REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION.
the east, marking the quotidian life cycle and providing humanity with existential reassurance. Therefore, sun worship featured prominently in ancient religions; in Christianity it became a metaphor for God and his love.18 Nonetheless, an eastern alignment will seem odd to modern viewers accustomed to using maps with north at the top and thus to conforming their movements to that spatial conceptualization. Also odd seeming is the situation of Jerusalem at or near the center of some twelfth- to fourteenth-century mappae mundi, like the Psalter, Hereford and Ebstorf maps. This convention has three sources: (1) the fact that Jerusalem was near the center of the medieval ecumene, (2) the impact of the Crusades on western Europe and (3) Ezekiel 5.5: ‘Haec dicit Dominus Deus ista est Hierusalem in medio gentium posui eam et in circuitu eius terras’ (‘This the Lord God says, “This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the middle with the other nations around her.”’).19 In this worldview, 18 The OED gives Aelfric’s Lives of the saints (c. 1000) as the earliest witness in English of this metaphor. See the edition published by the Early English Text Society, ed. W.W. Skeat et al. (London, 1881), 314, line 97. 19 Latin text from Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem (Stuttgart, 1983); author’s translation.
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Jerusalem was the spatial center of the Christian ecumene and, since the medieval cosmos was geocentric, centered on the earth and not the sun, the center of the universe. This arrangement also meant that the universe was anthropocentric, human centered, since humanity inhabited – indeed, was created on – the earth. Apart from the Matthew Paris Map, this Companion’s focal mappae mundi were laid out according to the tripartite classical model, with the aqueous ‘T’ separating the three landmasses and standing for the Crucifixion cross. All of these maps, including that of Matthew Paris, are aligned to the east. In the later Middle Ages, as biblical sources (mostly from the Hebrew Bible) overtook classical ones in prominence, the landmasses came to be understood as those settled by the descendants of Noah’s sons: Shem (in Asia), Ham (in Africa) and Japheth (in Europe).20 Eastern-oriented mappae mundi show Asia covering the entire top half of the circle and Europe and Africa dividing the lower half into two equal parts. The world is encircled by the Homeric Ocean River, and the landmasses are separated by major bodies of water: Asia from Europe and Africa by the rivers Don (Tanaïs) and Nile, and Europe from Africa by the Mediterranean Sea.21 In addition to toponyms (place names), mappae mundi include varying amounts of information, sometimes via inscriptions like ‘Naddaber civitas, draconibus plena’ (‘The city of Barkal, replete with dragons’).22 They depict bodies of water; topographical features; city icons; wind heads; various peoples, including the so-called monstrous peoples; mythical creatures; biblical, historical and mythological scenes; itinerary routes and much more. On complex maps like the Hereford and Psalter maps, which are often referred to as ‘encyclopedic’, the ecumene is packed with such features; the former contains nearly 1,100 items. This information and the maps’ formats came from myriad pagan and Christian sources and from other maps; that is, from books and maps. Chapters two and three in this Companion lay out the books held by exemplary pre- and post-Conquest monastic houses in England and their relationships to the mappae mundi they owned. Here a short list of authors and works suffices: the Alexander (the Great) romances, St Augustine, Beatus, Bede, Bible, Church Fathers, Ctesias of Cnidos, Herodotus, Ranulf Higden, Hugh of St Victor, Isidore of Seville, St Jerome, Lambert of St Omer, Lucan, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Megasthenes, Paulus Orosius, Pliny the Elder, Sallust, Solinus, Strabo and Virgil; also, textual itineraries, lists of place names and distances between them, like the late thirdcentury Antonine itinerary (Itinerarium provinciarium Antonini Augusti)
Genesis 9.18–10.32. See note 12 above. 22 For the Barkal inscription, see Scott Westrem, The Hereford Map: a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (Turnhout, 2001), p. 185. 20 21
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and Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury’s early eleventh-century journey to Rome.23 The artisans who made these source books also made the mappae mundi, which came in different sizes and which were painted and lettered on various surfaces.24 Where a map was displayed, its material and its size to some extent determined its survivability. The great majority of maps were made for inclusion in books and are, in myriad ways and to myriad degrees, relevant to the texts with which they are bound. Four such codicological (from Latin, ‘caudex’ or ‘codex’, meaning ‘tree trunk’, ‘wooden tablet’ or ‘book’) maps feature in this Companion: the Anglo-Saxon, Munich, Matthew Paris and Psalter maps.25 Such maps tend to last the longest, as they are protected by the structure of their books: the folios (pages) were stacked and sewn together into quires (page gatherings), and the folio or folios onto which the map was drawn were protected by the folios between which they were sandwiched. The books sometimes, but not always, had covers made from pasteboard or wood (‘boards’) covered in damp leather and fixed to a spine. There were also ‘limp bindings’ made of soft leather; even these would have afforded some protection to codicological maps. Mural mappae mundi, like King Henry III’s in Westminster Palace and Winchester Castle and like the one in a church at Chalivoy-Milon near Bourges in central France, were the largest and most vulnerable, due to fire, changing architectural tastes and needs, and to sociocultural shifts like the Protestant Reformation. While not painted on a wall, the monumentally sized Duchy of Cornwall Map likely was cut up by Henry VIII’s commissioners and used as binding material. Chapter nine in this Companion tells its story. In terms of map history and design, perhaps the most significant loss was that of a large mural mappa mundi at the Parisian abbey of St Victor that Hugh of St Victor used in teaching.26 Next in size and vulnerability were stand-alone maps painted on cloth or large animal skins, in other words, on parchment or vellum. ‘Parchment’ strictly refers to a writing surface made from sheep or goatskins, like those used for the monumental Ebstorf Map, which was destroyed in 1943 by Allied bombs. Making the surface on which this map was painted required the stitching together of thirty goatskins. ‘Vellum’ refers only to calfskin, like the single one on which the Hereford Map, the largest surviving mappa
On the Antonine itinerary, see Richard J.A. Talbert, Rome’s world: the Peutinger Map reconsidered (Cambridge, 2010), p. 138. For more on mappae mundi sources, see the relevant sections in Evelyn Edson, Mapping time and space: how medieval mapmakers viewed their world (London, 1997); Harley and Woodward, History; Westrem, Hereford. 24 For thorough coverage of this topic, see chapter one in this Companion. 25 On ‘codex’, see the OED. See chapter two for the Anglo-Saxon Map, chapter four for the Munich Map, chapter six for the map by Matthew Paris and chapter seven for the Psalter Map. 26 For more on Hugh and this map, see chapters one, three, four and nine in this Companion. 23
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mundi, was painted.27 The Duchy of Cornwall Map was larger than the Hereford Map and was made for the College of Bonhommes in Ashridge, some thirty miles northwest of London. Merton College, Oxford, had a large map that hung on the library wall; it does not survive. Rounding out this selection of stand-alone maps is the ‘pannus regis’, the ‘king’s cloth’ cataloged in the royal English Wardrobe and Privy Wardrobe accounts. This map traveled with Edward I and, like the mural maps of his father, Henry III, and the Duchy Map, which his uncle, Edmund of Cornwall, probably commissioned, would have signaled Edward’s eminence and power when displayed in his presence.28 The same artisans who made books made non-mural mappae mundi.29 A number of religious houses in Britain had scriptoria, areas where books were created in-house. Not every house had a scriptorium, however; and, in the later Middle Ages, a class of independent, mobile scribes, limners and illuminators – male and female – arose to fill this gap. These artisans also were capable of painting and lettering mappae mundi. Hereford Cathedral, for instance, did not have a scriptorium, but there were independent artists in town who likely had a hand, literally, in the creation of the cathedral’s famous map. The Hereford mappa mundi, and the other world maps up to the later fifteenth century, were made of the same parchment, vellum, ink and gold leaf as books, and the same array of pens, knives and pumice tools were used for both kinds of work. London had a number of such craftsmen, and Aldwych, Covent Garden, St Paul’s and Westminster, built on the defensive Thorney Island, were centers of book production. Paternoster Row, on the north side of St Paul’s Cathedral, became a thriving hub of book production and sale by the mid fourteenth century. Mural maps, and perhaps large textile maps, would have been painted by the men who decorated the interiors of ecclesiastical and royal buildings like Henry III’s abbey and palace of Westminster. Mappae mundi made in monastic scriptoria at places like St Albans, Glastonbury Abbey, Canterbury, Durham Cathedral Priory and Lincoln Cathedral were used on site in a variety of educational ways. In the Christian West, this practice goes back at least to the sixth century and Cassiodorus, whose Institutiones encouraged monastic novices to study geography and 27 On the map’s size, creation, composition and use, see chapters one and nine in this Companion. 28 P.D.A. Harvey, in his crucial article on the Wardrobe maps, cautiously indicates that there might have been three such maps. See his ‘Maps of the world in the medieval English royal Wardrobe’, Foundations of medieval scholarship: records edited in honour of David Crook, ed. Paul Brand and Sean Cunningham (York, 2008), pp. 51–5. On these royal and baronial maps, see chapter nine in this Companion. 29 For more information on these processes, see chapter one in this Companion. For a useful tutorial on making a manuscript book, see the British Library’s Medieval manuscripts blog: https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2017/09/a-rough-guide-to-making-amedieval-manuscript.html [Accessed 5 November 2018].
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maps, which would allow them to engage in virtual travel to and through the places about which they learned through reading and what we would call lectures. Members of religious houses used maps for teaching and learning, for meditating on scripture and writings of the Church Fathers, for consultation and as aides-mémoires to help them create simple and comprehensive mental maps.30 There were also papal and non-clerical commissioners and users of mappae mundi, all part of a tradition stretching back at least to imperial Rome.31 Unlike clerics, these men commissioned large-scale maps for display and self-aggrandizement. Julius Caesar’s initiative ‘to measure the four quarters of the earth’ provided the data for the monumental map ordered by his successor, Augustus Caesar, and perhaps the inspiration for successive powerful men.32 The so-called Agrippa map glorifying the expanding Roman Empire was on public display in Rome’s Porticus Vipsania. During the eighth century, Pope Zacharias had a world map painted on a wall in Rome’s Lateran Palace, and Charlemagne owned three silver ‘tables’, one a map of Constantinople, one a map of Rome and the third a map of the world.33 And, as we have seen, Henry III; his son, Edward I; and his nephew, Edmund of Cornwall, owned large-scale mappae mundi. We know that Edmund, whose father was King of the Germans, was aware of Charlemagne’s history and reputation, and we can assume that he, his cousin and his uncle understood the power that these display maps conveyed to them and their family. In short, commissioning and displaying such graphic, cartographical assertions of global power tied popes, kings and barons to a long history of imperial spectacle and self-aggrandizement. As the chapters in this Companion show us, there were as many medieval variants on the mappa mundi format as there were patrons and users. Each map was designed to meet the needs of its audience or owner and adhered to a basic format, while simultaneously being idiosyncratic in ways that met its owner’s or audience’s unique needs. Their designers’ adherence to formal convention makes mappae mundi instantly recognizable, even to the casually interested, while their endless variations make them endlessly fascinating – and just a bit enigmatic, even to the trained viewer.
On Cassiodorus and the educational uses of mappae mundi, see chapter two in this Companion. See also Marcia Kupfer, ‘Traveling the mappa mundi: readerly transport from Cassiodorus to Petrarch’, Maps and travel in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period: knowledge, imagination and visual culture, ed. Ingrid Baumgärtner, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby and Katrin Kogman-Appel (Berlin and Boston, 2018), pp. 17–36. 31 ‘Non-clerical’ refers to those who were neither monks nor canons. 32 O.A.W. Dilke, ‘Maps in service of the state: Roman cartography to the end of the Augustan era’, in Harley and Woodward, History, pp. 201–11, here 204. 33 For more information on imperial, papal, royal and baronial maps, see chapter nine in this Companion. 30
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3 MAPPA MUNDI OWNING INSTITUTIONS IN ENGLAND. CREATED BY MICHAEL ATHANSON, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, OXFORD. REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION.
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Travel by your reading all the way to paradise and sigh over what was lost.1 Peter of Celle By means of your pre-visualized image, direct your step further along the road’s course.2 Geoffrey of Vinsauf
V
Let the mind’s interior compass first circle the whole extent of the material. Let a definite order chart in advance at what point the pen will take up its course, or where it will fix its Cadiz. As a prudent workman, construct the whole fabric within the mind’s citadel; let it exist in the mind before it is on the lips.3 Geoffrey of Vinsauf
olume one of The history of cartography, J. Brian Harley and David Woodward’s Cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, remains an immensely valuable compendium of knowledge and was named ‘Best Book in the Humanities’ by the Association of American Publishers.4 As its editor/contributors justifiably claim, volume one is ‘the only comprehensive and reliable work that studies the people, cultures, and societies that have produced and consumed maps Peter of Celle, De afflictione et lectione, Peter of Celle: selected works, trans. Hugh Feiss, OSB (Kalamazoo, MI, 1987), pp. 137–8. In visualizing this introduction and in my thinking about the ways mappae mundi were used, I benefitted greatly from Mary Carruthers’ ideas in ‘The concept of ductus: or journeying through a work of art’, Rhetoric beyond words: delight and persuasion in the arts of the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Carruthers (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 190–213. Her use of Geoffrey of Vinsauf and Peter of Celle’s works sent me to the originals. I drew these epigraphs from Carruthers, after consulting the Latin. 2 Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova, trans. Margaret F. Nims (Toronto, 1967), p. 23, line 205. Carruthers’ translation, which grows from her argument in the piece cited above. Nims gives ‘Keeping to our image’, not ‘By means of your pre-visualized image’. 3 Geoffrey, Poetria, p. 17, lines 55–9. 4 J.B. Harley and David Woodward, eds, The history of cartography, volume one: cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago and London, 1987). 1
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from prehistoric times to’ the sixteenth century.5 While still indispensable, this first of six planned volumes was published in 1987 and is in need of updating. A critical companion to English mappae mundi of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries cannot claim to be a comprehensive revamp of Harley and Woodward. It does, however, deepen and extend their work, along with that of subsequent map-history collections that look back to volume one. This Companion does so by presenting a forward-looking study of one of Harley and Woodward’s ‘distinct subgroups’, world maps from the florescent period of Anglo-French cartography. We offer new background information on the maps studied, along with new perspectives and insights on their creation, use and context that, taken together, distinguish this collection from other important English-language studies dating back to the 1990s.6 There are few collections that focus on this cluster of mappae mundi; and, not surprisingly, much of this work has been done by English scholars. A selective shortlist of significant studies begins with P.D.A. Harvey’s Medieval maps, with its valuable introduction to the period and chapter on pre-1400 mappae mundi.7 Harvey’s chronological overview – which runs into the late fifteenth century – and close attention to the artifacts themselves advanced the history of cartography and was one of the best analog-age resources for color reproductions of nearly eighty maps.8 Evelyn Edson’s Mapping time and space: how medieval mapmakers viewed their world assertively moved the study of medieval maps out of the realm of the geographers and those who concentrated primarily on the maps themselves.9 She explores maps’ codicological contexts – the histories, chronicles and computus manuscripts with which they were bound – and demonstrates their makers’ interest in ‘concepts of time as well as space’.10 Edson’s monograph also has one of the
‘Summary’, The history of cartography: https://geography.wisc.edu/histcart/summary/ [Accessed 12 December 2017]. 6 One also should include Géographie de monde au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, ed. Monique Pelletier (Paris, 1989). Its first section, ‘Mappemondes médiévales’, pp. 7–88, includes five important English-language articles on medieval mappae mundi (David Woodward), the Duchy of Cornwall Map fragment (Graham Haslam), two on the Ebstorf Map (Rolf Lindemann and Armin Wolf) and one that introduces the Aslake Map (Peter Barber). There is also an article in French by Danielle Lecoq that was one of the first to reconstruct Hugh of St Victor’s De archa Noe map. 7 P.D.A. Harvey, Medieval maps (London, Toronto and Buffalo, 1991). 8 For something of an update, see P.D.A. Harvey, ‘The map and its relatives’, The Hereford world map: introduction (Hereford, 2010), pp. 39–66. In a section of this chapter, ‘The English family of world maps’, Harvey touches on all of this Companion’s study maps. The 2010 publication is the third, and significantly updated, edition of his Mappa mundi: the Hereford world map (London and Toronto, 1996). 9 Evelyn Edson, Mapping time and space: how medieval mapmakers viewed their world (London, 1997). 10 Edson, Mapping, p. viii. 5
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earliest English-language sections on Hugh of St Victor’s theography, his theological cartography, and is still pertinent.11 ‘A medieval flowering’ from Catherine Delano-Smith and Roger J.P. Kain’s English maps: a history offers a densely informative overview of maps, plans and diagrams covering nearly 700 years, from the four plans in Adamnán’s De locis sanctis (c. 685) to the late fourteenth-century Gough Map.12 Their copiously illustrated chapter still provides crucial background knowledge for the study of Anglo-Norman mappae mundi, while emphasizing the perpetual ‘need to set the maps we know about more deeply into their context’.13 Peter Barber’s capsule overviews of fourteen mappae mundi from the early twelfth to the mid fifteenth century manage to update Harley and Woodward’s section on the genre in just forty-five pages.14 Rather marvellous in their distillation, his studied portraits in ‘Medieval maps of the world’ constitute the most recent English-language overview of the maps studied here.15 We hope that the quality of this Companion’s ideas and its annotated bibliography, covering the past thirty-some years, will merit it a place among these seminal studies. Perhaps more importantly, we hope that it provokes novel thinking about this fascinating genre of medieval maps.
TRADITION AND DIFFERENCE Map scholars are understandably indebted to and their thinking influenced by The history of cartography, but have moved on from the first volume’s more traditional approaches to map history, particularly its deployment of a Lachmannian stemma for individual mappae mundi, genealogies that point back in time to an ‘Ur-text’, or, more precisely, an ‘Ur-map’ from which the maps derive.16 Source study of this sort leads to comparatism, in On Hugh’s theography, see below. Catherine Delano-Smith and Roger J.P. Kain, ‘A medieval flowering’, English maps: a history (London, Toronto and Buffalo, 1999), pp. 7–48. 13 Delano-Smith and Kain, English maps, p. 48. More recent studies correct or problematize some statements in the book, such as ‘Agrippa’s map of the world was displayed on a portico wall in Rome’, p. 39. See note 16 below. 14 Peter Barber, ‘Medieval maps of the world’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 1–44. The core of this collection’s chapters began as talks delivered at the 1999 Mappa Mundi Conference in Hereford. 15 Barber covers all of this Companion’s study maps, except for the Matthew Paris and Vercelli maps, although he does touch on them. See ‘Medieval maps of the world’, pp. 22 and 9, 10, 18, 25 and 35–6, respectively. 16 As noted in the Oxford English dictionary, from the German ‘ur’, denoting ‘primitive, original, earliest’. Karl Lachmann (1793–1851) was a German classicist, positivist and progenitor of the method by which philologists constructed family trees so as to work their way back through a manuscript’s history to its ‘Ur-text’, its first and best exemplar. On Lachmann and his work on medieval literary texts, see Tony Hunt, ‘Editing Arthuriana’, A history of Arthurian scholarship, ed. Norris J. Lacy (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 37–48, here 11
12
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which a number of post-1987 studies engaged. This valuable work revealed similarities between maps and has been helpful in categorizing and classifying them and their constituent components.17 The same approach was followed by literary scholars into the mid twentieth century, with similar results. However foundational, source studies, categorizing and classifying can be of limited use if they do not move beyond the discovery of likenesses. Energized in part by J.B. Harley’s provocative later work and interdisciplinary approach – itself the product of the radical hermeneutical shift in literary criticism and the social sciences occasioned by poststructuralism – and by the possibilities introduced by digital technologies, map scholars have shed new light on these maps’ stories.18 They have come to recognize, barring new discoveries, that a sufficient number of stemmae for major mappae mundi have been drawn, categories filled with siblings and cousins and classifications completed. Having built arguments and assessments on these foundations, attention has turned toward questioning received wisdom, to highlighting world maps’ epistemological and structural idiosyncrasy, to the monstrous, the excluded, the peripheral – in short, to difference. W.J.T. Mitchell has shown us that, in a visual art like painting, meaning derives from every stroke’s ‘relations with all the other marks in a … continuous field’; that is, across the entire painting.19 Modifying this observation allows us to see how mappae mundi differ, how each one is unique and how each one helps viewers make meaning. On these structurally similar maps, recognizing differences across their ‘continuous field[s]’ alerts us to the idiosyncratic ways in which their makers framed and arrayed the elements of what Hugh of St Victor (c. 1096–1141) understood and taught as historia: the human narrative of persons, places, times and events.20 Of course, there are degrees of difference. For example, asking why some maps portray Rome or Jerusalem has been revealing, but also useful is focusing on less obvious, localized questions, such as why the Hereford Map depicts Kirkham Priory, an Augustinian house in the north of England. W.L. pp. 37–40. For an insightful discussion of his method, see Jeffrey M. Hunt, R. Alden Smith and Fabio Stok, Classics from papyrus to the internet: an introduction to transmission and reception (Austin, 2017), pp. 212–20. The Ur-map often placed at the apex of the Anglo-French mappae mundi’s genealogical tree is Agrippa’s world map; or, in a narrower timeframe, Henry III’s Westminster mappa mundi. On the former, see, for example, Barber, ‘Medieval maps of the world’, pp. 4–5, 8 and 22; and Delano-Smith and Kain, English maps, pp. 36 and 39. 17 For examples of classifications and stemmae, see Harley and Woodward, History, respectively, pp. 294–8, 327, 331, 336, 343–58; 305 and 313. Evelyn Edson summarizes this trope and shows its problems; see Mapping, pp. 10–11. 18 J.B. Harley, The new nature of maps: essays in the history of cartography, ed. Paul Laxton, intro. J.H. Andrews (Baltimore and London, 2001). 19 W.J.T. Mitchell, Iconology: image, text, ideology (Chicago, 1987), p. 67. 20 For more on historia and its importance to mapping, see below.
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Bevan and H.W. Phillott, two of the map’s earliest interrogators, knew of ‘no reason why it should have been selected for notice by our cartographer’.21 However, Patrick Gautier Dalché has pointed out that Kirkham and other religious houses in Yorkshire, along with Durham Cathedral Priory, were interested in geography and cartography, as was ‘our cartographer’ working some 220 miles to the southwest in Hereford.22 This does not mean that the whole of twelfth- and thirteenth-century England was cartographically inclined, but it does illustrate awareness at Hereford Cathedral of a mutual interest in the north. Given that Kirkham Priory was nearly equidistant to Sawley Abbey and Durham Cathedral Priory, an investigaton of this mutual interest might bolster the argument for the Hereford Map’s link to the Sawley Map and to a northern exemplar, perhaps from Durham.23
THE RHETORIC OF MAPPAE MUNDI But how might map historians formulate different questions? A combination of Brian Harley’s later work and studies in medieval rhetoric provides a possibility. In his critique of Harley’s thinking, J.H. Andrews accepts that ‘it is natural to begin by assuming that verbal and cartographical languages probably resemble each other in being rhetorical and nonrhetorical to about the same extent’.24 However, he regards as ‘much more dubious’ Harley’s position, which ‘is to accept that rhetoric is part of the way all texts work and that all maps are rhetorical texts’.25 I am less ‘dubious’ than Andrews and less assured than Harley on this point. Nonetheless, it is clear that the western Christian mappae mundi studied in this Companion were created to make meaning and were, as part of a theological discourse, reliant upon a conventional word-and-image sign system which points to a Truth beyond the inscribed and painted world they present. As Harley writes, maps ‘state an argument about the world and they are propositional in nature’.26 They are rhetorical constructions; their encompassing outlines, landmasses, aqueous features, situated vignettes and legends ‘are drawn on blank surfaces, not with a blank mind’.27 21 W.L. Bevan and H.W. Phillott, Mediæval geography: an essay in illustration of the Hereford mappa mundi (London and Hereford, 1873), p. 169. Quoted in Scott Westrem, The Hereford Map: a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (Turnhout, 2001), p. 302. 22 Westrem, Hereford, p. 302; see also chapter three in this Companion. 23 For more on geospatial awareness in the south and north of England, see chapters two and three, respectively, in this Companion. 24 J.H. Andrews, ‘Meaning, knowledge, and power in the map philosophy of J.B. Harley’, Trinity Papers in Geography (Dublin, 1994); Harley, New nature, pp. 1–32, here p. 10. 25 Andrews, ‘Meaning’, p. 10; Harley, ‘Deconstructing the map’, New nature, pp. 150–68, here p. 163. 26 Harley, ‘Deconstructing the map’, p. 163. 27 Delano-Smith and Kain, English maps, p. 6.
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Work on medieval rhetoric is therefore helpful in getting at these maps’ syntheses of the conventional and the idiosyncratic. Much like poets of the period, Anglo-French mapmakers appropriated readily recognizable forms and ideas, thereby lending their work the authority of the past and immediate accessibility. They then innovated, twisting themes or motifs in unique ways that held and involved their audiences. Mapmakers might rely on the recognizable circular, oval or almond/mandorla frame into which they would insert the three known landmasses and the aqueous features separating them.28 Atop and around this geographical array, they would position words and images signifying historia.29 Innovation and idiosyncracy appear in their inclusion, exclusion and unusual situation of persons, places and events. Understanding these variations as the result of sponsorial and designer preferences and the availability of source texts and images can lead to new questions about maps’ creation, production, display and use.30 Mary Carruthers’ work points us to two useful rhetorical elements, consilium and ductus. Respectively, they are ‘the aggregate of the rational decisions and selections of the composer’, the completed text or map, and the ways in which those ‘decisions’ and ‘selections’ guide the ‘thinking, listening and feeling mind on its way through the composition’.31 The maker’s vision of the completed work, the consilium, governs the choice and disposition of inscriptions and pictographs across the map’s surface.32 It also determines the choice of bounding and segregational structures, that is, whether to use the T-O, Y-O, mandorla or zonal format, for example. These decisions produce a map’s ductus, the apparent or unapparent structures that enable and control a viewer’s ocular journey across its surface.33 For more on basic formats, see the preface to this Companion. These broad observations apply equally to fourth continent/quadripartite and zonal mappae mundi, but not to schematic maps. 30 Chapters two and three in this Companion focus on the relationship of maps to local library collections. 31 Carruthers, ‘Journeying’, pp. 200 and 196. Here, Carruthers might be echoing Aristotle’s essay in Parva naturalia on sleep, in which he argues that there must be ‘a single central sensorium’, a ‘master sense-organ’ that ‘sees, hears, imagines, desires, thinks, moves and acts’. For a cogent explication and extensive bibliography, see David Gallop, ‘Aristotle: aesthetics and philosophy of mind’, From Aristotle to Augustine, ed. David Furley (London, 1999), pp. 76–108, here p. 97. For an astute investigation of the presence and use of ductus and consilium in twelfth- to fourteenth-century mappae mundi, see Marcia Kupfer, ‘Traveling the mappa mundi: readerly transport from Cassiodorus to Petrarch’, Maps and travel in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period: knowledge, imagination, and visual culture, ed. Ingrid Baumgärtner, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby and Katrin Kogman-Appel (Berlin and Boston, 2018), pp. 17–36. 32 ‘Consilium’, from Latin for ‘a conclusion made with consideration, a determination, resolution, measure, plan, purpose, intention’. See Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin dictionary, Perseus Digital Library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0060%3Aentry=ductus1 [Accessed 28 January 2018]. 33 ‘Ductus’ from Latin ducere, ‘to lead, conduct, guide, direct, draw’. Lewis and Short, Latin dictionary [Accessed 28 January 2018]. 28
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In constructing these maps, designers worked like the English rhetorician, Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. 1208–13), who understood that a verbal composition can be ordered, that it has two versions of ductus, one that relies on a reasoned plan and one that gives into the wondrous other that branches off into multiple routes.34 This creative coincidence is unsurprising, since textual sources, particularly itineraries and texts that are narrative in nature, were so important to map makers, who relied on in-house collections and borrowed books.35 We need only think of common map sources like Orosius’ Historia adversus paganos (fifth century), Isidore of Seville’s (c. 560–636) Etymologiae and the Alexander romances (twelfth century), along with itineraries like those of the apostles or even Sigeric of Canterbury’s (d. 994), which recounts his journey along the Via Francigena from Calais to Rome. All are built on articulated events that take place in time.36 Each one of their locations becomes a mappable spot, a node, that in turn becomes a toponym on a path that readers and auditors can follow. Some will have been of local importance, while others, like Luke-Acts’ fifty-eight places, cover broader areas.37 Many nodes appear in multiple narratives, which means that they exist in what for individuals could become an ever-expanding metanarrative, a visualizable and memorable web encompassing vast amounts of historia from the Creation to the present. Building a truly comprehensive mental map, of course, was impossible; doing so would require a mind and vision as capacious as God’s. The interwoven tropes of consilium and ductus, along with the arts of memory, were vital parts of early to later medieval pedagogy, composition and reading.38 They provide ‘structures in the reader’s mind that are, at the least, equally as important as the marks on paper’.39 Carruthers goes so far as to write that consilium and ductus, ‘as principles both of analysis and practice, … are essential to all medieval arts’.40 Surely, this is why Consultus Fortunatianus (fifth century) bothered to define ductus in his Ars rhetorica (The art of rhetoric), why Augustine (354–430) included it in teaching Carruthers, ‘Journeying’, p. 192. For instance, the mappa mundi made or remade at Merton College, Oxford, might have been drawn on site but sourced from nearby Abingdon Abbey, as the 1308–09 bursar’s and subwarden’s accounts suggest. See Rodney M. Thomson, ‘Medieval maps at Merton College, Oxford’, Imago mundi 61.1 (2009), 84–90, especially 87–9. 36 The itinerary was included in what is now British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B V, fols 24r–28v, which also contains the Anglo-Saxon Map on fol. 56v. For more on Sigeric, see chapter two in this Companion. 37 ‘Luke-Acts’ is the name biblical scholars give to the composite narrative that recounts the ministerial travels of Jesus, in Luke, and the apostles, in Acts. For the use of Luke-Acts and other texts in virtual monastic travel, see chapter two in this Companion. 38 See Mary Carruthers, The book of memory: a study of memory in medieval culture, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2008). 39 C. Grant Head, ‘The map as natural language: a paradigm for understanding’, Cartographica 21.1 (Spring 1984), 1–31, here, 2. 40 Carruthers, ‘Journeying’, p. 204. 34 35
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rhetoric and why Martianus Capella (fifth century) worked ductus into his allegory on the liberal arts, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the marriage of Philology and Mercury), a seminal schools text.41 These rhetorical devices were employed by those who used such books in teaching and by those who wrote the books that became sources for maps. Those who made the maps would have had the structures of these narratives in mind, even in memory, during the making process, and these structures would to varying degrees condition their deployment of words and images on maps.42 We see the results of what might have been unconscious and conscious translations of narrative ductus in the Hereford Map, for instance. Not surprisingly, the map includes places from Luke-Acts like Antioch, Athens, Damascus, Jerusalem, Judaea, Rome and Tyre, which also are well known from other narratives and might appear for a variety of reasons. However, the map also includes relatively obscure places such as Derbe, Mysia, Patara and Puteoli, which suggests that the map’s designer was consciously including certain places from the apostolic itinerary. This combination helped viewers, readers and auditors engage the sensorium when moving through a narrative.43 De afflictione et lectione (On affliction and reading) by Peter of Celle (d. 1183) is purely verbal, but relies on mentally mapping events from Genesis and Exodus onto a landscape. It therefore stands proxy for the kind of experience someone reading or hearing Luke-Acts might have while looking at an encyclopedic map: In this book also, travel by your reading all the way to paradise and sigh over what was lost. Drink from the four rivers by imbibing justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance. … Walk with God as Enoch did. … Flee the fornication of the sons of God who deserved the flood. Enter the ark at the time of the flood. … In this manner run through the contents of this book with a deliberate but light step, imitating the good deeds, avoiding the evil ones, interpreting what is obscure, retaining and committing to memory what is straightforward. … Then come to the Exodus and be saddened by the entry into Egypt. … Observe how the law was given on Mount Sinai. … [R]un through the forty-two stopping places with what they signify. … [B]uild within yourself the tabernacle and its ceremonies, then inhabit the heavenly realms by imitating their holiness.44
On Augustine, ductus and monastic meditation, see Mary Carruthers, The craft of thought: meditation, rhetoric, and the making of images, 400–1200 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 66–81. 42 On this type of map design and the use of them for virtual travel, see Kupfer, ‘Traveling’. 43 See note 31 on Aristotle’s work on the sensorium, the brain center in which the five senses come together, also known as the ‘common sense’. 44 Peter of Celle: selected works, pp. 137–8. I made minor changes to Fr. Feiss’ translation. My italics are for emphasis. For the Latin, La spiritualité de Pierre de Celle, ed. Jean Leclercq (Paris, 1946), pp. 236–7. 41
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Peter of Celle illustrates how ductus turns what might be a mundane readerly event into a ‘fully sensory and emotional and well as rational experience’.45 He encourages readers to travel, sigh, drink, imbibe, walk, flee, enter, run, imitate, avoid, retain, commit, come, be saddened, observe, build, inhabit and imitate holiness as they traverse the landscapes of Genesis and Exodus. This is high order immersive engagement and highlights the power of consilium and ductus. We can only imagine what the experience would have been like for a Hereford canon reading this passage while looking at the cathedral map’s depictions of the golden Exodus route, Moses, Mount Sinai and the ‘tabule testamenti’.46 Of course, not all readers, auditors and mappa mundi users held to the straight path – they strayed, like Handlyng synne’s ‘Lewede men … Þat erre ful moche oute of Þe weye’ (1303), and like modern viewers (ocular travelers) confronting complex mappae mundi.47 In this, they were and are akin to Geoffrey of Vinsauf, in his Poetria nova (The new poetry): ‘Sometimes, as I advance along the way, I leave the middle of the road, and with a leap I fly off to the side, as it were; then I return to the point whence I had digressed’.48 To understand this, we need only recall the Psalter Map’s (Plate VI) dazzling colors, its literally attractive Majestas-with-angelic-censers, unavoidable Jerusalem bullseye, fascinating bas-de-page wyverns, Africa’s enchanting monstrous peoples and its magnetic Red Sea. How does the eye not wander over its surface? This and other maps’ vignettes, city images, geographical features and flora and fauna are as potentially diverting as the rhetorical ‘colors’ ornamenting so many prose and verse consilia.49 Medieval readers, auditors and viewers who grounded their education and theology on written and mapped historia had to be mindful of erring by the way and of the human story’s certain impermanence. Accounts of historia written and painted on durable, albeit perishable, skins stood metonymically for the perishable nature of their makers’ world. The only way for these readers/viewers to transcend the physical realm was to orient Carruthers, ‘Journeying’, p. 194. Inscription from Westrem, Hereford, pp. 120–1. 47 Robert Mannynge, Handlyng synne, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall (London, 1862), p. 294, lines 9516–17. 48 Quoted in Carruthers, ‘Journeying’, p. 192. 49 The etymology of ‘vignette’ provides a useful visual metaphor for the intertwined network of ocular paths followed across a mappa mundi’s surface. The word derives ultimately from the Latin ‘vinum’, ‘wine’, which gave Old French ‘vigne’ and its diminutives, ‘vinet’, ‘vignette’, which the OED defines as ‘a running or trailing ornament or design in imitation of the branches, leaves, or tendrils of the vine, employed in architecture or decorative work’. It also names ornaments and decorations on a manuscript page. Thus, we might imagine a map’s concilium generating a dense network of possible paths across its surface, rather like an espaliered grape vine. On ornament as ‘a supplementary domain of semiotic play that mediates between the work and the viewer’, see Marcia Kupfer, ‘At the edges of narrative: the nature of ornament in the Romanesque wall painting of central France’, Le rôle de l’ornement dans la peinture murale du Moyen Âge, ed. John Ottaway (Poitiers, 1997), pp. 177–85, here p. 177. 45
46
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their life courses and follow the vertical track inscribed on so many mappae mundi, to recognize humanity’s fall as mapped from east to west and reverse it for themselves.
MAPPING GEO-BIBLICAL HISTORY: HUGH OF ST VICTOR’S RAYONNEMENT Like Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) and Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400), Hugh of St Victor was able to detach himself from his time and place to see human events from a broader vantage point than most contemporary academicians and artists. Dante sent his alter ego to heaven and compellingly used the Pilgrim’s downward visions of earth to give his readers glimpses of what their God sees and knows, rather like the Hereford Map does with its Last Judgment scene.50 Similarly, Chaucer’s Troilus looks down from the eighth heaven and despises the vanity of his wretched world.51 Hugh was able to recognize that Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers, indeed all that is written and mapped, concerns the human narrative, historia’s seminal elements. He understood, taught and wrote extensively about the salvific importance of knowing historia, of having it in memory before moving on to higher levels of study. He also knew that mappae mundi provided an ideal opportunity for visualizing this story. Key components of Hugh’s theography, his theological cartography, appear on twelfth- and thirteenth-century English mappae mundi, most significantly, the vertical armature linking the six Ages of Man that provides viewers the ductus, the guide, to navigating the map.52 The significance of this device has led me and others to write about Hugh’s mapping ‘heritage’ and ‘influence’ on Anglo-French cartography.53 These overstatements imply the possibility of creating a genealogy connecting his ‘Ur-map’ to later maps. Given the unlikeliness of that and what I write above about carto-genealogies, I suggest that we eschew ‘heritage’ and ‘influence’ for rayonnement.54 The noun can mean ‘influence’, but it also translates as ‘radiance’. With its connotations of diffused ‘brilliant or splendid light’, ‘radiance’ is a more satisfying way to conceptualize the gradual diffusion
On the complex optics of this, see chapter ten in this Companion. See Dante’s Paradiso, cantos 22 and 27; and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, lines 1786–1827. The critical editions are Paradiso, ed. and trans. Charles S. Singleton (Princeton, 1975); and The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (New York, 1987). Each poet’s image of the earth was clearly derived from mappae mundi. 52 On the armature, see below. On Hugh’s theography, see Dan Terkla, ‘Hugh of St Victor and Anglo-French cartography’, Imago mundi, 65.2 (2013), 161–79. 53 Terkla, ‘Hugh’, pp. 161, 162 and 164. 54 Dominique Poirel differentiates between the two connotations in the title of a collection he has edited: L’école de Saint-Victor de Paris: influence et rayonnement du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne (Turnhout, 2010). 50 51
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of Hugh’s ideas across space and time.55 Appropriately enough, in a copy of his De archa Noe, Hugh is depicted with a lantern above him, indicating his brilliance, as he teaches what might be that cartographical text.56 His abbey students admired him, ‘not only for his learning and piety and the profundity of his theology, but also for his didactic commitment and outstanding ability to communicate his thinking through tables, diagrams, maps, and any mnemonic he could devise to clarify meaning … and promote learning’.57 Hugh’s theology drew on Plato (c. 424–348 BCE), as understood by Plotinus (c. 205–70), and on Augustine and Proclus (c. 410–85). He was a theocentric Platonist who, because of his intelligence and debt to the bishop of Hippo, was known as ‘alter Augustinus’ (‘the other Augustine’).58 Hugh lived at a time when ‘pictures themselves function[ed] “textually”, as a type of writing and not something different in kind’, when words could paint picturae.59 He was a visual thinker who understood the cognitive and mnemonic importance of mental, verbal and visual images and someone who exploited their complementarity. Hugh worked in a long line of exegetic mapmakers, going back to Eusebius (c. 264–340) and Jerome (c. 342–420), and built his entwined pedagogy and theography on verbal and visual sign systems so as to emphasize the salvific necessity of having historia in mind, in memory.60 As we have seen, the foundation of study and the gateway to spiritual restoration was the literal level of the human story as revealed by Scripture.61 The key elements of historia were also known as circumstantiae and constituted the core of monastic reading, the lectio divina, itself the foundation of pre-scholastic learning. After establishing this foundation, those seeking spiritual restoration could move on to higher levels of cognition – the allegorical, anagogical and tropological or moral – and the See ‘radiance’ in the OED. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 409, fol. 3v. Six other images of Hugh are known to exist. See Laura Cleaver, Education in twelfth-century art and architecture (Woodbridge, 2016), p. 117, n. 26. 57 Alessandro Scafi, Mapping paradise: a history of heaven and earth (Chicago and London, 2006), p. 125. For more biographical information, see Terkla, ‘Hugh’. 58 For Hugh’s intellectual biography, see Peter S. Dillard, Foundation and restoration in Hugh of St Victor’s De sacramentis (New York, 2014), pp. 2–5 et passim. On ‘alter Augustinus’, Terkla, ‘Hugh’, p. 162. 59 See Mary Carruthers, The book of memory: a study of memory in medieval culture (Cambridge, 1990), p. 222; and Mary Carruthers and Jessica Weiss (trans.), ‘Hugh of St Victor, “A little book about constructing Noah’s Ark”’, The medieval craft of memory: an anthology of texts and pictures, ed. Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski (Philadelphia, 2002), pp. 41–70, here p. 41. 60 On Eusebius, see Catherine Delano-Smith, ‘Maps and religion in medieval and early modern Europe’, Plantejaments i objectius d’una història de la cartografia/Approaches and challenges in a worldwide history of cartography, ed. Catherine Delano-Smith, David Woodward and Cordell D.K. Yee (Barcelona, 2001), pp. 179–91, here p. 182. 61 See Scafi, Mapping, p. 154, n. 7; and Beryl Smalley, The study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1952), pp. 83–106. 55
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attainment of sapientia (wisdom).62 Someone following Hugh’s guidance ‘would be ready to put in place everything he has heard, and apply those classification techniques … to all things that he may hear afterward by a suitable distribution according to their place, date, and person’.63 I emphasize putting circumstantiae ‘in place’, because this is what makers of mappae mundi like Hugh did. Someone following Hugh’s teaching – or the mapping tradition that he recognized, used and described – would first choose which elements of the scriptural quartet to chart and then determine where to locate them. Hugh called this ‘gathering’, which we can see as epitomizing, as finding essential examples of persons, places, times and events. Hugh arrayed the places in which significant events occurred to significant people along an axis, an armature running from east to west; that is, from the top (east) of a mappa mundi to the bottom (west), thereby following history’s progression from Asia to Europe and from ancient to medieval times.64 This enabled him to map translatio imperii et studii, the transfer of power and knowledge from east to west, during the six so-called Ages of Man, which were thought to have begun in the Earthly Paradise and to have been in spiritual decline since the Expulsion from the Garden.65 Hugh understood himself to be living in the sixth and final age and knew that ‘when the course of major events of human history reaches the end of the world as space [in the west] … it reaches the end of the world as time’.66 This eschatological conception of place and time controlled the consilium and ductus of Hugh’s mapping and of many twelfth- to fourteenth-century mappae mundi.
HUGH’S THEOGRAPHICAL WORKS Hugh was responsible for a number of cartographical works, along with scores of others on theology and exegesis and manuals for novices on reading and deportment.67 His writings were widely copied and transmitted 62 On these levels and the reading process, see Mary Carruthers, ‘Hugh of St Victor, the three best memory aids for learning history’, Carruthers and Ziolkowski, Medieval craft, pp. 32–40, here pp. 38–40. 63 Carruthers, ‘Hugh’, p. 39. 64 Scafi, Mapping, p. 127. 65 For a discussion of the Ages as depicted on the Duchy of Cornwall Map fragment, see chapter nine in this Companion. 66 Scafi, Mapping, p. 127. 67 Hugh’s works are catalogued by Rudolf Goy in Die Uberlieferung der Werke Hugos von St Viktor: ein Beitrag zur Kommunikationsgeschichte des Mittelalters (Stuttgart, 1976). For Abbot Gilduin (d. 1155) of St Victor’s list of Hugh’s works and modern editions of the Chronicon and De archa Noe, see Hugonis de Sancto Victore operum editio auspiciis Gilduini abbatis procurata et IV voluminibus digessa, ed. Rainer Berndt and José Luis Narvaja (Münster, 2017). For others, see Hugo de Sancto Victore: De archa Noe, Libellus de formatione arche, ed. Patrice Sicard, 2 vols (Turnhout, 2001); William M. Green, ‘Hugh of St Victor: De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum [Chronicon]’, Speculum 18 (1943), 484–93;
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and survive in over 2,500 copies. There was considerable correspondence between St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire and St Victor, probably initiated by Abbot Simon (d. 1183) and Prior Warin (d. 1195).68 Simon sent a list of Hugh’s books at St Albans to Prior Richard of St Victor (d. 1173), asking him to fill gaps in the collection, and Warin wrote to Richard, requesting copies of his writings. St Victor interacted with Hereford Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Durham Cathedral Priory, which, like St Albans, distributed copies of Hugh’s work, and there were Victorines in England, some of whom were Hugh’s students.69 Considering what he told his students, it is difficult to separate Hugh’s interests: ‘omnia disce, videbis postea nihil esse superfluum’ (‘Learn everything. Afterwards, you shall see that nothing is superfluous.’).70 Nonetheless, this is not the place for a full introduction to his writings and thought. Therefore, the following table includes only titles immediately germane to this Companion, along with alternative titles and dates of composition:71 Current Title
Common Alternative Titles
Dates
De archa Noe
De archa sapientia De archa Noe morali
c. 1126–7
Libellus de formatione archae
De reformatione archae De archa Noe mystica
c. 1128–9
Descriptio mappe mundi
Descriptio
c. 1128
Chronicon
De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum id est personis locis temporibus
c. 1130
Hugh lectured on his Ark concept at St Victor during the mid 1120s. The De archa Noe is his description of the intensely complex, ark-shaped image, which has at its center a mappa mundi, and we can assume that he lectured in front of a realized version.72 The treatise has four parts: in the first, Roger Baron, ‘Hugues de Saint-Victor lexicographe: trois textes inédits’, Cultura neolatina 16 (1956), 109–45. 68 Simon’s letter with St Albans’ books is in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Laud Misc. 370 (c. 1140) and Laud Misc. 490 (late twelfth century). The latter was copied from the former, which was made at St Albans and contains the De archa Noe and Libellus. 69 See Terkla, ‘Hugh’, 169–71; and Bernard Meehan, ‘Durham twelfth-century manuscripts in Cistercian houses’, Anglo-Norman Durham, ed. David Rollason, Margaret Harvey and Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 439–44. 70 Hugh of St Victor, Hugonis de Sancto Victore didascalicon de studio legendi, ed. Charles Henry Buttimer (Washington, DC, 1939) p. 115; my translation. 71 For more information on these and other works, see Terkla, ‘Hugh’, 161–8. 72 Not everyone agrees on this; for example, Carruthers, Memory, pp. 231–3 and ‘Hugh’, pp. 41–2; and Michael Evans, ‘Fictive painting in twelfth-century Paris’, Sight and insight: essays on art and culture in honour of E.H. Gombrich at 85, ed. John Onians (London, 1994),
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Hugh describes drawing the multidimensional image; in the second, he explicates the image; in the third he digresses to lay out the tree of wisdom’s growth stages; in the fourth, he uses the image to explain to his students how they might build the ark of wisdom in their hearts. In the Libellus, Hugh speaks as if he were drawing the Ark for and before his students. In some manuscripts, the Libellus follows the De archa Noe. His Descriptio mappe mundi is a verbal map, very much like the Chronicon’s sixth section, although it is more replete and includes commentary. The Chronicon is an illustrated book of lists for students to memorize, including a list of geographical names that is only slightly more than a list of toponyms.73 In the prologue, Hugh the narrator addresses a young male student (‘fili’, ‘child’) and explains how to use the master’s mnemonic system to obtain and store the treasures of wisdom. This section provides invaluable insights into Hugh’s visual pedagogy, relationships with his students, his conception of historia and the historical, allegorical and tropological levels of scriptural exposition. The geographical section begins with ‘iste sunt tres partes mundi[:] Asia, Europa, Affrica’ (‘these are the three parts of the world[:] Asia, Europe, Africa’) and lists some 350 places.74 The items in the Chronicon are arrayed in tables drawn to resemble rounded ecclesiastical archways to aid memorizing. Such list maps provide the raw material for fashioning a mappa mundi: the map designer positions the data, likely beginning with the ‘tres partes mundi’ that we see on schematic T-O maps of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies and then puts in place(s) around the ‘T’ the hundreds of data points, to take the Chronicon as an example. The result of this complex situationing is the mapmaker’s consilium, the world map that will generate idiosyncratic ductus(-i), or path(s) for each viewer. The first books of Hugh’s De archa Noe and the Libellus show how to draw the complex ark image, with its central mappa mundi giving circumstantiae primacy of place. In the Libellus’ thirteenth chapter, Hugh writes about the southern gate through which the liberated Israelites will pass. To ensure his charges understand, he says, ‘It will be clear how this is appropriate even according to the locations of these places from the drawing of the map of the world’, thereby conjuring up for them such an image and pointing forward to the one he draws: ‘when the Ark is complete, I draw an oval around it, which touches it at its corners, and the space enclosed by the circle is the orb of the earth. In this space, I draw the map of the world in such a way that the bow of the Ark is turned toward the east and the stern of the Ark is pp. 73–87, here p. 74 et passim. Others have tried to produce the image: Danielle Lecoq, ‘La “mappemonde” du De arca Noe mystica de Hugues de Saint-Victor (1128-1129)’, Pelletier, Géographie, pp. 9–31; Conrad Rudolph, ‘First I find the center point’: reading the text of Hugh of St Victor’s The mystic ark (Philadelphia, 2004); and Sicard, ed., Hugo de Sancto Victore, vol. 2, where the ark appears on eleven separate sheets. 73 These are on fols 16r–17v; Green, ‘De tribus’, p. 484. 74 Berndt and Narvaja, Hugonis, pp. 92–104, here p. 92.
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turned to the west’.75 At the top/east of the ark is the Earthly Paradise and at the bottom/west is either ‘the inferno, where the damned along with the rebellious spirits are driven downward’ or ‘the resurrection and final judgment of all’.76 The ark’s keel, therefore, stands in for the vertical axis of the ‘T’, and the fact that its bow points toward paradise indicates that the entire complex image is calibrated and oriented so as to reverse the decline and descent of humanity over the six Ages of Man. Were one able to keep Hugh’s multidimensional, metaphysical masterpiece in mind, in memory, and access its seemingly countless components, one could have nothing less than a key to heaven. At the very least, a mapping viewer would have an exemplary cartographic consilium, complete with verbalized, articulated pathways (ducti) on which to model his own, less complex mappa mundi.
CHAPTER EPITOMES The medieval mappae mundi examined in this Companion and their analogs were built on the system of consilium and ductus outlined above, and they served a variety of functions in myriad settings. They also have a material history dating back perhaps to c. 500 BCE and the Babylonian map of the world from Sippar, in southern Iraq, which contains the essence of many of the graphic features of medieval mappae mundi.77 In chapter one, ‘Making manuscripts and mappae mundi’, Michelle P. Brown sets these maps in their broad chronological and socio-historical contexts and situates their making in the culture of manuscript production. She discusses the maps’ formal, stylistic, art-historical and paleographical features and sets their materiality on the trajectory of the genre’s development. To do so, Brown firmly locates world maps in the complex histories of ‘book’ production and publishing, art and cartography. She demonstrates how the methods and materials of production, shifts in the milieu of map conception, manufacture, generation and reception are largely, if not exclusively, those of the medieval book – even if they sometimes strayed into other media. Chapters two and three by Dan Terkla set the scene for the English production of mappae mundi by narrowing Michelle P. Brown’s purview to focus on pre- and post-Conquest monastic houses that owned mappae mundi and had significant book collections. In chapter two, ‘Books and maps: Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury and geospatial awareness’, Terkla turns to the first major monastic revival house in England to suggest ways in which its particular books and map might have been used together to develop a visual understanding of geographical location. The earliest catalog of Glastonbury books lists a mappa mundi that shows tentative connections 75 76 77
Weiss, ‘Little book’, p. 67. Weiss, ‘Little book’, p. 67. See chapter one in this Companion for a discussion of this map.
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to the Anglo-Saxon Map and, therefore, to the contents of what is now the British Library’s Cotton Tiberius B V codex, a number of which appear in the Glastonbury catalog. Glastonbury’s books and inventoried, but missing, map likely index the first case of cartographically expressed, English geospatial awareness and so establish a point of reference for later, more advanced forms of such awareness. In chapter three, ‘Books and maps: Anglo-Norman Durham and geospatial awareness’, Terkla follows a similar path. He demonstrates how library holdings and clerical education in religious houses across AngloNorman England flourished in the twelfth century, leading to an expansion and deepening of the incipient clerical geospatial awareness and curiosity in the human story he outlines in chapter two. The third chapter looks to postConquest Durham and its environs to assess the growth and differences in this awareness and curiosity. Terkla locates their expressions in Durham Cathedral Priory’s book catalogs and in the reading interests of three men who were there in the third quarter of the twelfth century: Lawrence of Westminster, Hugh de Puiset and Roger of Howden. These men lived and worked during the second monastic revival and so during England’s cartographical florescence, which proceeded apace and symbiotically with an unprecedented expansion in book production and collection. Their interwoven stories and the relationship of northern mapping and books indicate that geospatial engagement was not unique for men of their rank and time and points to twelfth-century Durham as an important node in a nascent cartographical network. Chapter four, by Nathalie Bouloux, ‘The Munich Map (c. 1130): description, meanings and uses’, is the first of seven in this Companion that concentrate on individual twelfth- and thirteenth-century maps. The Munich Map is in an early twelfth-century manuscript containing works by Isidore of Seville and appears at the opening of his cartographically influential Etymologies. Bouloux argues that the map is an epitome of the great mural mappa mundi at the Parisian Abbey of St Victor and that it is, in fact, the map that Hugh of St Victor, theologian, teacher and mnemonicist, describes in his De mappa mundi. Before detailing the Munich Map’s nature and uses, Bouloux lays out its main characteristics and its relation to De mappa mundi. She asserts that, although the map was conceived in a canonical context, it is first and foremost a representation of real space, where humanity lives and is active. Pointing out that strictly religious elements, like paradise or Jerusalem as the center of the world, are absent opens the way for her to show how the map illustrates Hugh’s belief that objective knowledge of the inhabited world has real value. Such knowledge, Hugh argued and taught, is the indispensable foundation upon which to build an understanding of historia and, eventually, for moving from the visible to the invisible realm. Therefore, the Munich Map’s
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objective representation of the ecumene, the habitable parts of the earth, did not prevent it from being used for spiritual contemplation.78 In chapter five, Alfred Hiatt discusses the history, contexts and content of the Sawley Map. After a review of evidence that suggests the map’s relationship to a so-called ‘mappa mundi’ left to Durham Cathedral Priory by the bishop of Durham, Hugh de Puiset, Hiatt sets the map in its manuscript context. He then explores the Sawley Map’s connections to a schematic world map and Honorius Augustodunensis’ Imago mundi, a series of extracts of classical and late antique provenance. By analyzing the Sawley’s contents in detail, Hiatt reveals its synthesis of these materials, which it presents from an emphatically Christian standpoint, with references to Old Testament history, the spread of monasticism and the Apocalypse. Chapter five’s final section considers the Sawley Map’s relationship to the corpus of surviving medieval mappae mundi. The Sawley Map’s connection to the Hereford Map is important and well established, but its similarities to and differences from earlier maps, particularly the Anglo-Saxon Map and the Vatican ‘Easter Tables Map’, are also highly suggestive and allow us to glimpse aspects of the transmission and development of medieval mappae mundi. Hiatt closes with an appendix containing a full transcription of the Sawley Map’s 223 inscriptions and indicates their consonances with those on the Hereford Map. In chapter six, Asa Simon Mittman shows why the Vercelli Map’s very poor state of preservation has prevented it from receiving the attention that the other maps in this Companion have received. Mittman’s ‘The Vercelli Map (c. 1217)’ unveils new information about the map and new observations made possible by images from the Lazarus Project’s multispectral imaging initiative. The Project’s work has produced new visual information that makes the map newly available for examination. Mittman assesses the state of the map and the scholarship on it and provides a fresh, Lazarus-enabled description of it. He sets the map in conversation with other major works of medieval cartography and performs a close visual analysis of the map and its layout. This new look at the map reveals important differences in its presentation of Europe, Asia and Africa. Mittman argues for Cardinal Guala Bicchieri as the map’s patron and Guala’s Augustinian abbey of St Andrea as the place where it was used. He concludes by offering suggestions for further work on the map, based on his findings. Daniel K. Connolly’s ‘In the company of Matthew Paris: mapping the world at St Albans Abbey’, this Companion’s seventh chapter, asserts that Matthew Paris’ mappa mundi looks almost nothing like typical ‘T-O’ maps up to the thirteenth century. He argues that the map’s unusual nature suits its role in Paris’ Chronica majora and that it follows his idiosyncratically designed itinerary maps, which led cloistered monastic viewers from London across Europe and on to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. He notes 78
For more on the ecumene, see the preface to this Companion.
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that for a monk who had taken a vow of stabilitas this mappa mundi was an apt summary of the earlier itinerary maps and thus a devotional aid to such imagined pilgrimages. Connolly offers map designers’ idiosyncrasies as the answer to the question of why the other two maps produced in the same century at St Albans look unlike each other and unlike Paris’ map. He argues that the disparities in the goals and designs of these maps suggest that each artist sought to shape the world’s spaces in new, unprecedented ways, while searching for solutions to his own needs and those brought about by particular circumstances. In chapter eight, Chet Van Duzer discusses the Psalter Map and its companion list map, which appears on its verso in British Library Additional MS 28681. Following an examination of the maps’ manuscript context and relationship to each other, Van Duzer notes and explicates the Psalter Map’s strong visual emphasis on the centrality of Jerusalem. After analyzing its gallery of monstrous peoples at the southern edge of Africa, he critiques the popular theory that the Psalter Map was based on Henry III’s mural mappa mundi in his Painted Chamber at Westminster. Van Duzer turns to Matthew Paris’ description of the Westminster map to argue that it was made on a Macrobian model, and thus very different from the Psalter Map. His findings show that the Psalter Map’s visual emphasis on France and Paris indicates that its model was French. Dan Terkla’s ‘The Duchy of Cornwall Map Fragment (c. 1286)’, this Companion’s ninth chapter, constitutes the first deep study of this significant artifact and full transcription and translation of its inscriptions. Terkla juxtaposes the fragment to its nearest surviving analog, the Hereford Map, to reveal similarities in dimension, design and theology. Doing so highlights differences, which generate new insights into the fragment’s original appearance, placement, audience and use. Terkla shows why its patron must have been Edmund of Cornwall, who would have known that maps like the two commissioned by his uncle Henry III for Westminster and Winchester indexed earlier empires and so tied their owners to imperial displays of authority and spectacle. Terkla argues that the map would have been of great practical and meditative value at Edmund’s College of Bonhommes in Ashridge and a complex display item in his Painted Chamber at nearby Berkhamsted Castle. There it would have been a striking backdrop to the seat of Edmund of Almain, son of Richard, King of the Romans, and second earl of Cornwall. As Marcia Kupfer writes in chapter ten, ‘The Hereford Map (c. 1300)’, scholars have long known that the earliest antiquarian sightings of the map document its installation in a carved wooden case with painted shutters. Yet, she notes, scholars have never come to terms with the purposes of the map’s triptych housing in which the world image appeared between nearlife-size figures enacting the Annunciation. Nor has the puzzling left/right transposition of the legends for the two western landmasses (Europe and Africa) ever been properly explained. In this chapter Kupfer resolves both
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enigmas by showing how the images work in concert to set in motion the system of moralized optics governing the whole’s design. By focusing on the artwork as skin stretched and nailed to wood with the image of Christ crucified at its center, she shows how it identified the fabric of creation with the Word incarnate. Therefore, the map’s Marian case actualizes the Virgin’s role in God’s plan for human redemption. Helen Davies and Gregory Heyworth’s chapter eleven, ‘Digital mapping, spectral imaging and medieval mappae mundi’, examines the myriad ways in which digital technologies assist different types of projects related to medieval maps. They open with a critical examination of current digital approaches to mapping medieval cartographical information like Pelagios, Digital MappaeMundi, the Digital atlas of medieval and Roman civilization and the Digital Hereford Map. Davies and Heyworth then work through multispectral imaging’s digital recovery techniques that enable viewers and scholars to interact in newly significant ways with medieval objects. They conclude with a discussion of significant new directions and lines of inquiry opened up by hyperspectral imaging and by the application of the digital humanities’ deep mapping paradigm. Nick Millea’s annotated bibliography concludes this Companion. Millea drew these resources from the past thirty years or so of key publications, beginning with the all-encompassing ‘History of Cartography’ project, begun in 1987. Millea presents the reader with an international, multilingual collection of references ranging from more general to more narrowly focused works that look at specific aspects of individual maps, or introduce scientific advances that enable new research methodologies for the study of medieval mappae mundi. As these epitomes indicate, A critical companion to English mappae mundi of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries neither replaces nor updates J. Brian Harley and David Woodward’s first volume in the History of cartography series. This collection’s contributors, however, do provide new contexts for and examinations of this most significant genre of medieval maps. To do so, they have looked back to and beyond Harley and Woodward, joining and widening a scholarly conversation that has expanded impressively over the past three decades and now regularly employs new technologies to produce startling results. This Companion exemplifies, supports and will encourage such scholarship and thus facilitate still broader explorations – the crossing of borders yet unseen and territories only imagined.
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MAKING MANUSCRIPTS AND MAPPAE MUNDI MICHELLE P. BROWN
T
he History of the Book is a relatively new academic area of study. It extends beyond the parameters of the folded codex form of book to embrace the means by which text and image were transmitted and served to transmit thought across time and space. Its media vary from prehistoric rock art to cyberspace. Within this wide-ranging discipline medieval world maps occupy a particularly interesting and pertinent place, for they demonstrate the ability of what is known as ‘graphicacy’ to convey whole tracts of textually based knowledge, that is, by means of graphic devices which unlock and summarily represent that body of thought.1 Yet this genre can be firmly situated within the history of ‘book’ production and publishing history, as well as within the histories of art and cartography. The methods and materials of production, the changes in the socio-historical context of conception and manufacture and questions of generation and reception are in large part, if not exclusively, those of the medieval book. Whilst discussing these aspects of the materiality of medieval mappae mundi, I should like to briefly review the trajectory of their development and transmission, in order better to discern similarities and differences in form and function.
BEYOND THE BITTER RIVER: THE DEVELOPMENT OF EARLY MAPPAE MUNDI AS A GRAPHIC DISTILLATION OF THE WORLD VIEW, AND THE CONTEXTS OF THEIR PRODUCTION The ancient Babylonians are credited with the origins of written records, in the form of language expressed in cuneiform, a system of mutually understandable graphic marks made with reeds pressed into clay tablets. 1 On graphicacy, I. Garipzanov, ‘The rise of graphicacy in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages’, Viator 46.2 (2015), 1–21; also M.P. Brown, I. Garipzanov and B.C. Tilghman, eds, Graphic devices and the early decorated book (Woodbridge, 2017).
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1.1 BABYLONIAN MAP OF THE WORLD FROM SIPPAR, SOUTHERN IRAQ. LONDON, BRITISH MUSEUM, MIDDLE EAST DEPT., BM NO. 92687. AUTHOR’S PHOTOGRAPH.
They also seem to have begun the process of conceptualizing the world and their place in it in two-dimensional cuneiform drawings. Such tablets were used initially for pragmatic literacy – accounts, labels for transportation and the like – but came to be used to record literary texts such as the Gilgamesh epic. The Babylonians also used them to record other forms of knowledge, sometimes illustrated with proto-diagrams. The moment of transition from three-dimensional to graphic, two-dimensional, diagrammatic form is captured in a text concerning divination that incorporates a
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three-dimensional clay model of a sheep’s liver, made during the Old Babylonian period, about 1900–1600 BCE.2 The Babylonian view of the world, like that of the stars, assumed circular form, with their own geographical area bounded by the ring of the ocean or ‘Bitter River’, beyond which lay the other regions of the world, and ‘the other’, conveyed by a shorthand series of triangles representing peoples/ cultures. Towns and outstanding topographical features were marked by symbolic drawings. This world view occurs on the Babylonian map of the world (c. 500 BCE), from Sippar, southern Iraq (Figure 1.1).3 It contains, in essence, many of the graphic features of the medieval mappae mundi, which came to form a concise visual encyclopedia of tradition and innovation, the geographic and theocratic, the conceptual and the experiential. The heavens were similarly depicted on the Neo-Assyrian, cuneiform, clay star map (planisphere or astrolabe) from the Library of Ashurbanipal, which represents the night sky of 3–4 January 650 BCE over Nineveh.4 This earliest planisphere form was perpetuated in Graeco-Roman thought and would subsequently help to shape the Carolingian celestial maps, such as Cicero’s Aratea, a good example of which is the solar system map made in the diocese of Reims in the early ninth century.5 A Carolingian celestial map of the northern sky, using elegantly drawn monochrome Aratean figures, also occurs in a fifteenth-century copy of a ninth-century prototype.6 That such maps might also occur in other media is indicated by the bequest in Charlemagne’s will of three silver tables, one engraved with an image of Rome, another of Constantinople and the third and most elaborate (bequeathed to his heir, Louis) adorned with what his biographer, Einhard, describes as ‘a plan of the whole universe, drawn with skill and delicacy’.7 Graeco-Roman mapmakers retained an interest in schematic representation and the synthesis of naturalistic and symbolic representation, but combined this with a pragmatic concern with territorial mapping, itineraries and cartographic recording of exploratory ventures. Late Antique, early Christian and medieval map-making was concerned primarily, however, with constructing a world view, in which philosophy and faith played as great a role in shaping as did scientific knowledge. 2 British Museum, Middle East Department, BM no. 92668: http://www.britishmuseum. org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=361996&partId=1 [Accessed 7 December 2017]. 3 British Museum, Middle East Department, BM no. 92687: http://www.britishmuseum. org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery. aspx?partid=1&assetid=404485001&objectid=362000 [Accessed 7 December 2017]. 4 British Museum, Middle East Department, BM no. K.8538: http://www.britishmuseum. org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery. aspx?partid=1&assetid=153496001&objectid=303316 [Accessed 7 December 2017]. 5 British Library (BL), Harley MS 647, fol. 19r. 6 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vaticanus Graecus 1087, fol. 310v. 7 D.A. Michelson, ‘Charlemagne’s furniture’, Christian history 108 (2014), see https:// www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/charlemagnes-furniture/ [Accessed 7 December 2017].
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The main features of Greek and Roman geography were constructed by figures such as Anaximander (d. c. 547 BCE), Hecataeus of Miletus (fifth century BCE), Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276–194 BCE), Posidonius (c. 135–51 BCE), Pomponius Mela (first century), Pliny the Elder (c. 24–79), Ptolemy (second century), Marinus of Tyre (c. 70–130), Solinus (fl. c. 200), Macrobius (fl. c. 400) and Martianus Capella (late fifth century). These features were preserved by the endorsement of early Christian fathers such as St Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and Basil (c. 329–79), who endorsed the use of classical learning. This included theoretical ideas, such as the conception of the spherical earth, the division of the earth into climatic zones, and the existence of three continents. Christian Europe also inherited descriptions of the regions based on old Roman provinces, along with ethnographic tales about the so-called barbarians and monsters who lived at the edges of the earth. These were added to by Christian authors such as the possibly Alexandrian author of the fourth-century Physiologus, Paulus Orosius (early fifth century), Cassiodorus (c. 490–585), Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) and Bede (c. 673–735), working in milieux where textuallybased imagery also flourished. Anaximander is credited with having created one of the first world maps, which was circular in form and showed the known lands of the world grouped around a central Aegean Sea surrounded by the ocean, like its Babylonian precursor. This enduring spatial conceptualization was challenged by Cosmas Indicopleustes (mid sixth century), who wrote the illustrated Topographia Christiana (Christian topography), partly based on his experiences as a merchant on the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. This includes a description of India and Sri Lanka, which he seems to have visited, along with Ethiopia. Cosmas asserted that the world is flat, and that the heavens form the shape of a box with a curved lid (like biblical descriptions of the Ark of the Covenant). He aimed to prove that preChristian geographers had been wrong in claiming the earth was spherical and instead that it was modelled on the tabernacle. This schematic theological emphasis may have influenced the visual matrix of some medieval mappae mundi (such as Hugh of St Victor’s twelfth-century map), but only conceptually, for early medieval Christian scholars such as Bede were well informed concerning the world’s spherical nature and its position in the firmament. The spherical orb crowned with a cross, the globus cruciger, was accordingly used as a symbol of authority and can be seen, for example, on a Roman Antoninianus coin showing Carinus (third century) holding pilum (javelin) and globus cruciger, and on a solidus of the Byzantine Emperor Leontius (d. 705), who holds it as part of his imperial insignia.8 8 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RV_Antoniniano_Carinus.JPG; and https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solidus-Leontinus-sb1330.jpg [Accessed 7 December 2017].
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Two-dimensional depictions of the globe were often divided into climate zones, following Macrobius’ Commentarii in somnium Scipionis (Commentary on a dream of Scipio). Copies of Sallust (86–35 BCE) manuscripts can include a simple T-O map – a circle divided into three zones by a linear T shape, indicating Asia, Africa and Europe, divided by bodies of water forming the T, usually with east at the top – which relates to the first-century Bellum Jugurthinum, Sallust’s narrative of the Jugurthine War in Africa.9 These were probably the forebears of the first stylized Orosian or Isidorian T-O maps of the post-Roman period, with their simple division of the globe into the three parts. They condensed the knowledge gleaned by figures such as Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE), the historian Sallust and geographers such as Ptolemy, into a graphic Christian figura of the three known landmasses, said to have been given to the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham and Japheth – hence ‘Noachian’ maps. An artistic rendering of what was initially a simple linear diagram is to be found in a naturalistically painted, figurative T-O map from Jean Mansel’s La fleur des histoires (c. 1460–70) showing the lands settled by Noah’s sons.10 Medieval T-O maps achieved a more developed form in Isidore’s Etymologiae (Etymologies). This conceptual cartography represents the ecumene, the habitable portion of the world known in Roman and medieval times. The vertical arm of the T represents the Mediterranean Sea, and the left side of its crossbar the River Tanais or Don, the right the Nile dividing Asia, Europe and Africa. The O is the ocean. Jerusalem is in some cases the central umbilicus. T-O maps are generally oriented to the east (oriens), because the sun rose there and because that was roughly the direction of the Holy Land from western Europe. Often Paradise (Eden) was depicted at the top, in Asia. A good example of this is the T-O map made at Thorney Abbey in 1110.11 The exegetical and conceptual influence of Sallust, Macrobius, Isidore, Bede and probably that of the Anglo-Saxon scientific author, Byrhtferth of Ramsey (c. 970–1020), are evident here, in a map which topographically situates images such as the Cross. This graphic mapping on of iconic features, as well as places and peoples/fauna, is incorporated into the visual strategies of central medieval mappae mundi such as the Hereford (Plate VIII) and Aslake maps. At the risk of over-emphasizing such material, it is worthwhile dealing with the Anglo-Saxon, Norman and
9 Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86–34 BCE) was a Roman senator, historian and governor of Numidia, northwest Africa. On Sallust and T-O maps in general, http://cartographicimages.net/Cartographic_Images/205_Isidore_of_Seville_T-O.html [Accessed 7 December 2017]. One of the earliest extant, ninth-century copies of a Sallust map is University of Leipzig, MS 1607, fol. 1r. 10 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, MS 9231, fol. 281v: http://classes.bnf.fr/idrisi/ grand/7_06.htm [Accessed 7 December 2017]. 11 Oxford, St John’s College, MS 17, fol. 6r: http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/ms-17/ [Accessed 7 December 2017].
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Angevin manuscript map tradition at this point, as it is the seedbed for much of what follows from the late twelfth century.
ANGLO-SAXON, NORMAN AND ANGEVIN MAPS In form, content and function, the Thorney Abbey Map represents a Romanesque development in medieval cartography. Patrick Gautier Dalché argues that this period, the twelfth century, witnessed a transformation of mappae mundi from visual glosses appended to parent texts into autonomous graphic documents, some of which generated their own explanatory materials.12 For example, there are the numerous place names layered onto the Thorney Map’s T-O form, and its placing of Jerusalem and the Cross at the centre point, perhaps for the first time, reflecting interest in the recent First Crusade.13 That the diagrammatic concept might also have an impact on a text is demonstrated by Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica (731), which opens with a geographical description of Britain, a verbal T-O map. When diagrams were added to earlier works during the scholastic period, Bede’s De natura rerum (On the nature of things) was supplied with a Y-O version of a Noachian map.14 Late Anglo-Saxon art also evinces responses to or intersections with this cartographical tradition. The Tiberius Psalter, made at Winchester around 1050, contains as part of its prefatory matter a diagrammatic representation of the Creation in colored outline drawing.15 Here, the head of the Creator appears over the circle of the world, which recalls later T-O maps like the Psalter Map’s recto and verso (Plate VI, Figure 8.1) and the Ebstorf Map. Two trumpets (the breath of God and heralds of the Second Coming) issue from his mouth. He holds a pair of dividers and scales, and the Holy Dove emerges from the waters below. This iconography prefigures that of God as Geometer, stooping to create the world with dividers in hand, in the opulent, didactic royal Bibles moralisées from thirteenth-century Paris. A Macrobian T map also occurs in the prefatory matter of the AngloSaxon Scientific Miscellany, alongside material relating to astronomy, astrology, the computus and calendar and travel literature.16 The account 12 Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Maps in words: the descriptive logic of medieval geography, from the eighth to the twelfth century’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 223–42. 13 A.-D. von den Brincken, ‘Mundus figura rotunda’, Ornamenta ecclesiae: Kunst und Künstler der Romanik, vol. 1, ed. Anton Legner (Köln, 1985), pp. 99–106, here pp. 103–5. 14 See http://cartographic-images.net/Cartographic_Images/205_Isidore_of_Seville_T-O. html [Accessed 7 December 2017]. 15 BL, Cotton MS Tiberius C VI, fol. 7v. On the role of drawings in medieval art, including maps, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_tiberius_c_vi_fs001r [Accessed 7 December 2017]. 16 BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B V, part I. For a full digital facsimile, http://www.bl.uk/ manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_tiberius_b_v!1_f002r [Accessed 7 December
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of Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury’s pilgrimage to Rome and his itinerary appear, as does the ‘Marvels of the East’. Most importantly here, the book contains what might be the first medieval mappa mundi, on which Sigeric’s itinerary appears.17 The Anglo-Saxon or Cotton World Map (Plate I) conflates the wisdom of the ancients and patristics with Anglo-Scandinavian navigational experience of the world. The spherical form of the T-O map is here re-imagined into a flattened two-dimensional format in which the world is rectangular and so has four corners, to which the apostolic mission was to extend. It is essentially a sacred schematic image, a figura, despite its depiction of certain topographical features like the islands of the North Sea, known to the Anglo-Scandinavian and Hiberno-Scandinavian navigators in whose midst the map was made. It has been suggested that the Miscellany – damaged in the London Ashburnham House fire in 1731, making its original codicology difficult to reconstruct – was compiled by its bibliophile owner, Sir Robert Cotton, around 1600. However, palaeographical and artistic similarities and the thematic relationship of various textual components lead me, and others, to consider it to have been made in a single campaign, as a book, in Canterbury during the 1020s–1030s. It would thus fit into what I have characterized as an anthologizing trend in Anglo-Saxon monastic libraries, an attempt to collect and preserve knowledge and cultural identity which was probably stimulated by renewed Viking raids during the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.18 They were successful, and in 1016 the Danish king Cnut came to the English throne, thereby incorporating England into an extensive northern Scandinavian trading empire. Therefore, I favour an origin in the 1020s–1030s at Canterbury Cathedral, because its content fits best into an accommodation of the legacy of Antiquity and the practical navigational experience of Cnut’s empire. This also makes best sense of the degree of detail in the depiction of the Atlantic and North Sea area. This dating accords with the artwork and script of the map and the volume itself. The book’s upright Anglo-Caroline script and its similar Anglo-Saxon minuscule (occurring in places side-by-side in bilingual translations), with straight, attenuated ascenders/descenders and small bows fits best palaeographically with this time and place, as does Canterbury’s experience with charters, commencing with the will of Atheling Athelstan (c. 1014) and extending over the next two decades.19
2017]. For more on this codex, see chapter two in this Companion. 17 BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B V, part I, fol. 56v. On the map, see chapter two in this Companion. 18 M.P. Brown, ‘The Jellinge Stone: from prehistoric monument to petrified “book”’, Aspects of knowledge: preserving and reinventing traditions of learning in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Cesario and H. Magennis (Manchester, 2018), pp. 235–51. 19 For Atheling Athelstan’s will, see Anglo-Saxons.net: http://www.anglo-saxons.net/ hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+1503 [Accessed 13 November 2018].
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The edge of geographic knowledge, Mary Campbell reminds us, can be a location charged with ‘moral significance’ and even ‘divine dangerousness’.20 Living on the edge, as it were, Anglo-Saxons – or rather, at this period, the Anglo-Scandinavians – felt the dangers at their borders keenly throughout their history. They were also acutely aware of the possibilities of expansion and economic and cultural interaction, and of the desire to unify Christendom and extend its parameters by conversion. The Anglo-Saxon (or Anglo-Scandinavian) Map’s detailed depiction of the archipelago of Britain, Ireland, the northern isles and Iceland reflects its interests: this was an outward-looking, mercantile and missionary society with navigational experience and an interest in the conversion of Scandinavia, which at this time was assuming a more official complexion. The presence next to the map of Priscian’s fifth-to-sixth-century Latin translation of Dionysius’ Periegesis, a second-century BCE geographical description of the ecumene, integrates it into the ancient world view.21 The map is fully painted, like the other images in the volume, but uses a limited range of pigments (red lead, verdigris and text ink with blank vellum), appropriate to its visual structure and the need to convey captioned information. It thus performs a pivotal role in a volume intended by its monastic compilers to represent the existing body of knowledge concerning time and space, as part of the revelation of divine purpose and will, and to mark the contribution of contemporary English society to that knowledge. At the time the Miscellany was being made in Canterbury, the Christ Church scriptorium was learning important lessons about text and image integration. This drive was fuelled by its major project of creating a modified copy of the much-prized Carolingian Utrecht Psalter, made near Reims in the 830s, which had been obtained by the archbishop of Canterbury.22 This was probably Æthelnoth (r. 1020–38) who had been Cnut’s chaplain and who travelled to Rome himself in 1022. Around this time, one of the scriptorium’s leading artist-scribes, the flamboyant Eadui Basan (‘the fat’) was used by Cnut and Emma to pen the most prestigious of their charters, and to make deluxe manuscripts, some as gifts to curry favour following Cnut’s seizure of the throne. The Anglo-Saxon Map was therefore created in a scriptorium that was one of the oldest and most prolific in Britain, that was one of the most adroit and avant garde in its treatment of visual material and that had vibrant relations with Scandinavia and Rome. There is another mediator between maps in Antiquity and mappae mundi proper from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the quadripartite world map of Beatus of Liébana, which accompanied his Commentaria in Apocalypsin (Commentary on the Apocalypse, 776). The Saint-Sever Beatus, 20 Mary B. Campbell, The witness and the other world: exotic European travel writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca and London, 1988), p. 53. 21 On the map and Periegesis, see chapter two in this Companion. 22 Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32; for a digitized version, http://www.utrechtpsalter.nl/ [Accessed 7 December 2017].
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featuring the Commentary, was produced c. 1050 at the abbey of Saint-Sever in Aquitaine, France, and only copies survive. Made only a few decades after the Anglo-Saxon Map, it contains one of the oldest Christian mappae mundi as an illustration of the Commentary. Iberia was, of course, an area of vibrant interaction between Christian, Jewish and Moorish communities during a large part of the Middle Ages, when much of Spain and Portugal were under Muslim rule, but a measure of toleration was accorded to other faiths – and it should be remembered that Islamic scholars were producing similar maps during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Their preservation of such knowledge, along with the teachings of Aristotle, would provide a vital impetus to scholastic education in the west during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. During the twelfth century, many earlier works were supplemented with diagrams or illustrative cycles, such as Bede’s De temporibus (On time) and De natura rerum (On the nature of things). Diagrams and plans were created earlier, however.23 Adamnan (c. 627–704), abbot of Iona, related the tale of the Frankish Bishop Arculf who spent Christmas on Iona relating his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and drawing plans of the holy sites on wax tablets. The use of such tablets – shallow wooden trays with wax recessed into them, for reuse, upon which one wrote or drew with a metal or bone point known as a stylus – as a drafting and design mechanism should not be underestimated and may have some bearing on the design and transmission of ground-plans and diagrams, but also of maps, to which they are related as graphic conceptualizations.24 Most such tablets have been lost, as organic, informal materials of this sort do not survive well in Europe, but they were used from Antiquity until around 1900 for purposes of informal or pragmatic literacy. The level of detail in depicting the North Sea and Atlantic seaboard on the Anglo-Saxon Map is, tellingly, reduced to a simplified, diagrammatic form on the Peterborough Map (Figure 1.2). Britain, Hibernia and Thule look almost to have been afterthoughts, and the labels for Europe and Jerusalem are oddly placed and, for Jerusalem, especially expansive.25 This map was made in the Peterborough Cathedral scriptorium during the second quarter of the twelfth century and is part of a sequence of diagrams illustrating the computus that accompanied its annals. The images are executed in ink with colored washes and include diagrams of the winds, months, creation, Bryhtferth’s diagram and other material. Here, the cartographic matter 23 The OED defines ‘plan’ as ‘a drawing, sketch, or diagram of any object made by projection on a horizontal plane; esp. one showing the layout of a building or one floor of a building’; and as a ‘detailed map of a town, district, etc., drawn on a relatively large scale’. 24 M.P. Brown, ‘The role of the wax tablet in medieval literacy: a reconsideration in light of a recent find from York’, British Library Journal 20.1 (1994), 1–15; and The book and the transformation of Britain, c.550–1050: a study in written and visual literacy and orality (London and Chicago, 2011). 25 BL, Harley MS 3667, fol. 8v.
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can more properly be considered as diagrammatic rather than as a map per se. Similar diagrammatic graphic strategies were still being employed by Ranulph Higden (d. 1364), a monk of St Werburgh’s in Chester, on the world map that accompanies his encyclopedic Polychronicon.26 This copy ends in 1342 and contains a continuation probably composed at St Albans, but its oval mappa mundi is thought to be the closest to Higden’s original to have survived.27 On fol. 2v is an accompanying map of the Mediterranean with a drawing of Adam and Eve in Eden at the top in the east. The world map occupies a double opening and is far more painterly than the linear, diagrammatic Peterborough Map. Red and green pigments are profusely employed, to dramatic effect, as well as the text ink, and the winds are depicted as human heads. The images used to depict towns are varied and elaborate, and some biblical events are depicted and referenced. Adjacent to the oceanus, on the right-hand side, are boxes containing verbal descriptions of the monstrous peoples which, on the Ebstorf, Psalter, Duchy (Plate VII) and Hereford mappae mundi, occur as mainly pictorial depictions. It would appear that Higden was reinterpreting the more ‘artistic’ illustrated mappae mundi of the thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries back into a more diagrammatic, text-based format, whilst retaining the dramatic effect of a graphic artistic treatment, one more appropriate to the chronicle. Illumination in the body of the book is fully painted and gilded, and Higden’s maps, as preserved there, represent a visual mid-point between fourteenth-century programmes of book illumination and the cartographic and diagrammatic genres.
1.2 PETERBOROUGH DIAGRAMMATIC MAP. LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, HARLEY MS 3667, F.8V. AUTHOR’S PHOTOGRAPH.
BL, Royal MS 14 C IX, fols. 1v–2r. J. Taylor, ‘The development of the Polychronicon continuation’, English historical review 76 (1961), 20–36, here 34; J.B. Harley and D. Woodward, The history of cartography, volume one: cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago, 1987), figs. 18.25 and 18.67. 26 27
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LATER MAPPAE MUNDI IN CONTEXT: BOOK AND MAP PRODUCTION In northern Europe during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the scholasticism of the ecclesiastical schools of Paris and environs – especially that of St Victor and its leading teacher, Hugh – the rise of universities and of urbanization led to book production moving from predominantly religious environments, notably the monastic scriptoria in which men and women participated, into the towns.28 The scriptorium masters and mistresses were replaced by booksellers/stationers/publishers who took commissions from patrons or had works made to sell off the peg. They also subcontracted work out to a range of craftspeople: scribes/scriveners; illuminators/limners, including gilders; pen-flourishers and binders. Only in the book trade could women operate independently, perpetuating the important role played by them in the ecclesiastic phase of book production. Such trade was regulated by the university authorities in centres such as Bologna, Oxford and, notably, Paris. Other towns also generated books, and the big university centres catered not only for faculty and students but for the devotional, educational and entertainment needs of the nobility, rural gentry and mercantile elite. Some religious foundations also continued to produce books, especially unilluminated works, or had more prestigious books made for them in towns. Leading patrons, clerical and secular, also took control of their projects. Such was the case with the Bohun family (progenitors of the Lancastrian dynasty) who, during the fourteenth century, kept Austin friars on payroll as scribes and illuminators at their castle in Pleshey, Essex.29 Similarly, Abbot Nicholas Lyttlington appointed the secular scribe of Westminster Abbey’s great missal, Thomas Preston, as its project manager during the late fourteenth century and accommodated him in the abbot’s lodging during the two years required to produce the missal.30 Such in-house projects gave their patrons scope for greater input, customization and control, and offered the discretion and privacy that commercial and clerical transactions lacked – a factor of particular
28 On Hugh, see Dan Terkla, ‘Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) and Anglo-French cartography’, Imago mundi 65.2 (2013), 161–79, the introduction to this Companion, and chapters two, three, four and nine. 29 L. Freeman-Sandler, Illuminators and patrons in fourteenth-century England: the psalter and hours of Humphrey de Bohun and the manuscripts of the Bohun family (Toronto and London, 2014). 30 P. Tudor-Craig, ‘The “large letters” of the Litlington missal and Westminster Abbey in 1383–84’, Illuminating the book: makers and interpreters: essays in honor of Jane Backhouse, ed. M.P. Brown and S. McKendrick (London and Toronto, 1998), pp. 102–9. J.G. Clark writes about Westminster Abbey monks employing a network of craftsmen and workshops, including one remote from the abbey for finishing, giving an insight into the variety and complexity of relationships deployed by a significant institution in its acquisition of custommade books to supplement its ancient tomes, its second-hand books and bequests or gifts. See J.G. Clark, The Benedictines in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2011), p. 254.
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importance in troubled times such as the Lancastrian/Yorkist conflicts that escalated into the Wars of the Roses. In addition to the general trends of medieval book production, there were individual scholars who wrote or supervised publication of their own work, such as Bede, Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146–c. 1223), Matthew Paris (c. 1200–59), Francesco Petrarca (1304–74) and Christine de Pizan (c. 1364–1429). Giraldus was one of a number of clerics, including Walter Map (c. 1140–1209) and Stephen Langton (c. 1150–1228), who studied in Paris and bought new and second-hand books on the Paravisus, the porch in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame. Such scholars were conduits of scholastic knowledge, such as Hugh of St Victor’s, back to Britain and Ireland.31 Giraldus composed new topographical works on Ireland and Wales, the Topographia Hibernica (Topography of Ireland) and the Expugnatio Hibernica (Conquest of Ireland) in 1188, the Itinerarium Cambriae (Welsh itinerary) in 1191 and the Descriptio Cambriae (Description of Wales) in 1194, as a result of his travels preaching the Third Crusade. In the codex containing the Topographia and Expugnatio and in between the two texts, Giraldus included a simplified map of Europe, prominently featuring Britain and Rome, and routes from the former to the latter.32 Although composed during the late twelfth century, Giraldus’ works were mostly ‘published’ under his direct supervision during his retirement at Lincoln Cathedral in the early thirteenth century.33 He also illustrated his works with marginal images of fauna, local inhabitants and wondrous events, which I have argued were drawn by artist-scribes in the cathedral scriptorium.34 During Antiquity and the Middle Ages, authors generally dictated rather than take up the pen, but Giraldus instructed his artist-scribes and edited his own work. The instruction to include cartographic material and the choice of format, therefore, presumably was Giraldus’ and designed to support his claims to first-hand knowledge of Britain and Ireland as part of his campaign to encourage Henry II to legitimize the mercenary activities of his relatives and others in Ireland as a formal royal annexation. Although he travelled widely, Giraldus’ claims – to have visited the west coast of Ireland, for example – were false; and a degree of literary and cartographic imagination must have been required for him to produce the maps, even though they are relatively simple. Those who lived beyond the Bitter River to the west were to be subsumed by the Angevin Empire, as well as those
On the transmission of Hugh’s theography and pedagogy, see Terkla, ‘Hugh’, 161–79. Dublin, National Library of Ireland, MS 700, fol. 48r. 33 Hamo of Lincoln loaned a mappa mundi to William of Avalon/-un c. 1140. See Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 1, fol. 2r. Rodney M. Thomson includes an image of this folio in Catalogue of the manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral chapter library (Cambridge, 1988), plate 3. 34 Brown, ‘Marvels’, pp. 34–59. 31
32
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in the east. In Giraldus’ case, we see the use of a map as part of an author’s socio-political agenda.35 Matthew Paris was even more of a desktop publisher. A monk of St Albans Abbey with connections to the cathedral school of St Victor and to the royal court at Westminster, he composed, wrote and illustrated his own works of history and hagiography.36 These works included about a dozen maps, including a map of the four winds, four maps of Britain, a mappa mundi (Plate V), a map of the world’s climate zones, maps showing an itinerary from London to Apulia and thence by sea to Jerusalem and a map of Outremer.37 Matthew Paris’ interest in the places mentioned on maps and itineraries led him to depict them on his maps with varied stylized buildings. He took to a new pictorial level the antique convention of combining toponyms with stylized images of towns, which we see on coins and in documents such as the late Roman Notitia dignitatum (List of [imperial] offices) and on earlier mappae mundi like the one from Sawley Abbey. On thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Anglo-French mappae mundi, some of the material and accompanying images from the Anglo-Saxon scientific miscellany have been conflated with its world map in summary graphic form. The result is a visual encyclopedia of information of the kind that circulated primarily in book form. Classical and biblical knowledge were synthesized and, as the genre developed, new experimental data from the university orbit was assimilated. The Bitter River from the Babylonian world map is surrounded on the Vercelli, Duchy, Hereford and Ebstorf mappae mundi by a ring of animals and monstrous peoples from the fourthcentury Physiologus, the ‘Marvels of the East’ and the twelfth-century Alexander romances. Sites from pilgrim routes and the biblical narrative joined the cities and topographical features marked on earlier world maps.38 The mappa mundi thus became an object of devotion and meditation upon Creation and human history – not to mention of political agendas, as with the inclusion of ‘Pope Augustus’ on the Hereford Map.39 Another feature of these maps is that they are independent of books and function as ‘single35 T. O’Loughlin, ‘Giraldus Cambrensis’s view of Europe’, History Ireland. Ireland’s history magazine 8.2 (2000): http://www.historyireland.com/medieval-history-pre-1500/giralduscambrensiss-view-of-europe/ [Accessed 7 December 2017]. 36 For more on Matthew’s cartography, see chapter seven in this Companion. 37 His itineraries are similar to the Tabula Peutingeriana (Peutinger table), an itinerarium showing the road network in the Roman Empire. It survives in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, in the form of a thirteenth-century copy of the fourth-century original, covering Europe, India and north Africa. The map is named after Konrad Peutinger (1465–1547), a German humanist and antiquarian. See Emily Albu, The medieval Peutinger Map: imperial Roman revival in a German empire (Cambridge, 2014). On Matthew Paris’ Outremer Map, https://medievaldigital.ace.fordham.edu/mapping-projects/oxfordoutremer-map-project/interactive-map/introducing-the-oxford-outremer-map/ [Accessed 7 December 2017]. 38 A.S. Mittman, Maps and monsters in medieval England (Oxford and New York, 2006). 39 On Augustus, see chapter ten in this Companion.
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sheet’ membrane items, in the manner of documents. They are peculiar to England and prefigure the later portolan chart in form, if not in pragmatic navigational detail. The Psalter Map imports this approach into the pages of a book, where it occurs in a devotional context, introducing the Psalms, prayers and Office of the Dead.40 This encyclopedic mappa mundi functions as a visual, meditational cipher for Creation, and God’s intention for it. Such devotional significance, here in a personal contemplative context, probably also extended to the Aslake Map (c. 1325–73), which might ‘have been displayed on account of the monastic pride at the learning it demonstrated … in Creake Abbey’, Norfolk.41 Framing devices were introduced into thirteenth- and fourteenth-century mappae mundi and served to place different intellectual and theological emphases upon them. Treatises composed during the twelfth century by scholastic figures such as Honorius of Autun and Hugh of St Victor, particularly those with an emphasis upon the theme of God as Creator, were influential.42 In his De archa Noe (On Noah’s Ark), Hugh describes a map that presented the earth as a stage for enacting human history, running from its east to west, with the Ages of Man culminating in the far west with the Second Coming.43 Hugh explains how one superimposes a large rectangular image of Noah’s Ark on a mandorla-shaped mappa mundi that is itself superimposed on the body of Christ, hands extended. The complex image functioned as a pedagogic and meditative tool that he intended to provide spiritual inspiration through the wonders of Creation, conceptualized as the Ark.44 Hugh instructed his students in visual mnemonics, which predisposed him to explore the potential of the graphic transmission of knowledge – including encyclopedic, spiritually instructive maps. Although it is debated whether Hugh made such a map, the influence of his writings about it are detectable in the twelfth-century Munich Map and in a number of thirteenthand fourteenth-century mappae mundi; for example, in the Duchy Map, where images of the Ages of Man appear in roundels beneath the map, On the Psalter Map, see chapter eight in this Companion. The map is BL Additional MS 63841 c. See also Peter M. Barber and Michelle P. Brown, ‘The Aslake world map’, Imago mundi 44 (1992), 22–44, here 29. 42 See Terkla, ‘Hugh’, 161–79, the introduction and chapters two, three, four and nine in this Companion. 43 Also known as translatio studii et imperii. See A. Scafi, Mapping paradise: a history of heaven on earth (London and Chicago, 2006). Some scholars think that this map actually existed, while others disagree, seeing it rather as a conceptual device. On Hugh’s map, see the introduction and chapters three, four and nine in this Companion. For a somewhat controversial discussion of it, Rudolph, The mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, art, and thought in the twelfth century (Cambridge, 2014). 44 Earlier authors such as Cassiodorus and Cummian the Sage of Iona (seventh century) had compared the work of copying and meditating upon Scripture to making of oneself an Ark, reinforcing the devotional aspects of such a metaphor. See M.P. Brown, The Lindisfarne Gospels: society, spirituality and the scribe (London, Luzern and Toronto, 2003), p. 398. 40 41
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extending to the lower right-hand corner, a space occupied on the Hereford Map by a backward-looking horseman, who depicts a similar apocalyptic theme.45 In the opposite spandrel, as mentioned above, sits ‘Pope Augustus’, issuing a papal bull – and epitomizing the map’s Roman heritage and Hugh’s church history. His figure of Christ surmounting or sub-imposed upon the map of the world also figures in the Psalter and Ebstorf maps, and in the Doom (Last Judgement) at the head of the Hereford Map. Also in this vein is the Sawley Map, found in the Imago mundi by Honorius Augustodunensis, the drawing style of which suggests that it was made in Durham Cathedral’s scriptorium around 1190 for the Cistercians of Sawley Abbey.46 Its orientation and detail recall the rectangular AngloSaxon Map, reconfigured as an oval, flanked by the elegant, attenuated forms of four angels, two of whom hold books. The whole is executed in delicate colored outline drawing and text ink, with elements of its labelling in red, recalling the rubrics usually found in medieval manuscripts to write titles, instructions and other extra-textual matter. It marks places and one mythical creature, the basilisk. That the Durham scriptorium and its prince-bishops were interested in the new scholasticism and in the taste for travel, topography and world history stimulated by the Crusades and international pilgrimage routes is indicated by its production of new image cycles to accompany classics, such as the works of Bede, and in a late twelfth-century collection of medical and herbal information inherited from Antiquity.47 This collection, in which the fully painted and gilded image cycle that came to accompany this branch of the medical knowledge, is extended at the end of the volume to integrate and legitimize new experimental knowledge from the Near East via images of cautery, cataract operations and the like. This might be characterized as an attempt by the scriptorium of a leading religious house to continue to expand (innovatio) the body of knowledge (traditio) housed upon the shelves of its library, to better divine God’s will through an ongoing revelation of experience and knowledge. The proximity of the imposing castle and cathedral, the militaristic obligations of its prince-bishops to participate in travel through the Crusades and the desire to keep abreast of change by sending members of the community to study at the new academic centres would have stimulated this trend and fostered an advanced spatial awareness. As we see in this Companion’s ninth chapter, one of Durham’s prince-bishops, Hugh de Puiset, owned a mappa mundi; and Roger of Howden, whom he sponsored, wrote three spatially aware On Hugh and the Munich Map, see chapter four in this Companion; and on Hugh and the Duchy fragment and Hereford Map, chapter nine. 46 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66, Part 1, p. 2. On the map, see chapter five in this Companion and P.D.A. Harvey, ‘The Sawley Map and other world maps in twelfthcentury England’, Imago mundi 49.1 (1997), 33–42. 47 BL, Sloane MS 1975. On geospatial awareness in the north, see chapter four in this Companion. 45
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books, one called the Expositio mappa mundi, which might be a textual precursor to the Sawley and Hereford maps.48 Similar in conceptualization to the Sawley Map is the fragment that survives of the Vercelli Map.49 This has been dated to between 1191 and 1218 by Carlo Capello, who suggests that the map was brought to Vercelli by Cardinal Guala Bicchieri on his return from England c. 1218–19 as papal legate to Henry III.50 Capello also argues that the figure on the map of a king in Mauretania named ‘Phillip’ represents Philip II of France (1180–1223), although this is contestable. He draws particular attention to the fact that, while considered part of the Orosian-Isidorian tradition, it is not centred on Jerusalem, as were the subsequent Hereford and Ebstorf maps. In this regard, the Vercelli is closer to the Munich Map and its connections to Hugh of St Victor.51 Also similar in conception to the Sawley Map is the lost (c. 3.5m square) Ebstorf Map, once thought to have been made by Gervase of Tilbury (d. c. 1220), and now, according to Jurgën Wilke, by Benedictine nuns at Kloster Ebstorf, just north of Uelzen in northern Germany.52 The map’s designer added images and a comparatively large amount of text relating to biblical and pagan history. At the cardinal points outside the map – and therefore the world – are the head, feet and hands of Christ, recalling Hugh of St Victor’s description of his Ark map. The accompanying columns of text are squeezed somewhat uncomfortably into the corners of the sheet, emulating book layout but failing to adapt successfully to the unfamiliar spaces available. The large scale indicates that it was a ‘singlesheet’ parchment item, made from thirty goatskins stitched together, and intended for display.53 By contrast, the Psalter Map, likely made at the court of Westminster c.1265, serves as the introduction to a small-format psalter designed for private devotional use by a royal or aristocratic patron.54 It is fully painted and gilded, with deep azurite blue, green and red pigments and gilded details, including the symbols for towns, mixed with a delicate outline drawing technique for parts of the design, such as the angels flanking Christ, and executed in a refined courtly style exhibiting fashionable French influence. 48 See also P. Gautier Dalché, Du Yorkshire à l’Inde, une géographie urbaine et maritime de la fin du XIIe siècle, Roger de Howden? (Genève, 2005). 49 For new information on the Vercelli Map, see chapter four in this Companion. 50 C.F. Capello, ‘Il mappamondo medioevale di Vercelli; nota preliminare’, Atti del XVII congresso geografic Italiano 4 (1957), 577–85. 51 On Hugh and the Munich Map, see chapter four in this Companion. 52 Jurgën Wilke, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, 2 vols (Bielefeld, 2001). For a digital facsimile of the map’s surviving reproduction, http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/hyperimage/EbsKart/start. html [Accessed 7 December 2017]. On its making and history, see Peter Barber, ‘Medieval maps of the world’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed., P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 1–44, here pp. 23–5. 53 Barber, ‘Medieval’, p 23. 54 BL, Additional MS 28681, fol. 9r. On the Psalter Map, see chapter eight in this Companion.
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As such it forms an integral part of the book’s illumination programme and, although petite, is of extremely high status. The map depicts the winds, topographical biblical features and the monstrous peoples, the latter set in a band on the right-hand side of the circle. The world it depicts sits within the frame of salvation history. In medieval art, Christ in Majesty had come to hold the T-O orb, often inverted, as a symbol of his role as Creator, Redeemer and Judge. We see this on the De Lisle Psalter, for example, which was made in southern England (probably London) around 1310.55 On the map, Christ, flanked by censing angels, holds the T-O orb – the right way up – in his left hand and is set atop the world and thus the map. There is a complementary T-O map on fol. 9v of the little Westminster psalter (Figure 8.1), the reverse of the leaf bearing the mappa mundi. In this verbal depiction of the world, Christ embraces the T-O globe with widespread arms, his feet protruding beneath the orb and trampling the beasts as described in the Psalms. Like the Ebstorf figure, this image of Christ recalls the portrayal of St John in the Book of Kells (c. 800) enthroned like Christ in Majesty, while the figure of Christ, arms outstretched and feet bearing the stigmata, protrudes from behind the frame.56 The implication in all these images is that the world is the body of Christ, in the sense of the communio sanctorum (communion of saints), with Christ as the head of the body of the Church Militant, of those believers still living on earth. And so both maps in this opulent little devotional volume, stylistically worthy of royalty or secular or church elites, are part of the devotional, salvific role of the psalter, the mainstay of private devotion before the rise in popularity of the new Books of Hours, with which it continued to exist alongside and in symbiosis. Christ in Majesty also presides over the Last Judgement on the triangular tongue at the head of the Hereford Map, with this codicological format accommodating further illumination but also recalling the medieval rotulus or scroll format of southern Italian Exultet Rolls that have a tongue to assist in their unrolling.57 This famous map bears the name of its putative author ‘Richard of Haldingham or Lafford’ (Holdingham and Sleaford in Lincolnshire) also known as Richard de Bello, ‘prebend of Lafford in Lincoln Cathedral’. Recent research suggests a date of c. 1300 for the creation of the map.58 It is drawn on a single sheet of vellum (calf skin) measuring 1.58m BL, Arundel MS 83 part II, fols.129v–130r. M.P. Brown, ‘Embodying exegesis: depictions of the Evangelists in insular manuscripts’, Le Isole Britanniche e Roma in età Romanobarbarica, quadrini di Romano barbarica, ed. A.M. Luiselli Fadda and É. Ó Carragáin (Rome, 1998), pp. 109–27; and Brown, Lindisfarne, pp. 350–70. 57 The name, as the OED notes, derives from the ‘hymn beginning “Exultet jam angelica turba cælorum”, sung in the Roman Catholic Church at the benediction of the paschal candle on Easter-eve’. 58 For more on the Hereford Map’s creation, see chapter ten in this Companion. Dan Terkla has argued for this date, based in part on the triregnum that Octavian wears in the lower left corner. It seems to have first been worn c. 1303. 55
56
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x 1.33m. Antiquarian accounts like that by Richard Gough in 1770 and the discovery of its wooden frame led Martin Bailey to suggest that it served as an altarpiece, although several scholars have argued against this.59 Here, the world map has become an encyclopedic devotional image of the divine will and its manifestation through Creation. Jerusalem lies at the centre of the world, and superimposed on the continents are drawings of human history and the marvels of the natural world.60 These 500 or so drawings include around 420 cities and towns, fifteen biblical events, thirtythree plants, animals, birds and the monstrous races, thirty-two images of the peoples of the world and eight pictures from classical mythology, including the Cretan labyrinth and material relating to Alexander the Great.61 Below Christ in Majesty at the apex, Adam and Eve appear in Eden as they will do on some Higden Polychronicon maps.62 Similarities to the Psalter and Hereford maps can be detected in the intervening Duchy Map, made in London around 1283.63 As we have seen, this map was also probably influenced by Hugh of St Victor’s conceptualization of human history in its Ages of Man roundels. Only the portion depicting a part of Africa survives, but judging from its scale it must have been a ‘single-sheet’ vellum map. Royal interest is implied by its current location in the collection of the Duchy of Cornwall, where it is the property of Prince Charles as duke of Cornwall. The first duke was the Black Prince, son of Edward III, who took the office when it was created in 1337. A yet closer royal connection has been postulated; in chapter nine of this Companion, Dan Terkla provides new evidence for Edmund of Cornwall (1249–1300), Henry III’s nephew, having commissioned the map. Edmund also commissioned Peter Comestor’s (d. c. 1178) Historia scholastica for his College of Bonhommes in Ashridge, c. 1285, and the same scribe was responsible for the Duchy Map.64 Terkla strengthens the case for Edmund having commissioned the map and suggests that he might have had a hand in the creation of the Hereford Map, along with Bishop Richard Swinfield, Thomas Cantilupe’s successor. Certainly, the stylistic relationship between the script and illumination of these works supports such a connection, as I
Martin Bailey, ‘The rediscovery of the Hereford mappamundi’, Harvey, Medieval, pp. 45–78, here p. 49. On debunking the altarpiece idea, see chapter ten in this Companion; also Dan Terkla, ‘The original placement of the Hereford mappa mundi’, Imago mundi 56.2 (2004), 131–51; and Marcia Kupfer, ‘Medieval world maps: embedded images, interpretive frames’, Word & Image 10.3 (1994), 262–88. 60 For an interactive digital facsimile, see https://www.themappamundi.co.uk/ [Accessed 7 December 2017]. 61 Scott Westrem counts ‘nearly 1,100 inscriptions’. See his The Hereford Map: a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (Turnhout, 2001), p. xv. 62 For example, BL, Royal MS 14 C XI, fol. 2v. 63 London, Duchy of Cornwall Office, Maps and Plans, 1. See also chapter nine in this Companion. 64 G. Haslam, ‘The Duchy of Cornwall Map fragment’, Géographie du monde au moyen âge et à la Renaissance, ed. M. Pelletier (Paris, 1989), pp. 34–49, here pp. 41–3. 59
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noticed when working on the Duchy Map in relation to the Aslake Map – a much less royal affair. The Duchy Map may have been related to the lost mural mappa mundi (c. 1236) in King Henry III’s magna camera (the king’s own chamber) in his Palace of Westminster (c. 1236), which is thought to have been copied by Matthew Paris in his lost Ordinal.65 Henry also commissioned maps for the walls of Winchester Castle and Clarendon Palace. That which he ordered to be painted in 1239 on the wall of Winchester’s Great Hall was to be seen by a wider audience than that in his chamber at Westminster, and complemented an existing mural of the Wheel of Fortune – a circular or rota (wheel) composition like the map, both of them reflecting God’s plan and the place within it of royal authority.66 Henry’s son Edward I also had a map (or maps), as recorded in the Royal and Privy Wardrobe accounts (1296– 1306).67 Such maps would have helped to inform and bolster the status of such secular rulers, the implication being that they exerted temporal power over the regions of the earth as the viceregents of the Divine. A relationship between manuscript and mural art was not new. In the late twelfth century, some of the artists who worked on the Winchester Bible are credited with the frescoes at Sigena, Spain. Matthew Paris’ work is also echoed stylistically in the massive fresco from the first half of the thirteenth century that survives in Westminster Abbey’s south transept chapel, and one might well imagine his maps and the Psalter Map painted in large-scale on walls in royal chambers and prestigious church buildings.68 We do not, alas, possess sketchbooks of this period, but their existence may be postulated from that of the Guthlac Roll, perhaps used as a model for murals, stained glass and embroidery around 1200, and the Pepys Sketchbook of c. 1400, which may have provided the model for the naturalistically observed birds carved on a stone screen in Durham Cathedral.69 Similar models, in sketch books or as single sheets, may have circulated for maps, as may have designs drawn on wax tablets or painted or drawn in manuscript books. Images in such books were drawn in lead-point, metal-point, chalk or ink (either text ink and/or colored inks and washes in outline or tinted drawings) upon sheets of parchment or vellum. In deluxe 65 Referred to in BL, Cotton MS Nero D V, fol. 1v. On Paris, see chapter six in this Companion. 66 N.R. Kline, Maps of medieval thought: the Hereford paradigm (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 81–2. 67 P.D.A. Harvey, ‘Maps of the world in the medieval English royal wardrobe’, Foundations of medieval scholarship: records edited in honour of David Crook, ed. D. Carpenter and M. Ormrod(York, 2008), pp. 51–5. 68 Marcia Kupfer argued this for Chalivoy-Milon, and, of course, popes had monumental map murals in the Vatican. See her ‘The lost mappamundi at Chalivoy-Milon’, Speculum 66.3 (1991), 540–71. For an alternative perspective on the relationship between the Psalter Map and Henry III’s map, see chapter eight in this Companion. 69 For the Guthlac Roll, see below, note 71. The Pepys Sketchbook is: Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepysian MS 1916.
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items, such preparatory drawings might then be painted with thick layers of pigment and gilding. In these books, full-page miniatures would sometimes be painted on single leaves, rather than on the bifolia that formed the gatherings. This might be because they required additional time for the pigments and gold to be laid on and to dry and would hamper the flow of the rest of the work or, more usually, that they were to be made by specialist artists. Producing the information distilled into map form might likewise have been a task undertaken by scholars with the skill to do so, but also, on occasion, by professional artists and scribes copying exemplars, whether into books, on single-sheet maps, walls or textiles. The large scale of single-sheet maps and charts would also mean that the larger cattle skins might be preferred over sheep or goat skins.70 For even large scale maps, the technique of painting directly onto the wall (fresco) would be most suitable, although painting on large sheets of membrane or cloth sewn together is also a possibility, as in the case of the Ebstorf Map. Pigments and inks would be made within the monastic scriptorium or, after c. 1200, purchased from urban manufacturers and traders. They were used in ink horns and shells and applied with brushes, often of squirrel hair, with the gold laid on in leaf (or sometimes powdered form as a pigment, known as shell-gold) and burnished with an agate, dog or cow tooth. The growth in the textile industry during the fourteenth century led to a wider range of pigments used in dyeing, many of them of exotic eastern origin, such as the red lakes and saffron, which would have complemented depictions of events and places in far distant places. In its artwork and use of a wider range of pigments, the Duchy Map sits midway between the fully painted illumination practised in high status books such as that in which the Psalter Map occurs and the ink and wash of other mappae mundi, such as the Sawley Map. The Hereford Map, however, exhibits the use of outline drawing with washes of color, primarily diluted ink, woad blue, a green made from copper (verdigris) and touches of red and gold. It appears to have distinguished rivers from the sea by overlaying the blue with a green wash to depict the seas. It thereby perpetuates the use of color in the Sawley, Psalter, Duchy and Ebstorf maps, but reasserts the primacy of the drawn details and the texts. Fine drawing was as popular in courtly circles as the costlier full painting and gilding techniques and represented a refined aesthetic inherited from Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian art revived by artists like Matthew Paris and the early thirteenth-century maker of the Guthlac Roll.71 It was also the medium traditionally considered suitable for executing diagrams in scholastic works and would therefore have presented itself as an impressive, 70 Here I mean maps not bound into books, but on stand-alone sheets of membrane, either on a single skin, like the Hereford Map, or of many skins sewn or pasted together, like the Ebstorf Map. 71 The Vita Sancti Guthlaci (Life of St Guthlac) is BL, Harley MS Roll Y 6; see https://www. bl.uk/collection-items/guthlac-roll [Accessed 14 November 2018].
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if cheaper, style and technique to be used for a sacra figura, rather than as a purely or primarily iconographic or narrative depiction. (Of course, the Hereford Map includes narrative elements which are temporally synchronic, and so everything happens simultaneously, including the future on its Doom.) As in the case of Matthew Paris, the choice of colored drawings, rather than full painting and gilding, was appropriate to the needs of more scholarly makers, rather than urban professional painters, as the materials were less costly and there were fewer time-consuming processes involved. Someone like Matthew Paris, who was composing, writing and illustrating his own works, would probably have favoured such a medium as it required less technical artistic expertise in painting and gilding, needed fewer pigments and was quicker to produce, as he did not have to let each thick layer of color dry before applying the next or have to deal with the messy business of gilding. It also allowed penmanship and spontaneity of line to dominate and was conducive to the integration of textual information, such as captions or labels (including toponyms) into a visual structure. The technique used by the maker(s) of the Hereford Map was therefore influenced by a long tradition of diagrammatic cartography, by the scholastic tradition and by practical considerations. It was likely made by an individual or individuals outside the urban commercial production network, a lone scholar/draftsman and perhaps a colleague with artistic skills, someone working within a monastic or clerical environment without a major scriptorium.72 Hereford would fit the bill in this respect. By 1300, even though religious foundations still produced books, the role of illuminator, or limner, had become part of the urban nexus of specialist trades, in which clerics in minor orders and the mendicants were participants. The ethics of worship and spirituality might also play a part, for Cistercian approaches to the role of art were very different, and more austere, than those of the Benedictines. We saw this in regard to the Sawley Map, which was probably made in Durham’s Benedictine scriptorium in an unpretentious colored outline drawing style. The possible connection to stained glass is also pertinent, for grisaille (grey monochrome) complemented full-color glass, and allowed detail and the divine light of understanding to be transmitted particularly well, whilst full color and opulence demonstrated status, accorded honor and beautified worship. The Hereford Map would sit well in the former context and the Duchy Map in the latter. Since Anglo-Saxon times, there had also 72 M.B. Parkes argues for one scribe, a limner and an artist (painter) and for the work being done ‘at Hereford itself or in the vicinity’. See his ‘The Hereford Map: the handwriting and copying of the text’, Harvey, Medieval, pp. 107–17, here p. 115. Dendrochronological testing of the oak backboard revealed wood from the area. See Ian Tyers, ‘ARCUS [Dendrochronological Laboratory] project report 782A: Tree-ring analysis of the Hereford Mappa Mundi panel’, commissioned by the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral, January 2004. Nigel Morgan argues for two artists in ‘The Hereford Map: art-historical aspects’, Harvey, Medieval, pp. 119–37, here pp. 120–1.
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been a perception that full painting might be used to depict sacred space and tinted or outline drawing temporal space, often in the same work. Thus, in the Eadui Psalter, made by the aforementioned Eadui Basan in the 1020s–1030s, he depicts himself kneeling at the feet of St Benedict, who hands his rule to the Christ Church monks.73 Benedict sits enthroned in fully painted eternal celestial space, whilst the monks are in ethereal tinted drawing and inhabit the transitory temporal zone. Eadui is fully painted – even his bottom, which straddles the two spatial and temporal zones. In the Queen Mary Psalter, probably made at Westminster or in East Anglia for Edward II (1284–1327) or Queen Isabella (1292–1358), the miniatures and historiated initials depicting scenes from the New and Old Testaments, respectively, are fully painted and gilded, whilst the complementary images from hagiography, the bestiary and other intertextual references in the lower margin, and the prefatory cycle of images, are in elegant tinted drawing.74 The choice of pigments and techniques for the maps may thus have been intended as an additional commentary upon the nature of time and space and of the relationship between Creator and creation; for example, the Christ figure on the Psalter Map verso occupies a fully painted space, whilst the orb is tinted. Such choices also place maps midway between the graphicacy of diagrams and charts and the iconography of book illumination, murals and the other fine arts, signalling a convergence of pragmatic, devotional and display functions, in varying measure. The choice of script was likewise charged with meaning. For example, the Psalter and Duchy maps are written in Gothic textualis quadrata book script, the Duchy Map being of particularly high grade and incorporating decorated litterae notabiliores and paragraphus marks. The ornament of its litterae notabiliores resembles that of the Ashridge Comestor with which it is associated and accords with the formal book text layout in its spandrel inscriptions. The Hereford Map uses a more modest if well written textualis rotunda Gothic book script for its more formal elements: the text encircling the map and in its spandrels, with some of it on speech scrolls resembling charters and a more cursive script for the labelling on the map’s interior. On the other hand, the Aslake Map’s script is a cursiva anglicana suitable for documentary and lower grade book use, and its drawings are simple and executed in ink. These choices again reflect the level of formality, expense and ostentation or authority conveyed, and the perception of correlation with higher grade status associated with liturgical and devotional books, frescoes and glass. The Psalter and Duchy maps represent a higher level of expense and probable court patronage, whilst the Hereford Map is a more provincial, less costly product and the Aslake Map’s script commonly used for pragmatic purposes.
73 74
BL, Arundel MS 155. BL, Royal MS 2 B VII.
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1.3 MIDDLE SECTION OF THE ASLAKE MAP. AUTHOR’S DRAWING.
MICHELLE P. BROWN
This evolved distillation of traditio, received wisdom, would have been affected by the challenge of innovatio, new experimental knowledge, in the case of the Aslake Map (Figure 1.3). It would appear that its maker, perhaps a monk at Creake Abbey, was confronted with an early portolan chart, a map used for practical navigation by sailors which originated in thirteenth-century Italy. As a result of this encounter with new thinking, he had to reconcile traditio and innovatio in graphic form and erred on the side of caution by including both types of knowledge, even where they conflicted. He thus duplicated elements such as the Canary Islands, which he set in two different locations. In this way, he depicted the divergence of information from the mappa mundi tradition to the portolan chart, which derived its detailed coastline depictions from recent navigational experience. The Italian geographer Pietro Vesconte (fl. 1310–30) helped to pioneer the portolan chart. His nautical charts are among the earliest to map the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions accurately, and he also produced progressively more accurate depictions of the coastlines of northern Europe. He seems to have worked as a professional mapmaker and regularly signed and dated his works, most of which were made in Venice, although he was himself Genoese. In his world map of 1321, he introduced nautical accuracy to the mappa mundi genre. This world map, as well as a map of the Holy Land and plan of Acre and Jerusalem, were made for inclusion in a book: Marino Sanuto’s Liber secretorum fidelium cruces (The book of the secrets of the faithful of the Cross).75 They are executed as drawings with colored washes, primarily green or a green/blue, in the manner of the Beatus and Anglo-Saxon world maps, the maps by Giraldus Cambrensis, Matthew Paris and Ranulph Higden and the Duchy and Hereford mappae mundi. In 1439 a single-sheet membrane portolan chart (now in the Museu Maritim, Barcelona) by Gabriel de Vallseca (d. c. 1467), a Catalan cartographer of Jewish descent, connected to the Majorcan cartographic school, completed this process of synthesization by reversing it and incorporating pictorial elements such as the Marvels of the East into the chart in the manner of the mappa mundi and imposing fully painted images, some set in little painted panels, upon the drawn chart, which has a triangular tab at its head, like the Hereford Map.76 The millennia-long The Liber is BL, Additional MS 27376. See Ramon J. Pujades I Bataller, La carta de Gabriel de Vallseca de 1439: estudi i edició / Gabriel de Vallseca’s 1439 chart (Barcelona, 2009). 75
76
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process of distilling the ancient and medieval world views into the graphic form of a mappa mundi was complete, on the eve of that view being radically expanded by the discovery of new continents far beyond the traditional confines of the Bitter River. As this overview of the development, production, commissioning and transmission of mappae mundi, with particular emphasis upon the central Middle Ages, has shown, world maps reflect the changing contexts in which they were produced. Early on, they were made in monastic and abbatial scriptoria as part of the preservation and expansion of knowledge, which was seen as a revelation of God’s will, and kept for consultation and teaching in those houses’ libraries. Maps were later generated and consulted by scholars at the cathedral schools and universities who made them to illustrate encyclopedic, historical, biblical and devotional texts. From around 1200, the work was done increasingly by specialist craftspeople based in towns and instructed by patrons via stationers, although clerical scholars in religious foundations like cathedrals, monasteries and colleges continued to be involved in making these specialist works. Maps were made for ecclesiastical, royal and aristocratic patrons and communities; they appear in devotional, apocalyptic and topographical/ historical books and were painted or drawn on walls or as single-sheet charts. They were part of devotional and liturgical practices and of the trappings of power and government. They were made by or under the supervision of innovative scholars and cartographers at the transition points from the monastic to urban phases and from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The styles, materials and techniques used indicate a range of expenditure, aesthetic taste and interest in fostering received wisdom and new experiential knowledge, and in synthesizing traditio and innovatio. They were conceived as diagrams, as part of book illumination programmes and as display objects. The scripts and pigments used were in keeping with the sliding scale of cost that operated within the book trade and accorded with medieval perceptions of matching form to function. In short, mappae mundi are images of the worlds that made them, as well as of the world itself, and were consequently worthy of the attention and resources of medieval scribes, artists, patrons and scholars – and of their modern counterparts.
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BOOKS AND MAPS: ANGLO-SAXON GLASTONBURY AND GEOSPATIAL AWARENESS DAN TERKLA
A British study, published in 2006, made headlines by revealing that the brains of London taxi drivers, whose licensing requires that they demonstrate recall of 25,000 city streets, plus the locations of landmarks and points of interest, contain more gray matter in the region of the hippocampus responsible for spatial representation than the brains of London bus drivers. Greg Milner, Pinpoint1
T
I urge you also … to read through geographical writings so that you know the location of each place you read of in holy books. Cassiodorus, Institutiones2
his chapter focuses on Glastonbury Abbey, in order to illustrate the growth and importance of a pre-Conquest center of geospatial awareness. Glastonbury is important in this regard: because it was the first major monastic revival house in England; because the revival initiated and expanded its book collection, the 1247–8 inventory of which represents the tenth- and eleventh-century monastic norm; because the abbey owned a mappa mundi and because of that map and the abbey’s tentative connections to the Anglo-Saxon Map (Plate I).3 This Benedictine house became the
1 Greg Milner, Pinpoint: how GPS is changing technology, culture, and our minds (New York and London, 2016), pp. 132–3. 2 Full passage: ‘Cosmographiae quoque notitiam vobis percurrendam esse non immerito suademus, ut loca singula, quae in libris sanctis legitis, in quae parte mundi sint posita evidenter cognoscere debeatis’. Cassiodorus, Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum, 2 vols, trans. and intro. Wolfgang Bürsgens (Freiburg and New York, 2003), p. 248. Translation from Cassiodorus, Institutions of divine and secular learning and on the soul, trans. James W. Halporn, intro. Mark Vesey (Liverpool, 2004), p. 157. 3 The inventory is Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 724, fols 102–4. The folios were printed in Johannis Glastoniensis, Chronica sive historia de rebus glastoniensibus e codice
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wealthiest in pre-Conquest Britain, developed an impressive library, and had members with an expressed interest in mapping. The abbey’s books and inventoried, but missing, mappa mundi index the first case of cartographically expressed, English geospatial awareness of which I am aware and thus establish a point of reference for a look at later forms of that awareness. This chapter and the following one on geospatial awareness at Durham provide that background for the maps studied in this Companion.
BOOKS, MAPS AND LIBRARIES Readers of this Companion will see the following as truisms, but they bear restating: drawn and painted maps were based on earlier drawn and painted maps and, like those earlier maps, on written texts. Each medieval mappa mundi and book is the product of representational conventions adapted to an idiosyncratic – from the Greek ἰδιο-, personal, private, peculiar, separate – combination of sources. The men who made the maps used the same materials to make the source books and the books with which the maps later were paired.4 They kept their books and codicological maps, those bound or tipped into books, in book presses and, more significantly, in memory. Professional scribes aside, these book and map makers were the ones who used the maps and books separately and together for personal study; to assuage their geographical curiosity; for contemplation, meditation and absorption; for teaching and for combinations of these activities. They were able to do so because their maps and books were mutually and epistemologically complementary.5 During the Anglo-Saxon period (c. 410–1066), books were not in what we would consider libraries; rather, there were ‘caches of books which were mobile, readily broken up and reconstituted, attached to persons’ more than religious houses.6 No house’s list of extant, pre-Conquest books numbers 100; not surprisingly, then, there were not many books in toto on ms. Membraneo antiquo descripsit ediditque Tho. Hearnius, 2 vols, ed. Thomas Hearne et al. (Oxford, 1726), 1.423–35. Hearne’s edition is represented in Thomas Webb Williams, ‘Glastonbury’, Somerset mediaeval libraries and miscellaneous notices of books in Somerset prior to the dissolution of the monasteries (Bristol, 1897), pp. 45–98. Williams also copied verbatim A. Anscombe’s catalog description. See ‘Numerus librorum Glastoniensis ecclesiae A. 1248’, The Athenaeum no. 3589 (8 August 1896), 194. For access to the 1247–8 inventory and the other twelve Anglo-Saxon catalogs, albeit without codicological information, Benedictines: the shorter catalogues: Glastonbury B39, ‘Catalogue, 1247, with additions’, Bodleian Library: http://mlgb3.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/authortitle/medieval_catalogues/B39/ [Accessed 8 December 2017]. For other Glastonbury books, Neil R. Ker, Medieval libraries of Great Britain: a list of surviving books, 2nd edn (London, 1964), pp. 90–1. 4 For a full disquisition on this relationship, see chapter one in this Companion. 5 I use ‘complementary’ here and throughout to signal a book or mappa mundi that brings some degree of epistemological fullness to another book or mappa mundi. 6 Rodney Thomson, ‘The Norman Conquest and English libraries’, England and the 12th-century Renaissance (Aldershot, 1998), pp. XVIII and 27–40, here p. 28.
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the island.7 Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge’s authoritative handlist of manuscripts and fragments ‘written or owned in England up to 1100’ includes 1,291 items.8 These collections did come to be held in proper libraries, as they expanded between c. 1100 and 1175, when in-house or outsourced book making became a primary monastic activity, and the number of books produced dramatically increased.9 As Lapidge points out, though, ‘[w] ithout any indication of apparent antiquity … or a statement to the effect that the book was written in Old English, it is virtually impossible to identify Anglo-Saxon books in library catalogues of the later Middle Ages’.10 ‘Virtually’ is key here; for there are such indications, and they allow us to see that, for example, Christ Church, Canterbury, had over 1,800 books in the fourteenth century. Of course, as the southern metropolitan’s/archbishop’s see, it was exceptional. Medium- to large-sized abbeys had from 100 to 500 books.11 Pairing and storing maps with books was (and is) logical, because they were made from the same materials and with the same tools, but also because maps were used for monastic and abbatial instruction, which generally took place in common areas where the maps and books were kept. Samples of pedagogical statements illustrate this point and highlight the long history of geospatial awareness in monastic communities. In the late third century, Eumenius, rhetorician and magister sacrae memoriae to Constantius I, lobbied for rebuilding the schools at Augustodunum, now Autun in eastern central France. In his only surviving oration, Eumenius provides an early example of maps’ pedagogical utility and indoctrinatory power. In his densely articulated speech, the imperial panegyrist engaged the past cartographical experience of Lugdunensis prima’s governor by referring to him in the second person and tied that experience to the futures of ‘the children’, who will see at school world maps like the governor had seen. Their cartographical experiences will take place ‘in those porticoes’ of the schools, where students will see and be indoctrinated by maps of the Roman world. Their sense of sight, which was held to be the strongest of the six in Thomson, ‘Conquest’, p. 28. Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon manuscripts: a bibliographical handlist of manuscripts and manuscript fragments written or owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 2014). Work on the handlist began in 1970 and has since involved scores of eminent scholars. For their names and a history of the work, see pp. ix–xii. 9 On the period 1100–75, Rodney M. Thomson, ‘Monastic and cathedral book production’, The Cambridge history of the book in Britain, 1100–1400, vol. 2, ed. Nigel Morgan and Rodney M. Thomson (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 136–67, here pp. 136 and 140. On the increase in the number of books, Pamela Robinson, ‘The format of books: books, booklets and rolls’, pp. 41–54, here p. 50, in the same volume. 10 Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon library (Oxford, 2006), p. 74. 11 For numbers of books in individual monasteries and abbeys, see Richard Sharpe, ‘Library catalogues and indexes’, Morgan, Cambridge history, pp. 197–218, here pp. 200–15. 7
8
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the ancient world, will complement and supplement what they have taken in aurally from their teachers. They will see the locations of ‘all the lands and seas and every city’ and ‘the distances between them, the sources and terminations of all the rivers, the curves of all the shores, and the Ocean’. Eumenius closes by suggesting that ‘eager messengers’ will continue to deliver to ‘the bravest emperors’ news of conquests, ever expanding the map and imperial purview, students’ knowledge and imperial pride. The map will ensure that ‘we have the true pleasure in seeing a picture of the world, since we see nothing in it that is not ours’.12 Moving to the sixth century and a monastic environment, we find Cassiodorus (c. 490–585), who explained to the monks at Vivarium, in what is now southern Italy, ‘that it is useful to read through geographical writings so that you know the location of each place you read of in holy books’. The monks are to attend to Julius Honorius’ Cosmographia (fifth/sixth century) and Marcellinus Comes’ now-lost ‘handbooks for future travelers’ (sixth century) to Jerusalem and Constantinople.13 And then, in a multisensory admonition, Cassiodorus urges his monks to learn from Dionysius’ briefly sketched map [Pinax mundi: Descriptio orbis] where you may almost see with your own eyes what you heard of in the book mentioned above. Then if you are fired with interest for this noble subject, you have the book of Ptolemy who described every place so clearly that you might almost think that he was an inhabitant of all regions. Thus, although you are in one place (as monks ought to be) you may traverse mentally what others in their travels have collected with a great deal of effort. Deinde Penacem Dionisii discite breviter comprehensum, ut quod auribus in supradicto libro percipitis, paene oculis intuentibus videre possitis. Tum si vos notitiae nobilis cura flammaverit, habetis Ptolomei codicem, qui sic omnia loca evidenter expressit, ut eum cunctarum regionum paene incolam fuisse iudicetis, eoque fiat ut uno loco positi, sicut monachos decet, animo percurratis quod aliquorum peregrinatio plurimo labore collegit.14
Monks, unilocational students, should read (or hear read) Priscian’s Latin translation of Dionysius of Alexandria’s second-century descriptio mundi, 12 Eumenius, ‘Evmenii pro instaurandis scholis oratio’, In praise of later Roman emperors: the panegyrici Latini, ed. and trans. C.E.V. Nixon and Barbara Saylor Rodgers with the Latin text of R.A.B. Mynors (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 151–77 (English) and 554–63 (Latin), here pp. 174–7 and 563. 13 Brian Croke, Count Marcellinus and his chronicle (Oxford, 2001), pp. 37–47, here p. 41. On the Cosmographia and complementary map, A.D. Lee writes, ‘it contains a parting admonition not to separate the written text from an accompanying globe (sphaera)’. Information and frontiers: Roman foreign relations in late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2006), p. 84. 14 See Bürsgens, Institutiones, p. 248; and Halporn, Institutions, p. 158, for the translation. Emphases are mine.
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the Periegesis, which Glastonbury monks paired with a mappa mundi. When they did so, they would have in mind something like an eyewitness image of the world. His multi-sensual approach, Cassiodorus assures his auditors, will prepare them for further study and Ptolemy’s Geographia, via which they will be ready to ‘mentally traverse’ regions they would never physically visit.15 Cassiodorus’ prompt comprises the components of monastic learning: hearing a text read for your edification; reading it for and to yourself, so as to create your own mental mappa mundi to file in memory; and using that image to comprehend other complex narratives and verbal geographies. After moving through this process, the adept would be able to interweave or overlay, in this case, the geo-descriptions of Dionysius, Honorius, Comes and Ptolemy into a unique cognitive map, perhaps even to draw his own complementary mappa mundi, a visual vade mecum and aide-mémoire for reading and virtual travel. Before and during the timeframe of this Companion, England and northwestern Europe were relatively homogenous in terms of intellectual endeavors. Therefore, we should not be surprised to see Cassiodorus’ Roman-inflected pedagogy played out there. For instance, as we have seen in this volume’s introduction, Hugh of St Victor (c. 1096–1141) promoted a similar pedagogical tradition in Paris. He illustrated his lectures with a mural mappa mundi and provided a verbal accounting of such a map in his Descriptio mappe mundi. Having experienced the utility of this visual aid, Hugh wrote other key cartographical texts, one of which explains how to draw the multi-dimensional image from his De archa Noe, including the mappa mundi at its center. Hugh’s theography, his theological cartography, was at the core of his curriculum. We see traces of it in twelfth- through fourteenth-century mappae mundi and the popularity of Hugh’s thinking in the 2,500 extant manuscripts of his works.16 A few years after Hugh’s death, William of Avalun, a canon of Lincoln Cathedral, borrowed a mappa mundi; a Bedam super lucam, Bede’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke; an Epistolis Pauli, Paul’s epistles; and an Ysidorium Ethimologiarum, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, from Lincoln’s library, according to the borrowers’ list drawn up by Hamo, chancellor/ librarian from 1148 to 1182. We have no record of what William did with the items or whether he returned them.17 A bit farther north, Bishop Hugh de 15 For more on this aspect of Cassiodoran pedagogy and the use of maps for virtual travel, see Marcia Kupfer, ‘Traveling the mappa mundi: readerly transport from Cassiodorus to Petrarch’, Maps and travel in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period: knowledge, imagination, and visual culture, ed. Ingrid Baumgärtner, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby and Katrin Kogman-Appel (Berlin and Boston, 2018), pp. 17–36. 16 On 2,500 manuscripts, Mary Carruthers, ‘Hugh of St Victor, the three best memory aids for learning History’, The medieval craft of memory: an anthology of texts and pictures, ed. Mary Carruthers and Jan Ziolkowski (Philadelphia, 2002), pp. 32–40, here p. 32. 17 R.M. Woolley, Catalogue of manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral chapter library (Oxford and London, 1927), pp. ix and 144. R.M. Thomson reproduces the borrower’s list from Lincoln
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Puiset of Durham willed his mappa mundi and books to Durham Cathedral Priory. Raine and Botfield’s catalog records that ‘in the Mortuary taken upon the death of Hugh Pudsey [de Puiset], the munificent Bishop of Durham, in January, 1195, we find his benefactions to the Library of that Church’: a ‘Scolasticam Historiam’, Peter Comestor’s (d. 1178) Scholastic History, an ‘Ysidorus Ethimologicus’, a ‘Solinus de Mirabilibus Mundi’, Solinus’ Wonders of the World, and the bishop’s ‘Mappa Mundi’.18 Jean of St Victor wrote about a wall map still used for teaching at the Parisian abbey, in his Memoriale historiarum of around 1322.19 One cannot claim that this was a copy of the one Hugh used in teaching and described in various texts, but evidence does not suggest otherwise. The map Jean reported on was a rough contemporary of the mappa mundi that hung in the library of Merton College, Oxford, and of those displayed at Exeter and Magdalen colleges. Not surprisingly, Merton’s library was where teaching occurred. A mappa mundi and a map of Britain hung on the wall there into the fifteenth century.20 These St Victor and Oxford maps were roughly contemporary with the Hereford Mappa Mundi, which Thomas Dingley first spotted in 1684 in the Lady Chapel, then the cathedral library. The map was there until 1887 and has moved with the library over time to other cathedral locations.21 Since 1992 it has been showcased in the New Library Building next to the Chained Library. The Evesham Abbey mappa mundi (c. 1390), which rounds out this selective chronology, likely was ‘appended to the fabric of the monastery’, Cathedral MS 201 (C.3.6) and writes that Woolley’s list is ‘printed inaccurately’. Thomson’s reproduction does show the map and the Isidore on the list. See R.M. Thomson, Catalogue of the manuscripts of Lincoln Cathedral chapter library (Cambridge, 1989), p. 163 and, for the image, pl. 5, following p. 277. 18 James Raine and Beriah Botfield, preface, Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesiae cathedralis Dunelm: catalogues of the library of Durham Cathedral, Publications of the Surtees Society 7 (London, 1838), pp. 118–19. P.D.A. Harvey writes that of the some two dozen twelfth- and thirteenth-century booklists, only three note mappae mundi: those from Lincoln, Durham and Rochester. To this we must add Worksop Priory. See P.D.A. Harvey, ‘The Sawley Map and other world maps in twelfth-century England’, Imago mundi 49 (1997), 33–42, here p. 38. See also chapter three in this Companion. 19 On Jean’s date, see Marshall E. Crossnoe, ‘Victorine education, 1206–1419’, Medieval Prosopography 22 (2001), 165–80, here p. 169. Franklin T. Harkins draws an analogy between Hugh’s use of a mural version of his ark text in teaching and the painted parchment mentioned in Peter of Poitiers’ Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi. See his Reading and the work of restoration: history and scripture in the theology of Hugh of St Victor (Toronto, 2009), pp. 67–8, here p. 68. Albert of Trois-Fontaines wrote in Peter of Poitiers’ obituary that the chancellor created trees to illustrate Old Testament genealogies and the virtues and vices. These were painted on skins and hung on university classroom walls. See J. Lebeuf, Dissertations sur l’histoire ecclésiastique et civile de Paris, vol. 2 (Paris, 1739–43), p. 133. 20 R.M. Thomson, A Descriptive catalogue of the medieval manuscripts of Merton College, Oxford (Cambridge, 2009), p. xxi. For dates of work done on and for Merton’s mappa mundi, ‘Appendix B’, pp. 269–81. 21 Martin Bailey, ‘The rediscovery of the Hereford mappamundi: early references, 1684–1873’, in The Hereford world map: medieval maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey, (London, 2006), pp. 45–78, here pp. 49, 54 and 72.
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either ‘for temporary consultation or for longer term edification’.22 This shortlist of large maps excludes the 900 or so extant codicological maps, but it, along with the influence of monastic bibliographical conventions on colleges and universities, suffices to show that clerical and collegial institutions situated their books and maps together to facilitate their complementary use.
THE FALL AND RISE OF ENGLISH MONASTICISM For some five hundred years, from the papacy of Gregory I, the Great (540– 604), to that of Gregory VII (1015–85), monasticism was ‘an integral part of society’.23 The first half of the eighth century was the high point of AngloSaxon monasticism. Under the heading ‘Anglia monastica’, Charles Pearson recorded 284 canonical and monastic houses before 1066 and noted that ‘a glance at the distribution of monasteries will show that they had grown up irregularly’.24 However irregular, the 135 religious houses destroyed by Viking raids, deserted or absorbed by other houses were spread across thirty-four of thirty-nine historical counties.25 The English Benedictine presence began c. 598; the Augustinian canons regular arrived just before 1100, their ‘birth certificate’ having been issued at the 1059 Council of Rome, and the Dominicans in 1221.26 The Dominicans were soon followed by other mendicant orders: the Franciscans in 1224, the Carmelites in 1240–42 and the Augustinians (Austins) in 1248.27 As a result of new Norman foundations and the establishment of new orders, by 1200 there were more than 1,300 houses, and by 1215 Augustinian foundations outnumbered all others.28 The Victorines followed the Regula sanctae Augustini, and their presence in England was part of that expansion. The order’s explosive growth was due to the organizational and administrative freedom granted them by the Regula and to Queen Matilda’s (c. 1080–1118) founding of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, in London (1107–8), which initiated royal and episcopal patronage.29 All told, there were more than 2,000 English religious houses by the fourteenth century, thanks largely to the mendicant 22 Peter Barber, ‘The Evesham world map: a late medieval view of God and the world’, Imago mundi 47 (1995), 13–33, here 21. 23 David Knowles, The monastic order in England: a history of its development from the times of St Dunstan to the fourth Lateran Council, 940–1216, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 20 and 23. 24 Charles H. Pearson, Historical maps of England during the first thirteen centuries, 2nd edn (London, 1870), p. 61. 25 Map of monastic Britain (south sheet) (Chessington, 1954), pp. 3–6. The north and south sheets provide very useful visual representations of pre-Conquest houses. 26 Dickinson, Origins, p. 29. 27 South sheet, pp. 3–6. 28 J.C. Dickinson, The origins of the Austin canons and their introduction into England (London, 1950), p. 153. 29 Janet Burton, The monastic order in Yorkshire, 1069–1215 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 7.
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influx.30 English monastic culture was so rich in art and learning that its ‘monasteries of the seventh and eighth centuries were centers of learning unparalleled in northern Europe’.31 Hence, David Knowles’ assessment of monasticism as ‘integral’ to English life and learning. Monasticism’s eighth-century florescence was stymied in June 793 by the attack on Lindisfarne, the first in a series of Viking raids that continued intermittently and with varying degrees of devastation until the Battle of Stamford Bridge in September 1066. The northerners attacked Lindisfarne (793) and Wearmouth-Jarrow (794) in the North East and Iona (795) in the Inner Hebrides, along with many others, sometimes more than once, because they were easy prey. The houses were intentionally remotely sited, unguarded and rich in treasure. Among their valuable – and portable – wonders were gold and silver church plate and books of exquisite artisanry like the Codex Amiatinus, which was begun in 692 at the twin monasteries of Wearmouth-Jarrow, and the Lindisfarne Gospels, begun around the same time some seventy miles to the north.32 Northern monastic life survived until ‘the great Danish invasion of 867–70’, but monasteries in the fens and Beadoricsworth, the future Bury St Edmunds, disappeared.33 From 830 to 880, all Wessex and south Mercian houses were gone – Glastonbury left in ruin – or became places where clergy lived semi-communally, saw to the liturgy, and educated those who would become their successors. They generally lived under no rule. Knowles’ assessment became the standard on this period: Anglo-Saxon monasticism ‘had ceased to live by the time of Alfred [849–99]’.34 His apocalyptic view has been modified recently, as Janet Burton’s more temperate formulation demonstrates. Without denying that ‘the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God’, as the Anglo-Saxon chronicle for 793 has it, Burton recognizes ‘the possibility of the existence of a monastic sub-culture, which has left little trace on the written records’.35
South sheet, pp. 3–6. Julian Rivers, The law of organized religions: between establishment and secularism (Oxford, 2010), p. 2. 32 Codex Amiatinus is MS Laurenziano Amiatino 1, in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana di Firenze; the Lindisfarne Gospels is BL, Cotton MS Nero D IV. See Michelle P. Brown’s magisterial study, The Lindisfarne Gospels: society, spirituality and the scribe (London, 2006). On the Codex Amiatinus, Ernst Würthwein, The text of the Old Testament: an introduction to the Biblia Hebraica, 3rd edn, trans. Errol F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2014), p. 292. 33 Knowles, Monastic, p. 24. 34 Knowles, Monastic, p. 24. We see echoes of Knowles in most current work on monasticism; for example: ‘By 900 organized monastic life, and with it much of the learning of the early Anglo-Saxon church, had been totally destroyed’. Rivers, Organized, p. 3. 35 Burton, Yorkshire, p. 1. The Anglo-Saxon chronicle, trans. E.E.C. Gomme (London, 1909), The internet archive: https://archive.org/details/TheAngloSaxonChronicle [Accessed 5 April 2016]. 30 31
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DUNSTAN AND GLASTONBURY ABBEY There was enough of a ‘sub-culture’, in fact, to seed English monasticism’s revival in the mid tenth century and for monasteries to regain their place as the centers of art and education. A prime, energetic example was Glastonbury Abbey. Under the abbacy (c. 940–57) of the long-lived Dunstan (909–88), it ‘became both powerhouse and seedbed for a religious revival, … a superb example of a disciplined house of prayer, education and influence’, until the late eleventh century.36 Glastonbury and this context are important to the history of cartography for a host of reasons (and should receive more attention from map scholars): it was the first major Anglo-Saxon revival house, and examining its book collection gives us a good idea of what monks and other clerics of the time were reading and teaching. The fact that it had an early mappa mundi that might be related to the Anglo-Saxon Map is enough to encourage diplomatic investigation. As mentioned above, the abbey had a copy of Dionysius of Alexandria’s Periegesis, with which the map likely was paired. Dunstan had an interest in the computus; his student, protégé and future archbishop of Canterbury, Sigeric (d. 994), wrote an itinerary of the Roman kind. Dunstan invited Abbo of Fleury (c. 945–1004) to teach at Ramsey Abbey (985–7), and Abbo arrived with his copy of the Commentariius in somnium Scipionis, which contains a zonal mappa mundi.37 It would be surprising if these men did not discuss their geospatial interests, given that Glastonbury’s mappa mundi was probably at the abbey during their time, that Sigeric wrote an itinerary, that Abbo was a mapmaker interested in the computus, and that he and Dunstan were close: Abbo wrote three poems to Dunstan and dedicated his Passio sancti Edmundi to him. Knowles, following the great-man school of history writing, credits this ‘single individual’, Dunstan, with re-forming the ravaged world of English monasticism.38 While recognizing the datedness of Knowles’ approach, it is difficult to argue here with its soundness, especially if we consider the weakness of monastic culture after the Viking incursions, Dunstan and Glastonbury’s roles in the English Church and monastic reform, and his relationship with King Edmund (c.840–69). During his time there as a student, Glastonbury was a microcosm of the monastic macrocosm: it converted from a Celtic to a Saxon monastery and was sacked by Danish invaders, which meant that in the first decades of the tenth century there were no monastic buildings and no regular life. The site was partly inhabited by Irish pilgrims settled around the shrines to Saints Bridget and Patrick, with the whole mostly ‘a collection of scattered irregular buildings’.39 These scholar-pilgrims seem to be the ones who provided Dunstan with his early 36 37 38 39
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H.R. Loyn, The English Church, 940–1154 (London, 2014), p. 11. Abbo’s map is Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS. Phill. 1833, fol. 39v. Knowles, Monastic, p. 36. Knowles, Monastic, p. 37.
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education, for which he read the works of philosophy they provided and, of course, the Bible.40 In 939, Edmund I (c.922–46) succeeded his half-brother, Æthelstan (c. 893–939), and chose Dunstan as one of his chief advisors. In 940, he appointed Dunstan abbot of Glastonbury, which he converted into a Benedictine house.41 Edmund sent Dunstan to rebuild and revivify Glastonbury, because of the high regard he felt for this priest who was also his counsellor. Their relationship made Glastonbury Abbey the richest ecclesiastical community in the realm by 1066, quite a remarkable turnaround, given its penurious state when Dunstan arrived. Dunstan went on to become bishop of Worcester (957–58), bishop of London (958–60), and archbishop of Canterbury (960–78). He retired from the archbishopric in 978 but remained at Canterbury, dying there in 988. By 963, ‘an early disciple’ of Dunstan, Æthelwold (c. 908–84), and ‘a later protégé’, Oswald (d. 992), were bishops of Winchester and Worcester, respectively, and key figures in the monastic revival.42 These events, coupled with the 946 expulsion by King Edgar (959–75) of the secular canons from Winchester’s Old and New Minsters and Æthelwold’s replacement of them with Benedictines, gave the monastic revival a real boost. Abingdon, Winchester and Worcester became hives of monastic activity and kept versions of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle ongoing.43 Dunstan’s first biographer, the anonymous clerk ‘B’, and William of Malmesbury in the twelfth century tell us that Glastonbury had a substantial book collection, but that was not the case when Dunstan arrived as a student. As the abbey grew into ‘one of the most powerful monastic foundations in England’, with ‘immense wealth’, ‘numerous royal privileges’ and associations with ‘many prominent saints’, not to mention the ‘discovery’ of Arthur and Guinevere’s grave, the collection grew apace.44 What we might now call a library was substantial enough that, when John Leland visited between 1537 and 1542, he claimed that ‘the mere sight of the … books took my mind with an awe or stupor’. The ‘sight’ impelled him to further hyperbole: ‘there is so great a number that it is not easily paralleled anywhere else in Britain’.45 As a point of comparison, Durham owned Barrow, Clergy, p. 188. William Stubbs, ed., Vita Sancti Dunstani, Auctore B. Memorials of Saint Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1874), p. 23. 42 On Dunstan’s web of influence, Jesse D. Billett, The divine office in Anglo-Saxon England, 597–c. 1000 (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 150–1. 43 Knowles, Monastic, pp. 40 and 65. 44 James P. Carley, The chronicle of Glastonbury Abbey: an edition, translation and study of John of Glastonbury’s Cronica sive antiquitates Glastoniensis Ecclesie, trans. David Townsend (Woodbridge, 1985), p. xxx. Arthur and Guinevere’s grave was ‘discovered’ after the devastating fire in 1184, following the first round of fund raising to cover the costs of rebuilding. See Rodney Castleden, King Arthur: the truth behind the legend (London, 2003), pp. 193–4. 45 Quoted in James P. Carley, ‘John Leland and the contents of English pre-dissolution libraries: Glastonbury Abbey’, Scriptorium 40.1 (1986), 107–20, here p. 110. See also Webb 40 41
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nearly 900 books, as its fourteenth-century catalogs attest.46 Glastonbury’s collection was impressive, if not stupefyingly large: the Bodleian’s version of the earliest booklist (1247–48) shows 431 titles, not volumes, ‘with additions’, for a total of 701 manuscripts.47 Such budding libraries constituted the primary repository of English knowledge from the mid tenth century to the end of Henry I’s reign (1135) and the birth of the continental schools and universities. As the short list of books bequeathed c. 1017 to Glastonbury by Britwold and Æthelnoth and the 1247–8 list bear out, monastic books facilitated a reading practice focused more on the brethren’s spiritual than intellectual welfare. Reading was ‘a matter of ruminatio with the goal of reading authoritative texts slowly and repeatedly so as to facilitate either word-for-word or idea-by-idea recollection of their contents’.48 The emphasis was on the sacra pagina, the writings of Church Fathers and early monastics.49 Deep learning came not from lectures, questioning or disputation, as it did later in the schools and universities, but from the lectio divina and, ideally, divine revelation.
GLASTONBURY ABBEY BOOKS, MAP AND GEOSPATIAL AWARENESS The inventory includes titles that appear multiple times, suggesting their utility and popularity.50 While of great value, the Bodleian Library’s ‘Shorter Catalogue’ for Glastonbury does not include the ‘memoranda’, John of Glastonbury’s (fl. 1400) assessments of individual books.51 These invaluable notes tersely describe the books’ conditions and provide a sense of their ages: ‘novi’ (new), ‘vetusti set boni’ (old but in good shape), ‘vetusti set legibilies’ (old but legible), ‘vetustissimi’ (very old), or ‘vetusti et inutiles’ (old and unuseful/illegible). I follow Michael Lapidge in interpreting these labels: ‘It would be possible to challenge the implications for dating which I draw from the distinction between “uetustus” and “uetustissimus”; but there seems no reason to doubt that the books in question belonged to the Williams, ‘Glastonbury’, p. 46. 46 A.J. Piper, ‘The Libraries of the monks of Durham’, Medieval scribes, manuscripts & libraries: essays presented to N.R. Ker, ed. M.B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson (London, 1978), pp. 213–49, here p. 218. 47 On Canterbury, Neil R. Ker, ‘The migration of manuscripts from the English medieval libraries’, Books, collectors and libraries: studies in the medieval heritage, ed. Andrew G. Watson (London and Ronceverte, 1985), pp. 459–69, here p. 464. On 100–500 books, see Rodney M. Thomson, ‘Monastic and cathedral book production’, Morgan, Cambridge history, pp. 136–67, here p. 140. On the number of manuscripts and volumes, Carley, ‘Leland’, p. 110, n. 19. 48 Jan Ziolkowski, ‘Latin learning and Latin literature’, Morgan, Cambridge history, pp. 229–44, here p. 240. 49 Knowles, Monastic, p. 5. 50 Benedictines: the shorter catalogues: Glastonbury B39 [Accessed 22 May 2017]. 51 Webb Williams, ‘Glastonbury’, p. 53.
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pre-Conquest library of Glastonbury.’52 John’s memoranda give us a sense of which books survived the fire of 25 May 1184, which took nearly all of the relatively new Norman monastery, and allow us to pick out titles that were there during Dunstan and Sigeric’s time. Selections from the catalog show that Dunstan’s generation would have found a workaday collection of titles to facilitate abbey administration, personal study and teaching. Among what we might call the legal texts are the Capitularies of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious; Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury’s penitential; Pope Gelasius I’s decretals; a collection of Bishop Caesarius of Arles’ exhortations; and an account of papal canons and general councils of the early Church. The Acts of the Apostles, the Book of Revelation and a summary of Acts are logically followed by the Fathers, who make a prominent showing, most with multiple entries: Ambrose, Augustine, Basil, Bede, Gregory I, Isidore, Jerome and Origen. Juvencus’ ‘biography’ of Christ, taken from the Gospels, is there; along with Alcuin’s letters, his commentary on Basil and his exposition of the Mass; Old English sermon collections and a compilation of saints’ lives. Moving into pedagogy more narrowly defined, we find an array of grammars for teaching Latin, for example: Priscian’s ubiquitous On nouns, pronouns, and words; the Glosses on the significance of words; and Eutyches’ On words, which is in Dunstan’s Classbook. There are also Virgil’s Aeneid, Georgics and Bucolics; Bede’s Ecclesiastical history of the English people, and his On the art of metrics, a guide to poetic expression. Most geospatially relevant are the historical works, broadly defined, that were popular in monastic schools, especially those used by map makers and map readers through to the fourteenth century, like the Acts of the Apostles and works by Isidore, Orosius, Pliny and Solinus. The following titles from Glastonbury’s pre-Conquest booklist attest to the monks’ geospatial curiosity and awareness. They are tagged in the booklist with John of Glastonbury’s memoranda, which mark them as ninth or tenth century and thus contemporaneous with the missing mappa mundi. They are listed in chronological order by authors’ dates and run from the early fifth century BCE to c. 856:53 Plato (c. 429–c. 347 BCE) Cato (234–149 BCE) Sallust (86–34 BCE)
Timaeus … interprete Calchidio cum commentariis Liber Catonis (Disticha Catonis) cum bestiario Bellum Jugurthinum Bellum Catilinae Historiae
Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon, pp. 73–4. I have maintained the inventory’s spellings, making changes only to facilitate recognition and understanding; and so, Bellum Jugurthinum instead of Bellum Iugurthinum, but keeping the original Eneidos and not changing it to Aeneid. 52 53
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Virgil (70–19 BCE)
Eneidos
Livy (c. 59 BCE–17 CE)
De gestis Romanorum
Suetonius (c. 69–130)
Vitae Caesarum
Pliny the Elder (c. 23–79)
Historia naturalis
Luke (c. 80)
Actus apostolorum Breviarium apostolorum De situ et nominibus terrarum, cum mappa mundi De situ et nominibus terrarum [trans. by Priscian (fifth–sixth century)] De situ orbis terrarum Historiarum adversum paganos ‘Latina lingua’
Dionysius of Alexandria (second century)
Solinus (3rd c.) Orosius (early 5th c.) ‘Orosius’ ‘Dares Phrygius’ (fifth century)
Orosius Saxonice (c. 892–930, ‘in Anglia’, in English) Liber de excidio Trojae
Victor Vitensis († c. 505)
Historia persecutionis Africanae provinciae sub Geiserico et Hunrico regibus Wandalorum
Gildas (c. 500–570)
De excidio Britanniae
Arator (fl. 544)
Libri Aratoris de actibus apostolorum Liber de ordine creaturarum (seventh century, Hiberno-Latin) Etymologiae
Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) Bede (673–735) Alcuin(?) (c. 735–804) Hrabanus Maurus (c. 750–856) Anonymous
De natura rerum Historiae Anglorum Collatio Alexandri et Dindimi De compoto De naturis rerum Ultimo epistolae Alexandri [ad] Dindim[us] and Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem
These twenty-eight of some sixty ninth- and tenth-century titles account for 46 percent of the abbey’s pre-Conquest books, a significant number. As a selection of later books demonstrates, Glastonbury’s monks’ need to know and teach the human narrative, so as to understand their place (temporal and geographical) in it, did not diminish. They continued to look to the ancient world, while acquiring contemporary works. The books below postdate those in the above table and the missing mappa mundi. That does not mean they were not used alongside the map, though. Hereford
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Cathedral’s thirteenth-century library had none of the source books used to make its mappa mundi, but it did collect them in later years. As I have argued, the presence of the map and knowledge of its value as complement to written texts attracted them to the cathedral.54 The following titles are listed in chronological order by authors’ dates and range from the second to the late fourteenth centuries: Hegessipus (second century)
Quinque libri Egesippi historici
Julius Valerius (fourth century)
Gesta Alexandri Regis
Bede (673–735)
Historia Girwicensis coenobii (?Monkwearmouth and Jervaulx) Vita Benedicti et Ceolfridi abbatum
Freculf (d. c. 850)
Historiarum libri XII
William of Malmesbury (c. 1095–1143)
De gestis [regum] Anglorum (two copies) Antiquitas Glastoniensis ecclesiæ Vita Benigni, [Vita] Dunstani (two copies) [Vita] Indracti
Peter of Blois (c. 1130–1212)
Epistola Petri Blesensis de subversione terrae sanctae
Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146–1220)
Topographia Hiberniae
Jocelin of Furness (fl. 1175–1214)
Vita Patricii
Peter Comestor (d. 1178/79)
Liber historiarum scolasticarum (three copies)
Richard de Templo (fl. c. 1220)
Gesta Ricardi Regis Tabula Glastoniensis (late fourteenth century)
The selected titles in these tables date the inventory’s earliest and very late sections, and reveal an ongoing thirst for information about the human story. But what do they tell us about monastic geospatial curiosity and awareness? On one level, the answer is rather straightforward: the human story requires a setting – after all, we say its events have taken place – and a timeline. Each of these accounts, ranging from Plato’s in the fourth and fifth 54 Dan Terkla, ‘Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) and Anglo-French cartography’, Imago mundi 65.2 (2013), 161–79, here 167–8.
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centuries BCE to those described on Glastonbury’s Magna tabula during the late fourteenth century represent chapters of the human narrative set in select times, in select places and featuring select people engaged in select events.55 In other words, the men who made these books had a profound eschatological and pedagogical interest in what Hugh of St Victor later conceptualized and wrote about as historia.56 None of these Glastonbury books contain mnemonic schemes like Hugh’s, but the Benedictines did collect in memory the information they afforded, as the above excerpts from Eumenius and Cassiodorus suggest. After setting history in memory, they would have been able to situate geographically, even visualize, the people and deeds from biblical to current times and to use those visual situations during the lectio divina: reading (lectio), meditating on (meditatio) and contemplating (contemplatio) what they read, using the results in prayer (oratio).
COMPLEMENTARITY: BOOKS AND MAPS In order to see how maps extended the utility of these written texts and enhanced the lectio divina, I turn to Walter Melion and Susanne Külcher on memory and inscription. Their thoughts will help us work through the process and are worth quoting at some length: ‘memory enables the transmission of images: regardless of the material in which images are inscribed, that inscribing presupposes reference to a stored fund of images’.57 The ‘fund[s] of images’ preserve information but also paradigms, in this context, cartography’s representational conventions.58 Slightly modifying Melion and Külcher’s language further illuminates the transferral process: ‘the hand, when it inscribes an image on a material surface, is precipitating memory, [by] shaping and consolidating it’.59 The mapmaker takes information stored in visual memory, books and other maps, then epitomizes, shapes and inscribes it onto a new map. The mapmaker is the nexus of information translation from various sources and media, the maker of new personal and cultural memories that are transferred again and again in various media to myriad people across time. In what follows, I use the Actus apostolorum and, by implication, the Breviarium apostolorum, the Orosius Saxonice and the Anglo-Saxon map – standing proxy for the Glastonbury mappa mundi – to show how the abbey’s monks might have used their complementary map and books. I suggest The Tabula Glastoniensis is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. Hist. a.2. On Hugh and historia, see the introduction to this Companion and chapter four. 57 Walter Melion and Susanne Külcher, ‘Introduction: memory, cognition, and image production’, Images of memory: on remembering and representation, ed. Walter Melion and Suanne Külcher (Washington, DC, 1991), pp. 1–46, here p. 2. 58 Melion and Külcher, ‘Introduction’, p. 2. 59 Melion and Külcher, ‘Introduction’, p. 7. 55
56
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how that process might have worked, given what we know about the books the abbey owned, about the population’s geospatial curiosity, about the shared metaphorical nature of these written narratives and visual mappae mundi, and about Anglo-Saxon Christianity’s providentialism. I intend my conclusions to apply broadly to the list of Glastonbury’s geospatial texts in the above tables and to similar texts held by other pre-Conquest religious houses. As we shall see in chapter three, post-Conquest pairings of mappae mundi and books, which were similar in some ways, differed, because monastic education and reading lists changed with the advent of the schools and universities, especially in Paris. Along with Glastonbury’s map, four entries from the 1247–48 booklist attract attention. The first has two entries, ‘Actus apostolorum’ and ‘Breviarium apostolorum’, the Acts of the Apostles and its epitome. These manuscripts were probably given to the abbey by the monk Britwold c. 1017. The second entry is the Orosius Saxonice, the Old English translation and reworking of Orosius’ Latin Historiarum adversum paganos. The third and fourth entries, ‘Item Priscianus de situ orbis. vetus, set legi potest’ and ‘Priscianus Grammaticus de situ et nominibus terrarum, cum mappa mundi. Bon’, name Priscian’s Latin translation of Dionysius Periegetes’ Periegesis, his description of the ecumene in hexametric Greek verse.60 The ‘vetus, set legi potest’ version was the older of the two, and there is no memorandum appended to the other. I assume that the Priscian entries signify different manuscripts, since neither is coupled to another title, since they appear in different sections of booklist, and since the ‘vetus’ memorandum modifies only one. I also assume that the pronoun ‘cum’ in ‘cum mappa mundi’ signifies a map drawn or painted to complement the Periegesis, itself a descriptio mundi, and that this was a codicological map, since there is nothing to indicate that it was a singleton or so large as to have been displayed. I include Dionysius’ poem, because it is a description of the inhabited world and because one of Glastonbury’s Latin translations of it came with a mappa mundi.61 I include Acts and the Orosius Saxonice because they were commonly studied texts that fit under the rubric of historia and because they are concerned broadly with geography, with place(s) and with locomotion. We might conceptualize Acts and the Saxonice as mappable weaves of third-person narratives. My reasons for including the Priscians are obvious—they are verbal geographies. The Periegesis is a linear descriptio mundi and is heavily reliant on Orosius’ Historiarum adversum paganos. It 60 Dionysius Periegetes, Description of the known world, ed. and trans. J.L. Lightfoot (Oxford, 2014), which includes the Greek text, an English translation and extensive commentary. The Bodleian’s Benedictines: the shorter catalogues: Glastonbury B39 lists both, numbering one B39.169k and the other B39.296, but gives no help in differentiating them. On the ecumene, see the preface to this Companion. 61 On Dionysius’ poem, verbal geographies and the missing map, see Kupfer, ‘Traveling’, pp. 20–3.
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is replete with itineraries and surveys of entire regions, but it is not itself an itinerary. As its most recent editor and translator notes, the poem is no striking verbal depiction of ancient places: its ‘point is to evoke, not so much the places themselves, as the reader’s awareness of them, literary associations and cultural memory’.62 Its readers and auditors, therefore, would have benefitted from pairing it with a pictorial vade mecum, a map. No source I have located provides any hope that the map exists. Since its codex was no doubt stored with others, it might well have been destroyed in the 1184 fire. Fortunately, the Anglo-Saxon Map is roughly contemporary. As tempting as it might be, we cannot slot it, the oldest Anglo-Saxon world map, into Glastonbury’s Priscian codex, but associating them necessitates our considering the contents of the map’s codex, which will help us understand the benefits Glastonbury’s monks derived from this and other pairings. Four factors make this association, along with thinking about the missing map as the existent one’s exemplar, seem tenable. First, there is the ‘cum mappa mundi’ memorandum, tying the Glastonbury map to a copy of the Periegesis. The fact that the older Periegesis did not have a companion map makes us wonder why the newer copy did. One possibility is that the monks realized the benefits of a visual complement to Dionysius’ text and so commissioned or made the missing map. The Anglo-Saxon Map’s codex literally illustrates the value of this pairing. The map is adjacent to another copy of Priscian’s translation. The opening line of the prologue ties the map and text together and, implicitly, the Glastonbury map to its Periegesis: Incipit liber pergesis id est de situ terrae prisiciani grammatici urbis rome caesariensis doctoris quem de priscorum dicas excerpsis ormistarum sed et huic operi de tribus partibus videlicet Asia Africa Europa mappam depinxerat aptam in qua nationum promontoriorum fluminium insularum que situs atque monstrorum formatur honeste. Here begins the book Periegesis, the De situ terrae of the grammarian and doctor Priscian (from Caesar’s city of Rome), which is said to have been excerpted from the ancient Ornesta [Orosii mundi historia],63 that is to say the parts covering the three regions depicted on the attached map – Asia, Africa, and Europe – and on which nations, promontories, rivers, islands, and monstrous races are properly formed.64
Lightfoot, ed., Dionysius, ‘Introduction’, p. 5. On ‘ormistarum’, ‘Ornesta’ and ‘Orosii mundi historia’, see The history of cartography, volume one: cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago and London, 1987), p. 309. 64 The rubric appears on folio 57r of Tiberius B V. Transcription and translation are my own. 62 63
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The opening section of this entry ties Priscian’s Latin translation of Dionysius’ Greek poem to a ‘depicted’ map, a painted map from the same codex. Evelyn Edson translates ‘mappam … aptam’ as ‘apt map’, which is correct and reasonable.65 However, I find ‘attached map’ more to the point – and equally correct – because it is more codicologically descriptive. The phrase also conjoins the verbal descriptio and the visual depictio, the poem to the map. The section also ties Priscian, and Dionysius through him, to Orosius’ ubiquitous mappae mundi source text. As Lightfoot argues, there might be yet another link in the chain; she thinks that Dionysius had a map before him or in memory while writing, because his ‘eye seems free to wander, and orientation, where it is implied, is with regard to the direction of travel rather than some fixed and stable viewpoint … Sometimes it takes in entire continents, but it may also zoom in on details … It is by turns synoptic and particularistic.’66 These final two adjectives describe Dionysius’ ‘comprehensive mental view’ and simultaneously close focus on detail.67 As such, they describe the composition of non-schematic mappae mundi, with their broad, conventional overview of historia and idiosyncratic detail born of more local interests. In addition, Lightfoot’s conceptualization of Dionysius’ ocular journey over a source map’s surface describes most mappae mundi viewers’ eyepaths and the mental maps that result from their experience. Second, the Anglo-Saxon Map’s date, however contested, puts it in the right range as proxy. Looking back to the work of Frances Wormald and Neil R. Ker, B.C. Barker-Benfield has argued against Patrick McGurk’s date of c. 1050.68 Barker-Benfield believes that too many of Tiberius B V’s items ‘suggest the 990s’ and that the map ‘descends from one rather than many … exemplars’.69 This aligns him with C.M. Kauffmann, who posits a date of c. 1000 and an exemplar in the ninth-century, the Harley 647 manuscript.70 The preponderance of scholarly opinion, however, still favors dating the map to the first quarter or half of the eleventh century.71 Given how slowly the mappa mundi genre evolved, even a date of c. 1050 allows us to use the Anglo-Saxon Map as Glastonbury map’s proxy. Third, Dunstan’s protégé, Sigeric, had an interest in verbal mapping. After he was named archbishop, he traveled the Via Francigena to Rome 65 Evelyn Edson, The world map, 1300–1492: the persistence of tradition and transformation (Baltimore, 2007), p. 76. 66 J.L. Lightfoot, ‘Dionysius Periegetes, Description of the known world: an introduction’ (pdf file, Oxford Classics, University of Oxford, 2013), 218 pp., here p. 120. [This document is no longer available online, see now Lightfoot, ed., Dionysius.] 67 See the Oxford English dictionary on ‘synoptic’. 68 B.C. Barker-Benfield, ‘Shorter notice’, English historical review 101 (399) (1986), 474–5. 69 Barker-Benfield, ‘Shorter notice’, 474. 70 C.M. Kauffmann, Romanesque manuscripts, 1066–1190 (London, New York and Boston, 1975), pp. 77 and 103. 71 Peter Barber, ‘Medieval maps of the world’, Harvey, Context, pp. 1–44, here p. 24.
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to receive the pallium from Gregory V. The new metropolitan’s written itinerary of his return route from Rome became part of Tiberius B V, which includes the Anglo-Saxon Map.72 Dating from 990, it demonstrates a geospatial awareness, looks back to Roman list itineraries, and prefigures those of Matthew Paris (c. 1200–59). This Roman connection also calls to mind the odd-seeming vestiges of Roman centuriation on the Anglo-Saxon Map. Fourth, Dunstan was geospatially curious and intrigued by the computus, which implies an awareness of mappae mundi. He likely shared that awareness with the like-minded Abbo of Fleury during his time at Ramsey Abbey. It is also possible, given their interests, that Dunstan and/or Sigeric would have seen and used the Glastonbury map. It is not hard to imagine one or both of them carrying the map itself or a memory of it to their Canterbury seats, the cathedral scriptorium being the currently favored place for the Anglo-Saxon Map’s production. I suggest that there is no reason not to assume that the Glastonbury map was the Anglo-Saxon Map’s model. It might even be that, like the Anglo-Saxon Map, the Glastonbury map looked back to BL Harley MS 647.73 This codex, parts of which date to c. 820, contains twenty-three full-folio, celestial representations and a large solar system diagram. It also incorporates the oldest extant copy of Cicero’s translation of Aratus’ Phaenomena, a poem written to teach the reader how to identify constellations and predict the weather.74
READING LIKE A MONK; OR, COMPLEMENTARY PAIRINGS Since the time of Augustine, whose rule for monastic life relies heavily on Acts 4.32–35, monastics were seen as imitators of the apostles, who were thought to have lived the vita communis, holding everything in common. This was especially true after the first millennium, when the Hebrew Bible declined in popularity and the vita communis was equated with the vita apostolica, the apostolic way of life.75 This shift was tied to the rise of the gospels and Acts of the Apostles, which chronicle the viae apostolicae, the BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B V, fols 24r–28v. Kauffmann writes of a ‘[Carolingian] Harley 647-Tiberius B V. tradition’ and argues that the very similar Bodleian Library MSS Bodley 614 and Digby 83, which include excerpts from Abbo of Fleury, ‘go back to a model related to Tiberius B V’, that Bodley 614 and Tiberius B V ‘descend from the same archetype’, and that ‘the illustrations of both manuscripts [Bodley 614 and Digby 83] go back to a similar model to the Anglo-Saxon MS Cotton, Tiberius B V., which in turn was derived from the Carolingian MS Harley 647’. Kauffmann, Romanesque, pp. 77 and 103. 74 Aaron Poochigian, trans., Aratus: phaenomena (Baltimore, 2010), p. ix. 75 Patricia Ranft, Medieval theology of work: Peter Damian and the medieval religious renewal movement (New York, 2016), p. 84; and Kevin Madigan, Medieval Christianity: a new history (New Haven and London, 2015), p.125. 72 73
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apostles’ evangelical travels. In the early eleventh century, Glastonbury’s Benedictines had in their copies of Acts and the Orosius Saxonice, to name just two, texts that would have allowed them to vicariously follow the viae apostolicae, to ‘traverse mentally what others in their travels have collected with a great deal of effort’, as Cassiodorus put it. Acts tells the story of the inception and growth of a new religious movement centered in Jerusalem and its transformation into ‘a worldwide movement’ centered in Rome.76 This account of Jesus’ itinerary from Galilee to Jerusalem and the movements of his peripatetic apostles appears in the synoptic Gospels, and what has come to be called Luke-Acts. The apostles do as Jesus mandates: they ‘“bear witness for … [him] in Jerusalem, and all over Judea and Samaria, and away to the ends of the earth”’.77 In these books, Christianity’s ‘geographical progression’ and ecumenical expansion begin on Pentecost in the Old City of Jerusalem and expand outward.78 The apostolic itineraries pass through fifty-eight locations, sometimes more than once. In chronological order of first mention, they are Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, Damascus, Galilee, Lydda, Sharon, Joppa, Caesarea, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch, Tyre, Sidon, Salamis, Paphos, Iconium, Derbe, Lystra, Pisidia, Pamphilya, Perga, Attalia, Phrygia, Galatia, Mysia, Bithynia, Troas, Macedonia, Samothrace, Neapolis, Philippi, Thyatira, Amphipolis, Apollonia, Thessalonica, Beroea, Athens, Corinth, Syria, Cenchreae, Ephesus, Achaia, Assos, Chios, Samos, Miletus, Cos, Rhodes, Patara, Ptolemais, Phoenix, Sea of Adria, Malta, Syracuse, Rhegium, Puteoli and Rome.79
As this toponymic itinerary shows, the outward expansion ends in Rome, center of the empire, ultimately to become the center of western Christianity. This shift, according to Luke-Acts and the Orosius Saxonice, a thoroughgoing rewriting of Orosius’ Historiarum adversum paganos and therefore companion to the Periegesis, is inevitable, predetermined by biblical typology and the providentialism that drives it.80 The ultimate authority for medieval Christians himself confirms this. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus speaks to Clopas, whom Hegesippus claims was Joseph’s brother and so Jesus’ uncle, and his anonymous companion, a kind of 76 The new English Bible, with the apocrypha: Oxford study edition, ed. Samuel Sandmel et al. (New York and Oxford, 1976), p. 141. 77 Acts 1.7–8. 78 On ‘geographical progression’, New English Bible, p. 141. 79 These toponyms appear in Acts 8.1–28.15. Some are mentioned multiple times, Jerusalem most often. 80 On the substantial rewriting, The Old English history of the world: an Anglo-Saxon rewriting of Orosius, ed. and trans. Malcolm R. Godden (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2016), p. xi et passim. For a deeper comparatist analysis, see William A. Kretzschmar, Jr., ‘Adaptation and Anweald in the Old English Orosius’, Anglo-Saxon England 16 (2007), 127–46.
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Everyman representing the reader or auditor: Jesus ‘“began with Moses and all the prophets, and explained to them the passages which referred to himself in every part of the scriptures”’, proving via self-typology that the Messiah has from the beginning been ‘“bound to suffer thus before entering upon his glory”’.81 The anonymous author of the Orosius Saxonice was a west Saxon with good Latin and so probably a cleric. Unlike its Latin source, the Old English world history contains ‘a detailed description of the Germanic parts of Europe and their … inhabitants’, along with the lengthy accounts of Ohthere of Hålogaland and Wulfstan of Hedeby’s voyages around the Baltic and Scandinavia.82 The writer directed the narrative away from the classically trained reader and toward an Anglo-Saxon one by including these voyages; by omitting a substantial part of the Latin text, including much on the later Roman republic; and by rendering Orosius’ polemical tone more objective.83 Most importantly, he emphasized the predestined trajectory of history that fitted the English into ‘a Grand Design which had not ended with Rome’, but that would end, as Jesus explains, ‘in my father’s house, [where] there are many dwelling places’.84 How might we conceptualize a Glastonbury monk pairing Acts and the Orosius Saxonice with our proxy mappa mundi? How would he, who could not journey into the world, learn about the world but through history and maps? Acts and the Orosius Saxonice recount events that take place in time and focus on the people involved; therefore, each is historia in the Hugonian sense. Luke and the Orosius Saxonice author shaped events and characters to suit their moral and eschatological imperatives and in so doing contributed chapters to a determinist human narrative. Their narratives comprise, interweave and re-present paths trodden by historical figures. As such, like the mappae mundi reliant on them, the tales are hodological, about spreading the Word by enabling virtual travel.85 That word, so common in the twenty-first century, derives from postclassical Latin virtualis, signified power or potency and gives us a sense of what a monk might have experienced while reading or hearing these tales and situating their events on a mappa mundi.86 The word also carried 81 Luke 24.26–27. Eusebius makes the claim about Hegesippus and Clopas. Eusebius, The Church history, trans. and commentary Paul L. Maier (Grand Rapids, 1999), p. 92. 82 Godden, Old English, p. xii. Ohthere was probably a Norwegian, and Wulfstan might have been English, not from Hedeby, that is, Haithabu on the southeast coast of Jutland. See Godden’s note to 1.21, p. 434. The text has him sailing from Hedeby to Truso in Denmark. For an English translation of Othere and Wulfstan’s accounts, ‘The Accounts of Othere and Wulfstan’, Viking sources in translation, ed. Andrew Winroth. Yale University: https:// classesv2.yale.edu/access/content/user/haw6/Vikings/voyagers.html [Accessed 5 May 2017]. 83 Godden, Old English, pp. xii–xiii, and Kretzschmar, ‘Adaptation’, 127. 84 Kretzschmar, ‘Adaptation’, 143; and John 14.2. 85 From the Greek hodos, ‘path’, and logos, ‘word’ or ‘teaching’. On hodology and ancient texts, Lightfoot, ‘Introduction’, pp. 23–4. 86 ‘Virtual’ in the OED.
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the more modern sense of something that takes place in the mind, not in actuality. In that sense, a monk ‘following’ characters from Acts or the Orosius Saxonice would be doing so metaphorically, which shows us that these hodological narratives are built on life is journey, a conceptual metaphor that structures countless narratives, most obviously those featuring locomotion.87 We find this ubiquitous metaphor throughout the Bible and in patristic writings – perhaps most powerfully, for a monastic reader, in Jesus’ words to Thomas: ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’88 life is journey is not a cliché: it is the most compelling, ubiquitous trope we have for (re) structuring time and events, for describing and understanding the world by re-telling the human story. Mappae mundi re-present significant places in their source books and enable mental locomotion. They are themselves metaphors, because they implicitly claim to be the territories they represent. Like every metaphor, which is derived from the Greek μεταpresen, ‘to transfer’, mappae mundi present this failed equivalency through the copula ‘is’: mappa mundi is world. Each term names a conceptual domain that helps us think about the other term and domain. They also demonstrate the impossibility of immediacy, of closing the gap, here, between the two-dimensional map and three-dimensional world. Recognition of this fact rarely discourages a reader or viewer; it often has a motivating effect. When a Glastonbury monk saw the abbey mappa mundi, he would have transferred to it mental images of the world he created while reading and/or seeing other maps. Because mappae mundi, Acts and the Orosius Saxonice are founded on this same metaphor, their re-presentations of chapters from the human narrative make them ideal, even symbiotic, companions. Mappae mundi users needed complementary books to add persons, places and events to the graphical re-presentation of the mundus they observed. In turn, monastic readers needed complementary maps to geo-locate people, places and events. Put simply, Glastonbury monks would pair verbal accounts of locomotion with visual geo-location to more fully conceptualize and memorize historia. The process likely followed the one laid out by Edward Tolman, who coined the term ‘cognitive map’, and takes us back to hodology. Tolman split his cognitive map into strip and comprehensive maps. The former 87 Small capitals are the customary way to represent metaphors. George Lakoff, Women, fire, and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind (Chicago, 1987); Metaphors we live by, 2nd edn (Chicago, 2003); George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than cool reason: a field guide to poetic metaphor (Chicago and London, 1989). 88 John 14.6. A very short list of other examples includes Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante Alighieri’s Commedia, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, Edmund Spenser’s Fairie queene, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness, Kate Chopin’s The awakening, Jack Kerouac’s On the road, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse now, Gita Mehta’s A river sutra, Cormac McCarthy’s The road and Cheryl Strayed’s Into the wild.
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‘depicts only the spatial relationship between two points: an unbroken line surrounded by blank space on the paper’ (or parchment) – a path. As the cognitive map ‘gains depth, breadth, and context, it becomes a comprehensive map’.89 When that occurs, the ‘cognitive cartographer’ can ‘visualize the orientation of point A to point B, point B to point C, point A to point C, and so on’.90 The more information the monastic reader gained from adding ‘sets of overlapping networks’, that is, the stories of people, places and events in time, the closer he would come to owning a comprehensive cognitive map.91 More specifically, a Glastonbury Benedictine filling in such cognitive territory might note on the abbey’s mappa mundi locations from the apostolic peregrinations in Acts, like Ephesus, Galilee, Jerusalem, Philippi and Rome. He might then slot in mapped sites of personal interest from those peregrinations, perhaps Galatia after Acts’ Ephesus and Joppa after Acts’ Jerusalem. He might also note the map’s Ptolemais, and so conjure the Greek Pentapolis, the other four cities of which were Appolonia, Berenice, Cyrene and Taucheira.92 Naturally, he (and the apostles) would end in Rome, which he would have understood to be typologically determined as central and Christian. This activity would pull the text’s geo-descriptions closer to the map’s geo-depictions and slightly narrow the unbridgeable metaphorical gap between the reader, Christ and his apostles. Such a process also could accommodate longer, more complex narratives like the Orosius Saxonice. The monastic reader, situated in one place, as is seemly (to go back to Cassiodorus), would translate people and events from book to map, populating and animating its toponyms with the Orosius Saxonice’s armies, Scythians, Macedonians, Britons, Hungarians and Germanic voyagers as they made their ways across the ecumene. As with Luke-Acts, the Orosius’ chapter of the human story drives toward its conclusion in Rome. These narratives from Glastonbury’s early booklist, along with the ‘pervasive and dominating pan-European Christianity’ shown on the Anglo-Saxon Map (or its abbey model) would have reinforced the reader’s belief in the day when Christianity would no longer be just an imperium in imperio.93
89 Milner, Pinpoint, p. 116. Milner paraphrases Edward Tolman, ‘Cognitive maps in rats and men’, Psychological review (1948), which I have been unable to obtain. 90 Milner, Pinpoint, p. 116. 91 Elton Barker and Stefan Bouzarovski, ‘Between east and west: movement and transformations in Herodotean topology’, New worlds from old texts: revisiting ancient space and place, ed. Elton Barker, Stefan Bouzarovski, Christopher Pelling and Leif Isaksen (Oxford, 2016), pp. 155–80, here p. 158. 92 There were other clusters of five, each known as Pentapolis, but their towns do not appear in Acts. 93 Catherine Delano Smith, ‘The intelligent pilgrim: maps and pilgrimage’, Eastward bound: travel and travellers, 1050–1550, ed. Rosamund Allen (Manchester and New York, 2004), pp. 107–30, here p. 113.
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As a Glastonbury monk worked his way through the abbey book presses, his physical and cognitive mappae mundi would become layered over time, until they were synoptic repositories of as many narratives as he read or heard. The cognitive maps of monastic readers – a group that included mapmakers – were individually unique, because of what they read, saw and highlighted; however, they also shared an awareness of the mappa mundi’s conventional layout. Thinking about monastic books and maps in this way helps us understand why each mappae mundi is, like Dionysius’ Periegesis, ‘by turns synoptic and particularistic’: they are built on the same ecumene schematic, but transformed into fascinatingly different re-presentations of the habitable world and of those who ranged over it, literally and figuratively, for centuries.94 Thinking about the relationships of Glastonbury’s books and maps also reveals the florescence of a small monastic community with a limited purview into a large and powerful community with a library comprehensive enough to support expansive intellectual and spiritual endeavors, a community curious enough about the world beyond its abbey to prize and use an image of that world.
94
Lightfoot, ‘Introduction’, p. 120.
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BOOKS AND MAPS: ANGLO-NORMAN DURHAM AND GEOSPATIAL AWARENESS DAN TERKLA
In these ways, [collecting many books and instruments,] Merton College, especially in the fourteenth century, provided a powerful intellectual context for the mappamundi, perhaps as much an aid to cosmological as to cartographical or geographical studies. R.M. Thomson1
L
Certainly, the study of both the historical works and the surviving manuscripts produced in Northumbria in this period testifies to the importance of the sharing of both books and ideas across the whole region, within what emerges as a very distinctive spiritual and intellectual culture. Anne Lawrence-Mathers2
ibrary holdings and clerical education in religious houses across Anglo-Norman England were flourishing in the twelfth century. This flowering fostered an increase in the kind of geospatial awareness and curiosity in the human story that we saw in chapter two, with its focus on pre-Conquest Glastonbury Abbey. This chapter turns to post-Conquest Durham and environs to assess the growth and differences in this awareness and curiosity. We locate helpful information in Durham Cathedral Priory’s book catalogs and in the reading interests of three men who were there in the third quarter of the twelfth century: Lawrence of Westminster (d. 1172), Hugh de Puiset (c. 1125–95) and Roger of Howden (d. 1201). These men lived and worked during the second monastic revival and so during England’s cartographical florescence, which proceeded apace and symbiotically with
R.M. Thomson, ‘Medieval maps at Merton College, Oxford’, Imago mundi 61.1 (2009), 84–90, here 85. 2 Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (York, 2003), p. 261. 1
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an unprecedented expansion in book production and collection. Their interwoven stories and the relationship of northern mapping and books show us that geospatial engagement was not unique for men to their rank and time and points to twelfth-century Durham as an important node in a nascent cartographical network.
COUNTING AND LOCATING MAPPAE MUNDI After the Conquest, England and northern France became a relatively homogenous intellectual and cultural region, thanks in part to increased cross-Channel clerical communication. Evidence of this appears in the number of mappae mundi from the period covered by this Companion and in the kinds of books made, used and disseminated by canons regular and secular, by those who were cloistered and those who were ‘of the world’. Some of the extant mappae mundi from between 900 and 1100 are codicological, that is, bound into books; others are stand-alone items.3 The first volume of The history of cartography lists some ninety-six mappae mundi for the period c. 700–1350. Twenty-eight of those date from c. 700–1100 and sixty-eight from the remaining 250 or so years covered by this Companion.4 We can add to those ninety-six the 101 pre-thirteenthcentury mappae mundi that Patrick Gautier Dalché found in, by my count, seventy Bibliothèque Nationale de France manuscripts.5 That raises the total number of mappae mundi from Western Europe, c. 700–1350, to around 197. Forty-eight maps in Gautier Dalché’s catalog date from the late eleventh to the thirteenth century. Adding them to the History’s sixty-eight post-1100 maps results in a total of 116 of 197 mappae mundi of various types being made within this Companion’s timeframe.6 Durham was one of the many monastic, canonical and collegiate English institutions that had mappae mundi between c. 1000 and 1400. A short account of English places with mappae mundi during this period illustrates their dispersal across the country (Figure 3). As we saw in chapter two, Glastonbury Abbey’s 1247–48 book inventory lists a tenth-century mappa mundi that might have been the Anglo-Saxon Map’s exemplar. Current scholarly work suggests that the map was made at Canterbury between 1025 3 J.B. Harley and David Woodward, eds, The history of cartography, volume one: cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (Chicago and London, 1987), p. 286. 4 Harley and Woodward, History, pp. 359–63. We must use these numbers cautiously, realizing that datings change, appear as ranges and as ‘circa’, and that Harley and Woodward’s History is over thirty years old. 5 Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Mappae mundi antérieures au XIIIe siècle dans les manuscrits Latins de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France’, Scriptorium: revue internationale des études relatives aux manuscrits 52 (1998), 102–62. Numbers 91 and 101 in Gautier Dalché’s catalog also appear in the History’s catalog and are counted only once here. 6 On the different types of mappae mundi, see the preface to this Companion.
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and 1050. While Abbo of Fleury taught at Ramsey Abbey from 985 to 987, Byrhtferth of Ramsey (c. 970–1020) copied his Commentarii in somnium Scipionis, which includes a zonal mappa mundi. William of Avalun borrowed a world map from Lincoln Cathedral, as noted in Chancellor Hamo’s c. 1183 library account, and in 1187 Worksop/ Radford Priory received a mappa mundi as part of a bestiary donated by Canon Philip Apostolorum of Lincoln. On his death in 1195, Durham Cathedral Priory received Bishop Hugh de Puiset’s mappa mundi, which has been cited as the exemplar of the Sawley Map (c. 1190). Roger of Howden’s Expositio mappe mundi (An exposition of the world map), a verbal map composed in Yorkshire during the 1190s, was at Rievaulx Abbey and perhaps Kirkham Priory, which was in communication with Hereford Cathedral.7 King Henry III had a mappa mundi painted on his bedchamber wall at Westminster Palace (c. 1236) and another mural map in the Great Hall of his palace at Winchester (c. 1239). Henry’s friend, Matthew Paris, was making maps at St Albans in the 1250s. He referred to Henry’s Westminster map and to two others at Waltham Abbey, one of which, he writes, belonged to Robert Melkeley, about whom nothing is known.8 The Psalter Map might have been made at Westminster Abbey c. 1262.9 Edmund, second earl of Cornwall, had the Duchy of Cornwall Map made c. 1286 for use in the College of Bonhommes he founded in Ashridge and for display in his Painted Chamber at Berkhamsted Castle.10 Edward I seems to have had two portable maps made between 1299 and 1306.11 The Hereford Map was made c. 1300; and Merton College, Oxford, had its library wall map before 1308.12
7 Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, p. 270; and Mellie Naydenova-Slade and David Park, ‘The earliest holy kinship image, the Salomite controversy, and a little-known centre of learning in northern England in the twelfth century’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 71 (2008), 95–119, here 118. 8 On Paris and mapping, see chapter seven in this Companion; Catherine Delano Smith and Roger Kain, English maps: a history (London, 1999), p. 15; and Ernest William Tristram, English medieval wall painting: thirteenth century, 2 vols (London and Oxford, 1944), vol. 1, pp. 178–87 and 180, n. 3. 9 On the Psalter Map, see chapter eight in this Companion. 10 On the Duchy map, see chapter nine in this Companion. 11 For ‘unus panus depictus ad modum mappa mundi’, see Edward’s 1299 Wardrobe accounts in Lateinische Schriftquellen zur Kunst in England, Wales und Schottland, vom Jahre 901 biz zum Jahre 1307, ed. Otto Lehmann-Brockhaüs, 5 vols (München, 1955–60), vol. 2, p. 224. See ibid., p. 302 for another record: ‘Unus pannus regi [Edward I] datus ad modum mappe mundi’. For a complete list of the ten references, P.D.A. Harvey, ‘Maps of the world in the English wardrobe’, Foundations of medieval scholarship: records edited in honour of David Crook, ed. Paul Brand and Sean Cunningham (York, 2008), pp. 51–5. 12 On the Hereford Map, see chapter ten in this Companion.
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SETTING THE SCENE: ENGLAND’S SECOND MONASTIC REVIVAL How did the post-Conquest monastic revival seed the proportionate growth of English mappae mundi from c. 1100 to 1350? William I’s reforms were pervasive but not fully responsible for the ‘single greatest shift in medieval intellectual history’ that led to the subsequent growth in the numbers of monastic books and maps.13 The Conqueror’s so-called feudalization of the Anglo-Saxon Church was coupled to a number of continental developments that had profound effects in England: (1) urban expansion; (2) the birth of a cash economy and the peripatetism it enabled; (3) conciliar Church decrees on pastoral care and clerical teaching; (4) the papacy’s ascendant power; (5) the emergence and growth of the canons regular, particularly the Augustinians; and (6) the birth and expansion of urban schools and universities and the concomitant decline of monastic pedagogical preeminence.14 These large phenomena, along with the dominance of Latin as the lingua franca, molded England and northern Europe into a relatively homogenous intellectual region, in which Durham Cathedral Priory rose to prominence and built an outstanding library. England’s first monastic revival came into its own in part because of the appearance of capable, even remarkable, individuals like Dunstan, Æthelwold and Oswald. However, were it not for royal favor, family connections and the intervention of King Edgar (c. 943–75), it is unlikely that men like them could have set the revival in motion. The widely circulated writings of Bede (672/3–675) show how ‘monks should co-operate most closely with bishops and temporal rulers for the good of the Church and the country’; and the Regularis concordia, which was approved at the Synod of Winchester (c. 973), recognized the ‘king and queen as ex officio patrons and guardians of the whole monastic institute’.15 Bishop Æthelwold and ‘a large number of English bishops, abbots and abbesses ratified’ the Regularis, giving English monasticism ‘a bent quite peculiar to itself ’.16 Royal investiture and financial support meant that by 1066 monasteries held a vast portion of landed wealth, to say nothing of artworks, including the book arts, and other treasures.17 The result was powerful abbeys endowed by powerful families, independent of one another, largely unbeholden to higher ecclesiastical 13 Christopher de Hamel, ‘Books and society’, The Cambridge history of the book in Britain, 1100–1400, vol. 2, ed. Nigel Morgan and Rodney M. Thomson (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 3–21, here p. 8. De Hamel sees the shift starting c. 1150. 14 On the evolution of the universities from cathedral schools, Edward Grant, Science and religion, 400 B.C. to A.D. 1550: from Aristotle to Copernicus (Westport, CT, 2004), p. 149. 15 David Knowles, The monastic order in England: a history of its development from the times of St Dunstan to the fourth Lateran Council, 940–1216, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1966), p. 24. 16 Steven Vandenputten, ‘Canterbury and Flanders in the late tenth century’, Anglo-Saxon England 35 (2006), 219–44, here 222. On peculiarity, see Knowles, Monastic order, p. 45. 17 Domesday records thirty-five Benedictine houses holding one-sixth of the country’s revenue in 1086. See Knowles, Monastic order, p. 100.
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authority, existing in close relationships with the landowning class, under the influence and authority of the reigning sovereign and relying on the pool of oblate youngsters to sustain their numbers.18 This was the pre-Conquest situation, and it suited William’s practice. Between 1025 and 1066 in Normandy, he set in motion an expansionist monastic reform that privileged education, historiography and the arts, and encouraged his barons to follow suit. They became ‘patrons of monks and churches, and thereby of architecture, art and learning’, and by 1066 had established 28 houses in his Norman dominions. These monasteries, while they received the benefactions of the Duke and his vassals, were from the beginning caught up into the social and feudal organization depending upon him as head. His permission was necessary for their establishment; he appointed the abbots and received custody of their possessions during an interregnum; and some years before the Conquest a number of houses had come to hold of him by military service.19
By implementing the tried-and-true hierarchical system of vassalage, William tied together Church and duchy. In a (dated) word, William feudalized Norman monasticism and established himself as its liege lord. William imported the Benedictine Lanfranc (c. 1010–89), abbot of St Etienne in Caen and former prior of Bec Abbey, one of William’s foundations, to help him reorganize the English Church and shape it to his Norman model. In 1070, he had Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury (c. 1000–72), who crowned Harold Godwinson king of England after the Conquest, deposed and replaced with Lanfranc. Like Dunstan before him, Lanfranc aimed to revivify and reform English monasticism, which had become observationally lax and to varying degrees in various houses what we might call ir-regular. With William’s support, from 1070 forward Lanfranc set about to mold English houses in the image of Benedictine Cluny, the first house to implement the Regula Sancti Benedicti (Rule of St Benedict) as its reformist guide, installing Norman priors in important English houses, like Durham. These houses generally followed the customs and observations imported by their new abbots, and each was unique in the degree of reform it underwent. These installations caused distress, but set the scene for the Norman monastic conquest. The result was the rapid expansion of Anglo-Norman monasticism, an increase in the number of Norman and indigenous aspirants to the regular life, and a concerted construction campaign.
18 19
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Knowles, Monastic order, pp. 92–3. Knowles, Monastic order, pp. 87–8.
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CROSS-CHANNEL CONNECTIONS: DURHAM AS EXAMPLE By the end of the twelfth century, Durham Cathedral Priory’s insular connections were extensive, and ‘leading members of the priory were in contact with the schools of both St Victor and of St Bernard of Clairvaux’, along with the schools of Laon and Chartres.20 Durham became ‘a bastion of advanced European scholarship’ and was ‘very much in the mainstream of European theological and intellectual development’.21 To take but one important example, the priory received and disseminated works by Hugh of St Victor to Whitby and Tynemouth, much as St Alban did with his writings.22 We have accounts of two men whose travels and educations connect Durham to the Parisian abbey of St Victor. Robert of Adington studied at St Victor in the 1180s and gave forty-eight books he stored there to Durham. The first leaves of Durham MS A. III. 16 record this very generous benefaction, most of which consisted of glossed books of the Bible: ‘Here are the books of Master Robert of Adington, stored at St Victor. The library totals forty-eight books’. (‘Hic sunt libri magistri Roberti de Ædnt’ repositi apud sanctorum Victorem. Bibliotheca tota in xlviij quaternis’.)23 Robert’s title of ‘master’ (‘magistri’) suggests he took that degree in Paris and taught in the schools. Robert’s list also records his witnessing two of Hugh de Puiset’s charters and two of the bishop’s son; so, he was in the north for some time. Robert provides a human connection to the Continent but seems to have had no interest in mapping. Someone more immediately germane to northern mapping awareness is Lawrence of Westminster (d. 1173); he was ‘a Durham man’, Hugh of St Victor’s student and stenographer, a member of the St Albans community, abbot of Westminster Abbey until his death, and lifelong admirer of Hugh and St Victor.24 We know little of Lawrence’s early life, but he seems to have left England in the early 1120s and was at St Victor during this decade. Lawrence was an ‘external’, someone akin to today’s study-abroad students and not an Augustinian novice. Maurice of Rievaulx recommended that Lawrence study with Hugh. In a letter from Paris to his Cistercian referee, Lawrence wrote that he ‘embraced his 20 Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, p. 146. On Hugh of St Victor and maps, see the introduction and chapter four to this Companion, and Dan Terkla, ‘Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) and Anglo-French cartography’, Imago mundi 65.2 (2013), 161–79. 21 Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, pp. 159, 143, 160 and 161. 22 F.E. Croydon, ‘Abbot Laurence of Westminster and Hugh of St Victor’, Medieval and Renaissance studies 2 (1950), 169–71. Croydon writes that Tynemouth was a ‘cell of Durham’ but ‘claimed also by St Albans’, p. 171. 23 For the transcription and information on Robert, see R.A.B. Mynors, Durham Cathedral manuscripts (Oxford 1939), pp. 78–9. The translation is mine. 24 On ‘Durham man’, Croydon, ‘Laurence’, 170. Also Terkla, ‘Hugh’, 170–1 et passim; and R.M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey, 1066–1235 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 45–6 and 65–6.
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[Hugh’s] teaching with supreme diligence’, because of his ‘moral excellence’, ‘learning’, ‘saintliness’, ‘polished doctrine’ and ‘beauty of manners’.25 Lawrence was at St Victor while Hugh was lecturing and working on his signature theographical texts (c. 1125–29): the De archa Noe (On Noah’s ark), the Descriptio mappe mundi (The description of a world map), and the Libellus de formatione archae (Little book on the formation of the Ark).26 Lecturing on these works and before such a map was consonant with Hugh’s visualist mnemonics and would have benefitted students in myriad ways.27 Alluding to St Victor’s reformist bent, Conrad Rudolph notes that the map must have been ‘the focal point of a series of brilliant and highly political lectures’.28 Lawrence surely would have taken mental images of the St Victor map to Durham. He did carry notes on Hugh’s lectures, reportationes, that he made on ‘tabellas’ (wax tablets) and that Hugh vetted weekly. This was common in the schools and likely accounted for the creation of other texts attributed to Hugh.29 Most significantly, Lawrence might have been the stenographer for the Libellus and Descriptio, which are about envisioning and making a mappa mundi. The first of two recensions of the Libellus is a reportatio, and Conrad Rudolph argues earnestly for Lawrence as its creator, based on its stylistic deficiencies, as compared with Hugh’s other work and with the second Libellus recension.30 Patrick Gautier Dalché makes a similar case for the Descriptio, demonstrating that its preface differs stylistically from the body of text, which seems to have been edited by Hugh to his standard.31
25 Transcriptions of Lawrence’s letters in Bernhard Bischoff, ‘Aus der Schule Hugos von St Viktor’, Aus der Geisteswelt des Mittelalter 1, Supplementband 3.1 (1935), 246–50, here 250. The translation is mine. See also Stephen c. Ferruolo, The origins of the university: the schools of Paris and their critics, 1100–1215 (Stanford, 1985), p. 31. Paul Rorem, Hugh of Saint Victor (Oxford, 2009), p. 8; Franklin Harkins, Reading and the work of restoration (Toronto, 2009), p. 280, n.14; and Thomson, St Albans, p. 46. 26 For more on these key works, see the introduction to this Companion. 27 See chapter four in this Companion, in which Nathalie Bouloux develops Patrick Gautier Dalché’s thoughts on Hugh’s map as the Munich Map’s exemplar. 28 Conrad Rudolph, ‘First I find the center point’: reading the text of Hugh of St Victor’s mystic ark (Philadelphia, 2004), p. 2. Rudolph, Patrice Sicard and others, including myself, believe that there was such a map; Mary Carruthers disagrees. See Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski, ‘Hugh of St. Victor, A little book about constructing Noah’s Ark’, The medieval craft of memory: an anthology of texts and pictures, ed. Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski (Philadelphia, 2002), pp. 41–70, here pp. 40–1; also Patrice Sicard, Diagrammes médiévaux et exégèse visuelle: le ‘Libellus de formatione arche’ de Hugues de Saint-Victor, Bibliotheca Victorina 4 (Turnhout, 1993); Hugo de Sancto Victore, De archa Noe, Libellus de formatione arche, ed. P. Sicard, 2 vols (Turnhout, 2001). 29 The Notulae and Miscellania, for example. Rudolph, Reading, p. 88, n. 16; and H.P. Pollitt, ‘Considerations on the structure and sources of Hugh of St Victor’s notes on the Octateuch’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 33 (1966), 5–38; and Odon Lottin, ‘Quelques recueils d’écrits attribués à Hugues de Saint-Victor (1128–1129)’, Géographie du monde au moyen âge et à la renaissance, ed. Monique Pelletier (Paris, 1989), pp. 9–31. 30 See Rudolph, Reading, pp. 10–32. 31 Rudolph considers the Libellus to have ‘a lack of clarity’. See his Reading, p. 10.
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The De archa Noe, Libellus and Descriptio are key expressions of Hugh’s theology, visuality and cartography. We know that Durham did not have a copy of the Descriptio; however, it did own a copy of the Libellus, which records show under its alternate title, ‘De reformacione archa’.32 The priory also had multiple copies of the Ark texts, which are listed under various names.33 Whether these or their exemplars arrived with Lawrence, we cannot say; however, Rudolph and Gautier Dalché provide compelling arguments tying Lawrence, and so St Victor, to Durham Cathedral Priory during an important decade.34 In addition, we can say that the fact that Lawrence had two referees from Cistercian Rievaulx – abbots Maurice, who was also subprior of Durham, and William, whom Bernard of Clairvaux appointed as abbot – ‘strengthened the cultural contacts between the northern Cistercians and Durham, and provided one of the contexts for the interchange of manuscripts’.35 And here we should recall that the Sawley Map was likely made at Durham for the northern Cistercian abbey, perhaps by way of celebrating the house being saved with grants of the church of St Mary of Tadcaster, the chapel at Hazlewood, a pension drawn annually on the chapel of Newton and a section of land at Catton.36
WILLIAM DE ST CALAIS AND THE (RE)BIRTH OF DURHAM’S LIBRARY With the main causes of England monastic revival and two examples of cross-Channel communication set, we turn to the priory’s library and its map-complementary books. In 1072, William I began building Durham Castle and in 1080 appointed as bishop of Durham William de St Calais (d. 1096), the Benedictine abbot of St Vincent in Le Mans.37 In 1093, the king’s appointee laid the foundation stone for Durham Cathedral, which was completed in 1133, replacing Bishop Aldhun’s (c. 959–1018) Anglo-Saxon cathedral. When St Calais arrived in late January 1081, he would have found a collection that was ‘impressive in certain areas and strikingly blank 32 Catalogi veteres librorum Ecclesiae Cathedralis Dunelm: catalogues of the Library of Durham Cathedral, ed. James Raine, pref. by Beriah Botfield. Publications of the Surtees Society 7 (London, 1838), p. 68. 33 Some manuscripts call the Libellus the Depinctio arche or De pictura arche. See Carruthers and Ziolkowski, ‘Hugh of St. Victor, A little book about constructing Noah’s Ark’, p. 41. 34 On his return to England, Lawrence had a letter of commendation written to Prior Roger of Durham (1137–49) from William of Rievaulx and Bernard of Clairvaux. For the letter, see Croydon, ‘Laurence’, p. 170. 35 Janet Burton, The monastic order in Yorkshire, 1069–1215 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 285. 36 ‘Houses of Cistercian monks: Sawley’, A history of the County of York: volume 3, ed. William Page (London, 1974), pp. 156–8. British history online, [Accessed 5 September 2017]. 37 William de St Calais is also known as William de St Carilef.
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in others’.38 The pre-1083 booklist shows no psalters, no copies of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica or Vita Sancti Cuthberti, and a paucity of AngloSaxon histories and hagiographies. St Calais would have found biblical books dedicated for use at Cuthbert’s shrine, including the Durham and Lindisfarne Gospels and the Gospel of John, which was found in Cuthbert’s coffin. There were books given by King Æthelstan; as well as Cassiodorus’ commentary on the Psalms; Bede’s commentary on Proverbs; the Durham Rituale, its account of liturgical services; the Durham Liber vitae, or confraternity book, with names of over 3,100 visitors; and the Sidney Sussex Pontifical, listing episcopal ceremonies. The latter seems to have made its way north from Worcester with Oswald, who became archbishop of York and helped Dunstan bring Abbo of Fleury with, as it seems, his Macrobian mappa mundi to Ramsey Abbey. Also on hand were some Anglo-Saxon books: Ennodius’ letters and poems, the works of Prudentius, Ælfric’s Old English sermons, Bede’s Explanatio apocalypsis, a collection of Old English and Latin school books, a psalter leaf and tables and verses on the calendar.39 William worked to fill in gaps by establishing a scriptorium and employing scribes imported from the north of France and Normandy.40 In 1083, he replaced Durham’s community of St Cuthbert with monks from Wearmouth and Jarrow, including Aldwin, first prior at Durham (1073), and Benedictines from his abbey at Winchcombe.41 These recruits were supported by the Conqueror’s appointee as bishop, William Walcher (1071– 80), and likely brought with them scribes and books.42 St Calais’ efforts paid dividends, and the library expanded over the next decades, due less to the efforts of early bishops and more to those of priors Turgot (1087–1109), Algar (1109–37), Roger (1137–49) and Laurence (1149–53).43 As was customary, St Calais left his books to the priory, filling some of the gaps he found upon arriving. As R.A.B. Mynors puts it, his thirtynine gift books, not counting liturgical texts, ‘fall into well-marked groups’. There were St Calais’ ‘great two-volume Bible’ and ‘a splendid collection of standard works by the Fathers of the Church’, key to the lectio divina. There were also mundane items: ‘service books, edifying literature, sermons and works on Canon Law’. There were virtually no books on poetry, history or Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, 24. Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, pp. 20–23 and Mynors, Durham Cathedral manuscripts, pp. 14–31. 40 Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, p. 149. 41 Marjorie Chibnall, Anglo-Norman England 1066–1166 (Oxford, 1986), p. 142. The married members who left, rather than abandon their families, likely took their books: hence, the lack of patristica. On this, Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, p. 20. 42 Walcher was Durham’s first non-English bishop and, by purchasing the earldom of Northumberland, became Durham’s first prince bishop. The office was established in 1075 as a way for William to maintain a secular presence in the area during the conflict with Scotland. On Aldwin, Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, pp. 18–19. 43 Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, p. 151. Prior Laurence and Lawrence of Westminster were different people. 38 39
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classics.44 Such was ‘the foundation donation to the Priory Library’; it seems assembled to serve the priory’s day-to-day functions. As such, it typifies the books given to English monastic libraries by their Norman bishops.45 William’s gift would have looked familiar to Dunstan and his Glastonbury monks some 140 years earlier, and indicates how little basic reading lists changed before the advent of the schools and universities. Still, William de St Calais did establish what would become one of the most expansive of England’s monastic libraries.46 By the early twelfth century, there were some four hundred Durham books, not counting those used for the liturgy or at the altar. The 1392 and 1395 inventories show nearly 900 volumes, and today there are more surviving Durham Cathedral Priory books than from ‘any other medieval English institution’.47
DURHAM BOOKS AND THEIR CARTOGRAPHICAL COMPLEMENTARITY Turning to Durham’s book inventory from the year of Hugh de Puiset’s death (1195) through to the making of what is now Miscellaneous Charter 7144 in the mid fourteenth century, we find a telling collection, especially in geospatial terms.48 Taking into account all titles, including duplicates, and all storage locations, we find eighty-seven items that would have been useful to someone preparing for or returning from the schools or universities and forty-four map-complementary items.49 This is what we would expect from an important house like Durham. There are complete and incomplete copies of Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica; copies of the Verbum abbreviatum, epitomes of the thinking of the influential Parisian master, Peter the Chanter (d. 1197). Under the
For this summary, Mynors, Durham Cathedral manuscripts, pp. 32–3. For the list of St Calais’ books, Durham Cathedral Library, MS A.II.4, fol. 1r in the Bible of William of St Calais. For a description of that manuscript, Mynors, Durham Cathedral manuscripts, pp. 33–4. The list seems to have been written by Simeon of Durham. The Carilef Bible list also appears in Raine and Botfield, Catalogi, pp. 117–18. Cuthbert H. Turner lists and comments on all of the books in ‘The earliest list of Durham MSS’, The journal of theological studies 19 (1918), 125–32. Mynors, Raine and Botfield and Turner write that William left thirty-nine books. David Pearson claims forty-six in ‘Durham Dean and Chapter Library’, International dictionary of library histories, ed. David H. Stam (London, 2016), pp. 297–8, here p. 297. 45 Neil R. Ker, English manuscripts in the century after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1960), pp. 4–15. 46 Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, p. 48. 47 A.J. Piper, ‘The libraries of the monks of Durham’, Medieval scribes, manuscripts & libraries: essays presented to N.R. Ker, ed. M.B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson (London, 1978), pp. 213–49, here p. 218. 48 Durham Cathedral Muniments, miscellaneous charters, 7144, printed in Mynors, Durham Cathedral manuscripts, p. 11. 49 Information from Raine and Botfield, Catalogi, pp. 4, 18, 21, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32–33, 39, 40–44, 54, 65, 67, 68, 77, 79, 81, 83, 97, 107, 108, 109, and 177. 44
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category, ‘Libri philosophici et logici’ (‘Books on philosophy and logic’), appear three subcategories:
(1) ‘Vetus logica’, the ‘old logic’ from the mid-eleventh to the midtwelfth century curriculum, which include Aristotle’s foundational Categoriae (Categories) and De interpretatione (On interpretation); along with Porphyry’s (c. 232–305) Isagoge, his ‘introduction’ to the Categoriae; and works of Boethius (c. 480–524); (2) ‘Quaestiones super veterem logicam’, (‘Debate points on the old logic’); and (3) ‘Logica nova’, the ‘new logic’ from the thirteenth- and fourteenthcentury curriculum, which relied heavily on Aristotle’s multipart Organon. Durham had various sets of ‘debate points’ on these texts, including Aquinas’ (c. 1224–74) commentary on Aristotle’s Nichomachean ethics. The ‘Vetus logica’ and ‘Logica nova’ entries reveal a community that stayed current on the schools’ curriculum, in which the nearly solitary lectio divina of the earlier period, with its ultimate emphasis on divine revelation, was supplanted by two components of university pedagogy: the expositio textuum and the disputatio. During the expositio, a lector would read aloud and explain the authority under examination. Ideally, he would not argue with the authority or offer his opinion on the work. During disputatio, students posed questions on the readings. Disputatio sometimes led to the quodlibet, during which masters took questions from masters and students on any subject.50 The priory had an impressive collection of Hugh of St Victor’s pedagogical and theological works, some in multiple copies. A representative selection includes his guides for novices, the ubiquitous Didascalicon de studio legendi (On teaching of reading) and the De informacione noviciorum (On the formation of novices). His popular theological writings in the collection included: De arrha anime (Soliloquy); De claustro anime (On the cloistered soul); the Septem viciis capitalibus et cum Summa de virtutibus (The seven capital sins with the Sum of the virtues); the first and second parts of the De sacramentis Christianae fidei (On the sacraments of the Christian faith), the latter of which might have come with Lawrence of Westminster; the Expositiones Hugonis de sacramentis (Hugh’s expositions on the sacraments); the De tribus diebus (On the three days); and the De amore sponsi ad sponsam (On the love of the bridegroom for the bride).51 Hugh’s key theographical texts, those on his theological cartography, appear among the priory’s forty-four map-complementary titles, starting with two copies of another foundational treatise for students. In De 50 F. Donald Logan, A history of the Church in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London and New York, 2013), p. 219. 51 Durham’s copy is now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 344, fols. 41v–58v.
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tribus maximis, better known as the Chronica (Chronicle), Hugh lays out his visualist mnemonic system and explains his concept of historia, the knowledge of which for him underlay all further study and paved the way toward spiritual restoration.52 There were also multiple copies of De archa Noe, Hugh’s visualist disquisition on Genesis 6–7, which suggests wide dissemination and use among the community. Boyd Taylor Coolman describes Hugh’s signature visual metaphor, Noah’s Ark, without exaggerating, as the ‘master symbol … with which to think about nearly everything: God, creation, Christ, church, salvation history, and the moral-religious life of the soul’.53 Durham also had the Libellus (The little book on making the Ark), which might have come with Lawrence.54 These three works constitute the core of Hugh of St Victor’s visualist pedagogy, which grounded his theography. Studied together, they would have provided the foundation that novices and scholars at Durham, any number of whom could have studied in Paris, would have exploited to visualize and mentally – or physically – map the narratives they had read or heard during the expositio textuum. It is not difficult to imagine monks at their carrels in Durham’s north cloister aisle, reading William de St Calais’ copy of Bede’s Hystoria anglorum (Ecclesiastical history of the English people) or Hugh de Puiset’s copy of Isidore’s Ethimologarium (Etymologies) and then using the Victorine’s system to memorize significant people, places, events and the times at which those events occurred.55 They might have done the same with Solinus’ De mirabilibus mundi (On the marvels of the world) or the Itinerarium Clementis, Rufinus’ (d. 410) Latin translation of The [pseudo-] Clementine recognitions, a theo-philosophical romance with sections on the motions of the stars; the cosmogonies of Hesiod and Orpheus; astrological lore and its refutation; the customs of different countries and information on rivers and seas, plants and animals.56
On Hugonian historia, see the introduction and chapter four of this Companion. Boyd Taylor Coolman, The theology of Hugh of St Victor: an interpretation (Cambridge, 2010), p. 18. Earlier, C.M. Kauffmann expressed a similar, albeit more restrained, response: ‘In his works on Noah’s Ark, every detail of the Ark, which is a symbol of the Church, is allegorically interpreted in terms of the Christian scheme of life and salvation’. See Romanesque manuscripts, 1066–1190 (London and Boston, 1975), p. 45. 54 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud. misc. 277 contains the De archa Noe and the Libellus and was made early in the second half of the twelfth century at Durham. See Patrice Sicard, Hugonis de Sancto Victore, De archa Noe [et] Libellus de formatione Arche (Turnhout, 2001), p. 41. 55 Raine and Botfield list books according to the cathedral locations in which they were used. 56 For an English translation, The Clementine recognitions, trans. Thomas Smith, AnteNicene fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 8 (Buffalo, 1886), pp. 135–472; revised edition, The Recognitions of Clement, ed. Kevin Knight. New advent website: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0804.htm [Accessed 8 December 2017]. 52 53
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Equally useful in this regard would have been the Itinerarium Jeresoliminitanorum de recessu Ricardi regis de Messana (King Richard’s itinerary to Jerusalem and his return from Messina) and De recessu regis Franchiae de Accon (The return of the French king from Acre), most likely by Walter of Coventry (fl. c. 1293–1307), who borrowed heavily from Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100–55) and Roger of Howden.57 There were also further copies of Isidore’s Etymologiae, one with a ‘tabula in principio libri’ (‘tablet/ map in the first book’), and others with ‘tabulae in principio libri’ (‘tablets/ maps in the first book’). Closing out the list of geospatial titles are the priory’s copies of the Tractatus de sphera (Treatise on the sphere) by the Paris master, John of Sacrobosco (fl. c. 1220–50), an astronomical work that was usually fully illustrated with maps and diagrams and that incorporates the works of Ptolemy and Islamic astronomers; the De mirabilibus Hibernae (On the wonders of Ireland) by Gerald of Wales (1146–1223); and a Tractatus super Macrobium (likely Macrobius’ Commentary on Cicero’s dream of Scipio). Plato’s ubiquitous ‘dialogue’ and creation myth appears in a lone Timeus (Timaeus), a Tabula super Thimeum Platonis, and two glosses on the Timaeus, one by Bernard of Chartres. Aristotle’s De caelo et mundo (On heaven and earth) is listed multiple times, and complemented by Michael Scots’ (1175–c. 1232) Commentum on it and the Super librum metheorum, his commentary on Aristotle’s meteorology.58 Finally, there are two copies of the computus, a book on astronomy, and one copy of Orosius’ De ormesta mundi, the Orosii mundi historia (Orosius’ history of the world), another foundational text for mapmakers. Clerics in any house or order would have found little to envision or chart in schools texts like Abelard’s Sic et non or Aristotle’s Priorum or Posteriorum analeticorum. However, narratives that take place like the Chronica, the Etymologiae, the Historia Anglorum, Itinerarium Clementis, and the Historia scholastica would have made ideal material for such cognitive activities, for mental mapping – that is, material featuring the persons, places, times and events about which they read and heard in the priory’s biblical books, itineraries and books on natural history, human history or cosmography.59
57 William Stubbs, ed., The historical collections of Walter of Coventry, vol. 1 (London, 1872): on De recessu Ricardi regis, p. 438; on De recessu regis Franciae, p. 435. 58 On the Metheorum being Aristotle’s and taught in Paris at Ascension tide, Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, 5 vols, ed. Heinrich Denfile and Emile Chatelaine (Paris, 1889–1942; Cambridge, 2014), vol. 1, p. 278. 59 For a list of other map-owning houses that owned copies of these theographical works, Terkla, ‘Hugh’, Appendix 2, p. 177.
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HUGH DE PUISET AND GEOSPATIAL AWARENESS IN THE NORTH Hugh de Puiset rose to be chief justiciar of England: treasurer, archdeacon and bishop of York and archdeacon of Winchester before becoming the seventh prince bishop of Durham in 1153.60 He came from a very well connected, powerful family from the north of France; his parents were Hugh de Puiset and Agnes of Blois. Agnes was the sister of Stephen of Blois, king of England (c. 1096–1154), and Henry of Blois, abbot of Glastonbury, papal legate and bishop of Winchester (c. 1098–1171).61 Agnes, Stephen and Henry’s parents were Count Stephen Henry of Blois (1045–1102) and Adela of Blois (c. 1067–1137), to whom we shall return. Adela was a daughter of William the Conqueror (c. 1028–87) and Matilda of Flanders (c. 1031–83) and a legitimate sister of Henry I (1068–1135). Put more succinctly, Hugh de Puiset was William the Conqueror’s great grandson, nephew of King Stephen and Bishop Henry of Winchester, and so well positioned to play a prominent role in royal/ecclesiastical politics. Hugh’s involvement in Henry II’s struggles with William I of Scotland (c.1142–1214), his resultant interest in geography and his descent from Adela of Blois could have helped Durham become a node in England’s cartographical network. The house of Blois stood strongly in opposition to Henry II’s parents – Matilda (c. 1102–67), daughter of Henry I, and Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou (1113–51) – and to Henry as duke of Normandy and king of England. As G.V. Scammell writes, Hugh’s parents sought ‘to displace Blois influence in England and Normandy’ during the twenty-year Anarchy (c. 1135–54).62 Even after the Treaty of Winchester was signed to end the conflict, Henry II struggled to maintain control of the Duchy of Normandy.63 After Henry became king of England, the house of Blois and the ‘interrelated counts of Flanders, Champagne, … and Boulogne’ supported Henry the Young King’s (1155–83) revolt, which gave William I of Scotland, who was faithful to the Young King, the chance to reclaim Northumberland and lost North West counties.64 This brought Hugh de Puiset into the frame as a vassal of Henry II sworn to William I, whom the house of Blois supported. To ensure Durham’s safety, Hugh paid William 300 marks, after finding ‘Northumberland 60 The touchpoint for biographical information is still G.V. Scammell, Hugh du Puiset: a biography of the twelfth-century bishop of Durham (Cambridge, 1956). In this section, I am indebted to Scammell’s study, even when not cited. 61 Henry I appointed Henry abbot of Glastonbury in 1226 and bishop of Winchester in 1229. See Scammell, Biography, p. 5. 62 Scammell, Biography, p. 36. 63 Scammell, Biography, p. 26. For a clear version of the Anarchy and Henry II’s activities after the Treaty of Winchester and Henry II’s troubles in Normandy, see ‘The pursuit of an inheritance (1135–54)’ in W.L. Warren, Henry II (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1977), pp. 12–53 and 132ff. 64 Scammell, Biography, p. 36.
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overrun and the county of Durham almost encircled by Scottish armies in May 1174’.65 After Henry II’s men captured William in July, Hugh surrendered the castles of Durham, Norham and Northallerton to Henry.66 Within three years, Hugh was back in Henry’s favor. He spent Christmas 1184 with the king at Windsor; traveled with him to Normandy in 1185; lodged with him in Carlisle, Marlborough and Winchester in 1186, and traveled with him to Normandy in 1186. In 1188, Henry sent Hugh ‘to collect the Saladin tithe’ from William the Lion.67 After the king’s death, Hugh was in the close service of Richard I (1157–99) and his mother, Queen Eleanor (c. 1122–1204). Hugh walked at Richard’s right hand during his 1189 coronation and spent the following week with the court; he was sheriff and earl of Northumberland; made justiciar in 1189 with William Longchamp and engaged militarily on Richard’s behalf at the siege of his rebel brother John’s castle at Tickhill in 1193.68 Throughout all of this and as prince bishop, Hugh de Puiset epitomized the post-Conquest episcopal ideal. If nothing else, Hugh’s lineage, not to mention his territoriality, would have interested him in the epistolary Adelae comitissae, which Baudri (c. 1046–1130), abbot of Bourgueil and archbishop of Dol, offered to his grandmother between 1099 and 1102.69 Baudri wrote his multi-part poem to the young Adela, who might have encouraged its composition; the intended audience for the section under discussion here, of course, was her father the Conqueror.70 In its vividness and fantastical nature, this section moves beyond descriptio into depictio, presenting the reader with what Baudri claims is Adela’s bedchamber: [A]round her bed, the conquest of England, William’s claims to the throne as Edward’s chosen successor, the comet, the Norman council and preparations, the fleet, the battle of Hastings with the feigned flight of the Normans and the real one of the English, and the death of Harold. On the ceiling, the sky with its constellations, the signs of the zodiac, the stars and planets described in detail. On the floor, a map of the world with its seas, rivers, and mountains, named along with their creatures, and the cities on the landmasses Scammell, Biography, p. 41. John D. Hosler, Henry II: a medieval soldier at war, 1147–1189 (Leiden, 2007), pp. 213, 216; and Scammell, Biography, p. 42. 67 On the tithe and Hugh’s royal relationships, see G.W.S. Barrow, ‘Puiset, Hugh du, earl of Northumberland (c. 1125–1195)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography: https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22871 [Accessed 6 June 2019]. 68 On Hugh at Richard’s coronation, ‘Roger of Hoveden: The order of coronation of Richard I, 1189’, Medieval sourcebook: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/ hoveden1189a.asp [Accessed 8 December 2017]. Hugh bought the positions of sheriff and earl of Northumberland. 69 On Adela and Baudri, see Bernard S. Bachrach, ‘The Norman Conquest, Countess Adela, and Abbot Baudri’, Anglo-Norman studies 35 (2013), 65–76. 70 The classic study is Shirley Ann Brown and Michael Herren, ‘The Adelae comitissae of Baudri of Bourgueil and the Bayeux Tapestry’, The study of the Bayeux Tapestry, ed. Richard Gameson (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 139–56. 65
66
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of Asia, Europe, and Africa. The bed is decorated with three groups of statues, of Philosophy and the liberal arts, the quadrivium … at the head of the bed, the trivium … at the foot. The third group represents medicine, with Galen and Hippocrates, the humors and physical characteristics, herbs and unguents.71
Baudri economically depicts the history and background of the Norman Conquest, a map of the heavens on the ceiling, a mappa mundi floor and, around Adela’s bed, the scholastic liberal-arts curriculum. The heavens and ecumene cocoon Adela, while Halley’s comet adumbrates her father’s status as successor to Edward the Confessor. Baudri’s elaborate ekphrasis signifies William’s victory, which will guarantee the security of the secular trinity – quadrivim, trivium and medicine – that triangulates Adela, a kingship as naturally occurring as the heavenly bodies, ‘seas, rivers’ and ‘landmasses’. The comet indexes the Anglo-Saxon chronicle for 1065–66 and the Bayeux Tapestry (c. 1080). On the textile, Halley’s Comet flies over the enthroned King Harold Godwinson (c. 1020–66), and his people point at the omen presaging his demise. Both poem and textile emphasize the rightness of William’s victory: the Normans’ ‘flight’ is ‘feigned’ and clever; the English flight is ‘real’ and cowardly.72 The Tapestry’s presentation of Harold is ambivalent in places, but overall shows him to be a traitorous vassal of Edward and William.73 The mappa mundi on Adela’s floor cues images of contemporaneous maps for modern readers, as it would have done for Adela, perhaps even William. The ceiling would have conjured for contemporaries mental images of celestial maps. For modern readers, it brings to mind the maps bound with the Anglo-Saxon Map (Plate I) and that codex’s exemplars, not to mention Abbo of Fleury’s eleventhcentury terrestrial and celestial maps.74 Baudri’s ‘memory theatre for all standard knowledge’ swaddles Adela in its decorative program and flatters her intelligence and knowledge and, on a grander scale than the Tapestry,
71 ‘A letter from Baudri, abbot of Bourgueil and archbishop of Dol (c.1107)’, trans. Kimberly LoPrete, Epistolae: medieval Latin women’s letters, Columbia University: https://epistolae. ctl.columbia.edu/letter/95.html [Accessed 8 December 2017]. For the original, Les oeuvres poétiques de Baudri de Bourgueil, ed. Phyllis Abraham (Paris, 1926, repr. 1974), pp. 196–253. Italics are mine. 72 On the Tapestry’s Norman bias and insistent determinism, Dan Terkla, ‘Cut on the Norman bias: fabulous borders and visual glosses on the Bayeux Tapestry’, Word & Image 11.3 (June–September 1995), 264–89; and ‘From Hastingus to Hastings and beyond: inexorable inevitability on the Bayeux Tapestry’, The Bayeux Tapestry: new interpretations, ed. Martin K. Foys, Karen Overbey and Dan Terkla (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 141–57. 73 Baudri could have seen the 241-foot-long textile at Bayeux Cathedral, where it was sometimes displayed round the nave and where Odo, William the Conqueror’s half-brother, was bishop. 74 The Anglo-Saxon Map is London, BL Cotton MS Tiberius B V, fol. 56v and has been tied to BL Harley MSS 647 and 3667. Abbo’s glorious book is Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 6362. See chapter two in this Companion on the map and chapter seven on Abbo of Fleury.
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glorifies her father.75 This is William’s universe, she is his daughter and Hugh de Puiset is his great-grandson.76 The Adelae extract is found in the Poppleton Manuscript, a fourteenthcentury compilation best known for its ‘Scottish materials’.77 It was ‘at least partially compiled at the York house of Austin friars by Robert de Poppleton’, prior of Hulne Priory (1364), a man with geospatial interests.78 Patrick Gautier Dalché and Jean-Yves Tilliette presume that the compilation’s exemplar was ‘developed in Hugh de Puiset’s entourage’ (‘vraisemblablement élaborée dans l’entourage de Hugues du Puiset’).79 Hugh could have gotten the extract from his grandmother, ‘par héritage familial’.80 They make the case by stressing Hugh’s ‘interest in textual and figurative representations of geographical space’ (‘intérêt pour les représentations textuelles et figurées de l’espace géographique’) and by focusing on the poem’s provenance, Hugh’s relationship with Roger of Howden and his mortuary endowment.81 While the Poppleton Manuscript’s Adelae extract and Scottish materials point to Hugh, of equal and broader interest are the items preceding them in the codex: an incomplete mappa mundi surrounded by the celestial spheres; a cluster of geographical extracts on the orbis terrarum; reworked excerpts on Italy, Gaul and Spain from Pseudo-Aethicus’ Cosmographia, which it labels the Cosmografia Prisciani, a somewhat common mistake; Martianus Capella’s (fl. 410–39) De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the marriage of Philology and Mercury); Pliny’s Historia naturalis and Robert of Cricklade’s (d. c. 1175) Defloratio naturalis historie Plinii secundi (Anthology of Pliny’s natural history).82 This is an exemplary collection of complementary texts, 75 Monika Otter, ‘Baudri of Bourgueil, “To Countess Adela”’, The journal of medieval latin 11 (2001), 61–142. 76 Natalia Lovosky argues that Baudri shows William as more imperial than Caesar. See her ‘Maps and panegyrics: Roman geo-ethnographical rhetoric in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages’, Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: fresh perspectives, new methods, ed. Richard J.A. Talbert and Richard W. Unger (Leiden and Boston, 2008), pp. 169–88, here pp. 182–7. 77 Now Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), MS Latin 4126. 78 The verse extract appears on fols 20r–21v and runs from lines 749 to 946. Robert’s name is spelled variously: Populton, Popilton and Poppleton. This section derives from Gautier Dalché, Howden, p. 47. For specific information on BNF, MS Latin 4126, see Patrick Gautier Dalché and J-Y. Tilliette, ‘Un nouveau document sur la tradition du poème de Baudri de Bourgueil à la comtesse Adèle’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des chartes 144 (1986), 241–57, and, with care, John Block Friedman, ‘Cultural conflicts in medieval world maps’, ed. Stuart B. Schwartz, Implicit understandings: observing, reporting and reflecting on the encounters between Europeans and other peoples in the Early Modern era (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 64–95, here pp. 88–94. As Gautier Dalché points out, Friedman gets the book’s dating wrong by two centuries in his Northern English books, owners and makers in the late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY, 1995), pp. 40–52. 79 Gautier Dalché and Tilliette, ‘Nouveau’, abstract on cover page. 80 Gautier Dalché and Tilliette, ‘Nouveau’, 252. 81 Patrick Gautier Dalché, Du Yorkshire a l’Inde: une ‘géographie’ urbaine et maritime de la fin du XIIe siècle (Roger de Howden?) (Genève, 2005), p. 47. Gautier Dalché does not have much to say about the Adelae. 82 See Gautier Dalché and Tilliette, ‘Nouveau’, p. 244, on this misnaming phenomenon, and Gautier Dalché, Howden, p. 47. Oddly, Gautier Dalché does not mention the mappa
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a virtual schoolbook suited to fostering and enhancing spatial awareness. Gautier Dalché and Tilliette’s plausible claim about Hugh and the Adelae illustrates the continuity of a dedicated spatial awareness in the north. The Poppleton’s map and complementary texts, including its mis-labelled Pseudo-Aethicus, recall pre-Conquest Glastonbury’s books and Cotton Tiberius B V, with its copies of Priscian, and so mark the continuing practice of book-and-map complementarity.83 Hugh’s posthumous gift to Durham Cathedral Priory shows someone looking beyond the north of England to envision and understand the world’s shape and composition. The Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesiae cathedralis Dunelm records that ‘in the Mortuary taken upon the death of Hugh Pudsey, the munificent Bishop of Durham, in January, 1195, we find his benefactions to the Library of that Church’.84 These ‘benefactions’ illustrate Hugh’s understanding of book-and-map complementarity and round out the Poppleton ‘schoolbook’ with three mapping evergreens: Peter Comestor’s (d. 1178) ‘Scolasticam historiam’; ‘Ysidorus Ethimologicus’; ‘Solinus de Mirabilibus mundi’ and the bishop’s ‘Mappa mundi’. The works of Isidore and Solinus are familiar, fundamental sources for makers and users of mappae mundi. The Comestor’s ubiquitous Historia leans heavily on Hugh of St Victor’s work, was a core university text, and is found in countless catalogs from institutions that had world maps.85 Since Hugh de Puiset’s gift list refers to his map as a single item, we can assume that it was not codicological like the Anglo-Saxon, Sawley or Psalter maps. We know nothing about its provenance, size, complexity or nature. Nor do we know whether its design was related to the prince bishop’s political engagements – Edward I’s (1239–1307) Caernarvon and Conwy castles (1283) on the Hereford Map (Plate VIII) come to mind – what its sources were or where Hugh kept it. In fact, it might have been a verbal map like Hugh of St Victor’s Descriptio mappe mundi or like Priscian’s Latin Periegetes that was bound with the Anglo-Saxon Map. Nonetheless, given what we know of Hugh’s lineage, territorial concerns and closeness to the king, we might expect it to have been suitably grand and more personally and epistemologically comprehensive than the Poppelton Map or the mundi. There is a critical edition of Robert’s Pliny: Bodo Näf, ed., Roberti Crikeladensis defloratio naturalis historie Plinii secundi, Lateinische Sprache und Literatur des Mittelalters, 36 (Bern, 2002). For a reproduction of the incomplete Poppleton mappa mundi, see Friedman, ‘Cultural conflicts’, p. 89, fig. 2.13. 83 On the Periegesis, see chapter two in this Companion. 84 For this section, see Raine and Botfield, Catalogi, pp. 118–19. P.D.A. Harvey writes that of the some two dozen twelfth- and thirteenth-century booklists, only three note mappae mundi: those from Lincoln, Durham and Rochester. To this we must add Worksop Priory and three Oxford colleges: Merton, Magdalen and Exeter. See his important ‘The Sawley Map and other world maps in twelfth-century England’, Imago mundi 49.1 (1997), 33–42, here 38. For Thomas Apostolorum’s Worksop benefaction inscription, see Teresa Webber and Andrew G. Watson, The Libraries of the Augustinian canons. Corpus of British medieval library catalogues 6 (London, 1998), p. 446. 85 Terkla, ‘Hugh’, p. 164 et passim.
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Sawley Map (Plate III). Were Hugh’s mappa mundi a stand-alone item like the painted pannus regis with which Edward I might have traveled, we might imagine – and I emphasize ‘imagine’ – it hanging above his episcopal sede in Howden’s great hall to signal his status.86 This, of course, would not mitigate against its pedagogical usefulness at the priory and in that way brings to mind Edmund of Cornwall’s Duchy Map (Plate VII) and its likely uses at Berkhamsted Castle and his College of Bonhommes in Ashridge.87 Such a display would not have been unusual; as we know, ‘large maps on vellum or painted on walls were … produced for monasteries, their rural dependencies, and cathedrals’.88 We also can assume that Hugh knew of the Bayeux Tapestry’s propagandistic utility from the Adelae. He also might have seen it on his 1190 trip to Normandy, where he travelled at the king’s behest, and where ‘Richard I laid down measures for the government of Normandy during his crusade’.89 Assertive artifactual displays by powerful men date back at least to Agrippa’s (c. 63 BCE) map in Rome’s Porticus Vipsania, which extolled Rome, its empire and its emperor.90 Centuries later, the Peutinger Map’s exemplar (c. 300) might have been made to adorn ‘a public building of the Tetrarchic period’.91 Pope Zacharias’ (d. 752) mural mappa mundi in the Lateran Palace refectory was part of this tradition, as was the map on display in Bishop Theodulf of Orleans’ (c. 760–822) palace refectory. And, of course, there were Charlemagne’s three gold and silver maps and the silver mappa mundi Muhammad al-Idrisi made in 1154 for Roger II of Sicily.92 In short, Hugh de Puiset’s map could well have been part of a self-aggrandizing tradition reaching back centuries and continuing in England with the monumental maps of Henry III at Westminster and 86 Archaeological work suggests that the interior dimensions of the great hall at Howden were 62ft x 32ft (19m x 10m). Anthony Emery, Greater medieval houses of England and Wales, 1300–1500. Vol. 1, Northern England (Cambridge, 1996), p. 355. 87 On the Duchy Map, see chapter nine in this Companion. 88 Marcia Kupfer, ‘The lost mappamundi at Chalivoy-Milon’, Speculum 66.3 (July 1991), 540–71, here 555. 89 Daniel Power, The Norman frontier in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries (Cambridge, 2004), p. 341. 90 O.A.W. Dilke, ‘Maps in the service of the State: Roman cartography to the end of the Augustan era’, Harley and Woodward, History, pp. 201–11, here p. 207. Currently, there is disagreement on the nature of this map; for a useful overview and references, see Scott F. Johnson, ‘Real and imagined geography’, The Cambridge companion to the age of Attila, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 394–413, here 402–3. See also Emily Albu, The medieval Peutinger Map: imperial Roman revival in a German empire (Cambridge, 2014). 91 Richard Talbert, ‘Greek and Roman mapping: twenty-first century perspectives’, Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Talbert and Unger, pp. 9–27, here p. 17; and, in the same volume, Lozovsky, ‘Maps and Panegyrics’. 92 On Zacharias, Theodulf, and Roger II, Kupfer, ‘Chalivoy-Milon’, 555, n. 26. On Zacharias and Charlemagne, Emily Albu, ‘The battle of the maps in a Christian empire’, The city in the Classical and post-Classical world: changing contexts of power and identity, ed. Claudia Rapp and H.A. Drake (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 202–16, here p. 211. On Charlemagne, Harley and Woodward, History, p. 303; and F.N. Estey, ‘Charlemagne’s silver celestial table’, Speculum 18.1 (January 1943), 112–17. Estey quotes Einhard on the tables, p. 112. On Roger, Albu, Peutinger, p. 93.
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Winchester; with his nephew Edmund of Cornwall’s grand Duchy Map and with the maps owned by his son Edward I.
ROGER OF HOWDEN AND GEOSPATIAL AWARENESS IN THE NORTH And, finally, to Roger of Howden, whom John Gillingham calls ‘the most widely travelled of all [medieval] English historians’; Gillingham also asserts that, ‘for students of later twelfth-century Ireland and Scotland, there is no English historian more important’.93 Roger drew no maps, as far as we know, but we might call him a verbal cartographer. He was probably a native of the East Riding and educated at York or Durham. He certainly was in the clerical service of Henry II (1133–89), a parson and a diplomat who traveled on the Third Crusade with Richard I (1157–99). Roger returned from the Holy Land in the entourage of Philip II of France (1165–1223).94 He was close to Archbishop Roger of Pont l’Evêque (d. 1181) and the clerks of York. By 1174, his father arranged his succession to the rich parsonage of Howden, which was on a fief north of the River Ouse, a hundred miles or so south of Durham, and held by its bishops.95 In the last decade of his life, Roger lived at the parsonage, where he wrote his well-known Chronica, a history of England from 732 to 1201.96 By the early 1190s, after Archbishop Roger’s death, Roger of Howden became close to Hugh de Puiset and a member of his familia. Like Hugh, Roger was geospatially curious, and we can assume that this commonality pulled them together. Patrick Gautier Dalché goes so far as to claim that this common interest made Hugh ‘une influence décisive’ on Roger’s work.97 Such a bond would explain why Roger was present in 1195 when Hugh died at the episcopal manor in Howden.98 In addition to his Chronica, Roger narrated events in the lives of Henry II and Richard I in the Gesta regis Henrici II (The deeds of King Henry II). Most significant for this Companion, though, are his geospatial works: the 93 John Gillingham, The English in the twelfth century: imperialism, national identity, and political values (Woodbridge, 2000), p. 70. Gillingham provides a detailed account of Howden’s background. For insights into Roger’s construction of his verbal map, see Marcia Kupfer, ‘Traveling the mappa mundi: readerly transport from Cassiodorus to Petrarch’, Maps and travel in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period: knowledge, imagination, and visual culture, ed. Ingrid Baumgärtner, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby and Katrin Kogman-Appel (Berlin and Boston, 2018), pp. 17–36, here pp. 28–30. 94 See Gillingham, Imperialism, p. 72. 95 See Gillingham, Imperialism, p. 71. On Howden and the episcopal fief, Gautier Dalché, Howden, p. 34. 96 Roger of Howden, Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. William Stubbs, 4 vols, Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores 51 (London, 1868–71). Accessible on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/. 97 Gautier Dalché, Howden, pp. 46–7. 98 For Roger’s account of Hugh’s death, ‘Hugo Dunelmensis episcopus obiit’ in Stubbs, ed., Roger, vol. 3, pp. 284–5.
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Liber nautarum (The seamen’s book); the De viis maris (On the ways of the sea); and the Expositio mappe mundi (An exposition of the world map), with the latter assuming primacy of place here.99 The two codices containing the three works are fascinating florilegia of geographical, astronomical and computistical works popular at the so-called school of Chartres.100 The Liber nautarum largely repeats the thirteenth and nineteenth books of Isidore’s Etymologies on ships, providing the classical names for the twelve winds, while adding the eight names used by Greek and southern Italian sailors and favorable seasons for navigation.101 In De viis maris, Roger used his crusading itinerary to describe the courses of the Humber estuary and the River Ouse, both of which were on his home turf, and then his travels along the English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Sicilian coasts. In the section on Sicily, Roger incorporated the writings on the Mediterranean of the pirate and admiral, Margarit, whom he met. Sebastian Sobecki sees the De viis maris as proof of Roger’s ‘wide-ranging knowledge of coastal topography’ and ‘strong sense of political geography, borne of practical necessity’.102 In this he would agree with Gautier Dalché and others who stress Roger’s non-ideological, straightforward, even rational approach to cataloging and presenting geographical information.103 Put tersely, he was a reporter and chronicler, not an ideologue. Remembering that Roger gathered his data while participating in one of the most fiercely ideological endeavors in western European history makes his tone and approach quite remarkable. In this way, Roger of Howden’s Liber nautarum and De viis maris are the antitheses of The book of Sir John Mandeville, the wildly popular, fourteenth-century pseudo-account of the travels of the ‘knyght of Ingelond’ that today merits inclusion in the online Museum of
99 Roger of Hoveden, Gesta regis Henrici secundi Benedicti abbatis: the chronicle of the reigns of Henry II and Richard I, A.D. 1169–1192, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols, Rolls series 49 (London, 1867); The annals of Roger de Hoveden, comprising the history of England and of other countries of Europe, from A.D. 732 to A.D. 1201, trans. Henry T. Riley, 2 vols (London, 1853). Accessible on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/. The three geospatial works exist in two manuscripts: BNF, MS Latin 3123, fols 126r–155v and Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 453, fols 52va–74rb. For a detailed study, Gautier Dalché, ‘Les manuscrits’, Howden, pp. 11–19. Gautier Dalché has transcribed the Expositio (pp. 142–64), Liber nautarum (pp. 165–72) and De viis maris (pp. 173–229). 100 Gautier Dalché, Howden, p. 17. On the Rievaulx catalog, now Cambridge, Jesus College, MS Q.B17, Tractatus miscellanei, M.R. James, A descriptive catalogue of manuscripts in the library of Jesus College, Cambridge (London, 1895), p. 50. A second twelfth-century copy of the Expositio was probably made at Durham and went to York. Its codex has ‘[a] handsome, nearly contemporary, table of contents … followed by “Expositio mappe mundi”, now missing’. N.R. Ker and A.J. Piper, Medieval manuscripts in British libraries, vol. 4, PaisleyYork (Oxford, 1992), pp. 715 and 717. 101 On the Liber, see Evelyn Edson, The world map, 1300–1492: the persistence of tradition and transformation (Baltimore, 2007), pp. 45–6. 102 Sebastian I. Sobecki, The sea and Englishness in the Middle Ages: maritime narratives, identity and culture (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 148–9. 103 Gautier Dalché, Howden, p. 9.
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hoaxes: wonderful stories contrived for the public from ancient times to the present day.104 The two extant texts of the Expositio are identically orderly presentations of the inhabited world, its cities and topographical and hydrographical features, conveyed in Roger’s matter-of-factual tone.105 His Expositio begins by declaring that, ‘God willing’ (‘domino auxiliante’), he will show by image and description (‘picturam et descriptionem’) what Scott Westrem calls the ‘content and spatial arrangement of a mappa mundi’.106 This is reminiscent of Hugh of St Victor’s Descriptio mappe mundi from the 1120s. Gautier Dalché does not draw this analogy, but is convinced that Roger ‘used all of language’s resources to get at the essence of the matter, which was to produce an accurate and precise copy of the map before his eyes’ (‘emploie toutes les ressources que lui procure la langue à cet effet montrent que l’affaire essentielle … fut de rendre un compte exacte et précis de la carte qu’il avait sous les yeux’).107 To bolster this observation, I would add that Roger used passive verbs like ‘pinguntur’ (‘is painted’), ‘scribitur’ (‘is drawn’) and ‘intitulatur’ (‘is entitled’) that confirm Gautier Dalché’s reading by emphasizing that someone painted, drew and entitled the physical object, the map, he describes.108 All of this and Expositio in the title raise questions about which map Roger ‘had before his eyes’. Was it Hugh de Puiset’s? If so, would Roger’s Expositio help us reconstruct the bishop’s mappa mundi? What consonances are there between the Expositio and its contemporary, the Sawley Map? What might those consonances tell us about links between Hugh’s map, the Sawley Map and the Hereford Map, to which it is often linked? The Expositio begins with the Tanaïs, the river Don (‘fluuio Tanay’), ‘a relatively unimportant place’ (‘un lieu relativement négligeable’) from a Christian perspective, but a defining structural feature of T-O mappae mundi.109 By contrast, Isidore, in the Etymologies, and Honorius Augustodunensis (d. c. 1157), in the Imago mundi, begin their verbal maps with paradise, the starting point of human history; Hugh of St Victor does the same in the Descriptio mappe mundi. And so, divine invocation aside, the world that the Expositio sets forth is non-eschatological, neither literally nor figuratively surmounted by divinity nor centered on sacred sites. It does The book of John Mandeville, ed. Tamarah Kohanski and c. David Benson (Kalamazoo, 2007). ‘[K]nyght of Ingelond’ appears in the opening line. 105 Gautier Dalché, Howden, p. 15. 106 Gautier Dalché, Howden, p. 143. 107 Gautier Dalché, Howden, pp. 81 and 23. 108 For example, ‘Postea pinguntur duo rustici hominis membra uorantes’ (‘After this are painted two rustics [Scythians] devouring human limbs’); ‘Prima Tripicia que est triangula, in qua scribitur…’ (‘The first is the triangular Tripicia, on which is written…’), and ‘Hec ita intitulatur…’ (‘This is entitled in this way…’). Gautier Dalché, Howden, pp. 144, 145 and 145. Translations are mine. 109 Gautier Dalché, Howden, pp. 143 and 76. On this convention and types of mappae mundi, see the preface to this Companion. 104
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not include Jericho, Mount Olivet, Hebron, Mount Calvary, Jerusalem, the valley of Jehoshaphat, Bethlehem, Babylon or the land of Judah, all of which appear on the Hereford Map, and other eschatological mappae mundi. The Expositio leaves off at Toulouse, and so also absent are subSaharan Africa, large sections of Asia, Iberia, the Mediterranean islands, Britain, Scandinavia and Ireland.110 As he did in the Liber nautarum, Roger predominately used and followed rivers and coastlines by way of carefully organizing his movement around the Expositio’s ecumene in a ‘consistent direction’.111 The most remarkable and provocative aspect of the Expositio for this Companion is its congruency with the Hereford Map and the scope of its travels. The remarkable aspect is that over 40 percent of the mappa mundi’s 1,091 legends ‘recur exactly or very closely’ in the Expositio – equating to 82 percent or 400 of the Expositio’s 484 items.112 Since the Expositio is Roger’s description of a mappa mundi that he had before him, and since it and the Hereford Map have so much in common, the map Roger saw might have been ‘un prototype de [Hereford]’ and perhaps of the Sawley Map.113 With this suggestion and a slight shift in dating, Gautier Dalché, and Westrem through him, reinvigorate G.R. Crone’s decades-old claim that ‘the prototype of the Hereford Map was established in the first half of the twelfth century’.114 Westrem lines up Gautier Dalché’s Expositio transcription with items on the Hereford Map and writes that the former ‘certainly had the potential to serve as an instruction manual for cartographers’.115 This is the provocative aspect of the items’ text/map symmetry and raises myriad questions, all beyond the scope of this chapter but worth pursuing. For example, since Hugh of St Victor’s Libellus is also an ‘instruction manual’, and since Durham had a copy, might Roger of Howden have seen it? What is the relationship between the Expositio and Hugh’s other theographical works, like the Descriptio mappe mundi? Who were Westrem’s ‘cartographers’? Where did they work? The Expositio survives in only two copies, one of which was at Rievaulx and the other perhaps at Kirkham Priory, which was in communication with Hereford Cathedral.116 The Augustinian priory had a copy of 110 Scott Westrem, The Hereford Map: a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (Turnhout, 2001), pp. xxxiv–xxxv. 111 Westrem, Hereford, p. xxxvi. 112 On ‘remarkable’, Westrem, Hereford, p. xxxvi. He provides a concise overview of the Expositio and its connections to the Hereford Map, pp. xxxiv–xxxvii. Also, Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Décrire le monde et situer les lieux: l’Expositio mappe mundi et la généalogie de la carte de Hereford’, Howden, pp. 49–82. 113 Gautier Dalché, Howden, p. 61. 114 G.R. Crone, ‘New light on the Hereford Map’, The geographical journal 131.4 (December 1965), 447–62, here 455; Westrem, Hereford, p. xxxvii, n. 59. 115 Westrem, Hereford, p. xxxvi. 116 On the two copies, see Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts, p. 270; and Naydenova-Slade and Park, ‘Earliest’, 118.
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Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos, which the Hereford Map records as a source, and ‘Kircham’ and the River Derwent appear on the map. These consonances suggest to Mellie Naydenova-Slade and David Park that Kirkham Priory ‘may have been of singular intellectual importance in the late twelfth century’.117 This and what we now know of geospatiality in the north of post-Conquest England indicates an area worthy of more study by map historians. The invaluable archival work done by Gautier Dalché and others allows us to put more maps in conversation and so to expand our knowledge of the genre. Westrem and Gautier Dalché’s comparatist aligning of text and map is the very useful, logical first step and reveals hundreds of similarities. Also revealing, perhaps more so, are the dissimilarities, which might provide insight into why certain choices were made. For instance, might they have resulted from local, patronal or designer needs? Gautier Dalché’s kind of sophisticated diplomatics also highlights, as the above questions indicate, how deracinated and inadequately contextualized many mappae mundi are, including the much-discussed one in Hereford. To state the obvious, people generate and move ideas from place to place. Until we know more about the relevant canonical, monastic, baronial and royal interactions that generated the maps we study, we will be left with varying degrees of scholarly surmise. If we take our cue from Hugh of St Victor, and attend more closely to Anglo-Norman historia – the people in places where events occurred at certain times – we will know more about the maps’ creation, about their creators’ and users’ world and, consequently, our own.
117
Naydenova-Slade and Park, ‘Earliest’, 116.
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THE MUNICH MAP (c. 1130): DESCRIPTION, MEANINGS AND USES NATHALIE BOULOUX 1
T
he Munich Map (Plate II) appears in an early twelfth-century manuscript written in the north of France and consisting primarily of works by Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636): Etymologiarum libri XX and De fide catolica contra Iudaeos.2 The manuscript’s history is not well established. According to an ex libris, it belonged at some point to the library at the monastery of the Celestines of Marcoussis, founded in 1406 in the Essonne department in France. The map is found at the opening of Book XIV, 2, of the Etymologies, ‘De orbe’ (‘the inhabited world’), which describes the world in which humanity lives and begins with these words: ‘Orbis a rotunditate circuli dictus ...’ (‘The globe takes its name from the circle’s roundness’). The Etymologies played an important role in the constitution of medieval geographical knowledge.3 The map only slightly interested scholars until the work of Patrick Gautier Dalché who, in 1988, established that the map was a small-scale version of a large mural mappa mundi preserved at the abbey of St Victor, whose existence and appearance were made known thanks to a description
1 This chapter was translated from the French by Dan Golembeski, Grand Valley State University, Michigan. 2 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10058. Description of the manuscript in Elisabeth Remak-Honnef and Hermann Hauke, Katalog der Lateinischen Handschriften der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München, Clm 10 001–10 930 (Wiesbaden, 1991), pp. 36–7. Other descriptions in Peter Barber, ‘Medieval maps of the world’, in The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 1–44, here pp. 8–10; Leonid Chekin, Northern Eurasia in medieval cartography: inventory, text, translation and commentary. Terrarum orbis 4 (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 132–4. The map is sometimes erroneously dated to the eleventh century, the result of an exhibition catalog: T. Scheiffert, Die Karte als Kunstwerk: dekorative Landkarten aus Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Unterschneidheim, 1979), plate I. References pertaining to the history of cartography have been kept to a minimum: for these, see this Companion’s annotated bibliography. 3 Andrew H. Merrills, History and geography in late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2005); idem, ‘Geography and Isidore’s Etymologies’, in Mapping medieval geographies: geographical encounters in the Latin West and beyond, ed. Keith D. Lilley (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 45–64.
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written as part of a course in geography shortly after 1130 by scholar and theologian Hugh of St Victor (d. 1141).4 The map may be the work of the great Victorine himself. Furthermore, based on similarities in forms and legends, Gautier Dalché placed the St Victor map (and the Munich Map) within a family of mappae mundi sharing common features: the Sawley Map (Plate III), the Psalter Map (Plate VI), the Hereford Map (Plate VIII) and the Ebstorf Map.5 In the early twelfth century, mappae mundi, generally considered until that time to be secondary to text-based descriptions, benefitted from the promotion of imagery as a means for the transmission of knowledge and as a sound tool for the expression of learned concepts. They therefore became the focus of new attention, leading to the dissemination of spatial descriptions that make reference to companion maps.6 The links between text and map vary, being strong when the map or cartographic diagram illustrates the text, but weaker when the map visually completes a descriptive text without reiterating its content. Such is the case of this mappa mundi, which has no link to Isidore’s text other than to offer an alternate way of representing the world, along with additional geographical information. At the same time, there is no good reason to create a separate category for it, one that might not even exist – that of ‘Isidorian maps’. It is most often precisely at this opening passage of chapter two, Book XIV, that a cartographic diagram is inserted, showing the physical space of the tripartite division of the orbis terrarum, which is often designated by historians of cartography as a ‘T-O schematic’, and which acts as a helpful gloss. These cartographic diagrams offer visual versions of the debate that comes to us from Antiquity over how the ecumene should be divided – whether into two or three parts – and over the respective place and role of each part within the orbis terrarum. Numerous manuscripts of the Etymologies contain such a schematic, often
4 P. Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio mappe mundi’ de Hugues de Saint-Victor. Texte inédit avec introduction et commentaire (Paris, 1988); idem, ‘La “Descriptio mappe mundi” de Hugues de Saint-Victor: retractatio et additamenta’, in L’abbaye parisienne de Saint-Victor au Moyen Age, ed. J. Longère, Bibliotheca Victorina, 1 (Paris and Turnhout, 1991), pp. 143–79; idem, ‘Nouvelles lumières sur la Descriptio mappe mundi de Hugues de Saint-Victor’, in Géographie et culture: la représentation de l’espace du VIe au XIIe siècle, Variorum collected studies series, XII (Aldershot, 1997). 5 To these, we can add the Vercelli and Duchy of Cornwall maps, on which see chapters six and nine, respectively, in this Companion. On the influence of the map from the monastery of St Victor and ways in which such visual exegesis was received in England, Dan Terkla, ‘Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) and Anglo-French cartography’, Imago mundi 65.2 (2013), 161–79; and the introduction to the present volume. 6 See P. Gautier Dalché, ‘Maps in words: the descriptive logic of medieval geography, from the eighth to the twelfth century’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 223–42; idem, ‘Comment et pourquoi décrire une mappemonde au XIIe siècle’, in Figures de l’autorité médiévale. Mélanges offerts à Michel Zimmermann, ed. Pierre Chastang, Patrick Henriet and Claire Soussen (Paris, 2016), pp. 69–88.
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associated specifically with this passage, but sometimes placed earlier on, where Book XIV opens.7 Consequently, the presence of a detailed mappa mundi in this particular location is noteworthy and reflects real intent on the part of the person in charge of the manuscript’s fabrication. The page layout clearly indicates that, from the outset, that intent was to include a map. The mappa mundi is drawn on the upper three-quarters of the folio, whereas the entire chapter, ‘De orbe’, set in a two-column layout for the remainder of the manuscript, begins under the map, hugging the circle of the orbis terrarum. It is written in the same hand as the place names on the map. Therefore, there can be no doubt about the complementary relationship of text and the map. The manuscript is illustrated, moreover, by an iconographic cycle, which, if not exceptional, is at least noteworthy, given how complete it is.8
DESCRIPTION OF THE MAP The map measures 10.5 inches high and 10 inches wide (266mm x 254mm). A closer look reveals how it was made: the border was traced first, followed by the vignettes and drawings of geographical places and animals; then place names were penned in, using red ink for inland regions and black for seas.9 Color was then applied, green for the seas and rivers and faded brown for the mountains. Vermilion red was used for the Red Sea and to highlight certain vignettes – in particular, important cities such as Rome and Jerusalem, the Caspian Gates, Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat and the Castra Alexandri, for example – and to draw vegetal patterns in northern Asia above the Caucasus and northern Europe. This same ink was used to write ‘De orbe’, the title of this section of Isidore’s text. The Munich Map follows certain cartographic conventions. It is nearly round, as the drawing had to fit on the handwritten page. This circular shape dominates in medieval mappae mundi, although some, in particular the most ancient, use a different border – two examples of this are the square shape of the Anglo-Saxon Map (c. 1025, Plate I), and the frond-like shape of 7 See Olga Spevak’s introduction in Isidore of Seville, Étymologies, livre XIV, ‘De terra’, text prepared, translated, and commented by O. Spevak (Paris, 2011), pp. xxviii–xxxv; P. Gautier Dalché, ‘De la glose à la contemplation: place et fonction de la carte dans les manuscrits du haut Moyen Age’, Testo e immagine nel alto medioevo (Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, XLI), vol. II (Spoleto, 1994), pp. 693–764. 8 Indeed, in fol. 34r, there are eight geometric drawings corresponding to the section ‘De tercia divisione totius numeri’ (book 3); fol. 35r, several geometric schematics and a diagram ‘De figuris geometricis’; fol. 40 drawings of the phases of the moon (De formis lune); fol. 175r a diagram of the ‘De mensuris agrorum’; fol. 108v, a tree of consanguinity. 9 It is also possible that the coloring of the seas changed the appearance of the place names written on the seas, as the name of Magog demonstrates, inscribed in red inside the island, but whose last letter, located in the sea, has become ‘black’, which perhaps occurred after the color green was applied.
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4.1 SCHEMATIC MUNICH MAP
the Albi Map (eighth century).10 Surrounding the map proper is a circular ring representing the ocean, within which are illustrations of the oceanic isles and twelve winds, each shaped like a human head. It represents, therefore, the entire physical space inhabited by humanity, situated on the terrestrial sphere like an island, surrounded by the boundless immensity of the ocean.11 The map’s shape is not meant to suggest a flat earth, something On the Anglo-Saxon Map, see chapter two in this Companion. For a comparison with the Descriptio: ‘Descripturus orbem terre, primum pono circulum maris occeani, quo ex omni parte fines illius clauduntur, cuius longitudo siue latitudo inscrutabilis a nemine unquam transfretatur. In hoc maris circuitu multe sunt insule in locis diuersis posite’; ‘Seeking to describe the terrestrial orb, I begin by the circle of the oceanic sea, by which the ecumene is surrounded and limited on all sides; no one
10 11
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no medieval scholar believed in. Other features are also the result of cartographic conventions: its eastward orientation, which is by no means systematic in all medieval maps; and the division of the ecumene into three parts: Asia, appearing twice as large as the other two parts, is located at the top of the handwritten page, Europe to the left and Africa to the right, with the Mediterranean centrally positioned. The mappa mundi depicts the inhabited world as being tightly structured by topographical features, recognizable from their shape and color: rivers are in the same green/blue as the ocean and the Mediterranean Sea; mountains – the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Atlas, and the Taurus – are tinted a faded brown. Designs depict several noteworthy places. The great number of urban vignettes stands out as a feature specific to this map and one that requires explanation.12 Finally, a large number of place names makes it possible to identify designs indicating cities, places and animals, for example. These features, as well as the overall aspect of the map, proceed directly from a model dating from late Antiquity that gave rise to this mappa mundi. Most medieval maps are, indeed, the result of a process of transformation and adaptation of antique models.13 An important step in the formation of a ‘world image’ took place in late Antiquity, especially between the fourth and sixth centuries, when the Collectanea memorabilium by Solinus (third or fourth century) and the Historia adversus paganos by Orosius (early fifth century), were ‘set to maps’: this explains why most of the place names on mappae mundi can be traced to this time.14 No original maps from this period have survived, but they were copied over the centuries, and medieval mappae mundi often preserve traces of successive elaborations. On the map in question, a few rare place names bear witness to this process of reproduction: Venetia, founded in the sixth century; and Normannia, of Carolingian origin and dating from the tenth century. The small proportion of updated place names suggests that the map’s model at St Victor was quite close to the antique original. Other information suggests this as well, in particular the absence of elements stemming from the Christianization of mappae mundi. The terrestrial paradise is not represented.15 The center of the map is not Jerusalem, but Tyre. This choice has ever traveled across its unfathomable distance. The circuit of this sea comprises many islands situated in diverse places.’ La ‘Descriptio’, lines 52–56, p. 134. All references to this text are to Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’. 12 On this phenomenon, see chapter six in this Companion. 13 See chapter one in this Companion. 14 E. Edson, ‘The oldest world maps: classical sources of three VIII century mappae mundi’, The Ancient World 24 (1993), 169–83. P. Gautier Dalché, ‘L’héritage antique de la cartographie médiévale: les problèmes et les acquis’, in Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: fresh perspectives, new methods, ed. R. Talbert and R.W. Unger (Leiden, 2008), pp. 29–66; idem, ‘Maps in words’, p. 51. 15 On terrestrial paradise on mappae mundi, A. Scafi, Mapping paradise: a history of heaven on earth (London, 2006).
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is perhaps the result of a reading of the prophet Ezekiel, who places Tyre in the center, in the sea.16 But it might also derive from the antique custom of situating the ecumene’s center in the Aegean Sea, in the Cyclades, a feature preserved on the Sawley Map. The Holy Land is not shown in any great detail either, even though the vignette representing Jerusalem, topped with a cross, does stand out; it does so, however, no more than the other salient places on the map. It was toward the end of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that mappae mundi began to be centered on Jerusalem. This was due to the Crusades, which centered the Holy Land in western religious and political thought, and to the diffusion and deepening of theological culture via the university curriculum.17 Even if the map’s model dates from Antiquity, the forms through which it was transmitted correspond, of course, to the cultural demands of the map’s creator and intended audience. Consider urban vignettes, a striking feature of the Munich Map, which are given such prominence that the physical space of the world seems almost entirely urbanized. There can be no doubt about the antique origins of the vignettes, despite no model having survived to the present day. It is usually held that cities were represented in two basic forms: stylized urban vignettes and picturesque representations referring to ‘real’ cities, characterized by one or several of their monuments or topographical particularities.18 As mappae mundi were adapted to medieval realities, urban vignettes continued to be drawn, diverging from their antique model and assuming an abstract form, with no connection whatsoever to the urban reality they represented in the guise of fortified walls and towers. On the Munich Map, the vignettes, which were designed using a limited number of geometric elements, including a border wall (sometimes in a quadrangular shape viewed from a semi-oblique perspective), round towers and gates (topped with domes or pediments, sometimes evoking church bell towers) are all different. Some elements, such as the dome, are reserved for eastern cities; the most important cities are given the largest vignettes, in an attempt to establish a hierarchy. Although there can be no doubt about the decorative purpose of urban vignettes, they serve above all
Ezekiel 27.32. P. Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, p. 177; A.-D. von den Brincken, Fines terrae: die Enden der Erde und der vierte Kontinent auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten (Hannover, 1992), p. 83; Chekin, Northern Eurasia, p. 132. 17 On this point, see Ingrid Baumgärtner, ‘Erzählungen Kartieren: Jerusalem in mittelalterlichen Karten Räumen’, in Projektion, Reflexion, Ferne: räumliche Vorstellungen und Denkfiguren im Mittelalter, ed. S. Glauch and S. Köebele (Berlin, 2011), pp. 193–223; M. Kupfer, ‘The Jerusalem effect: rethinking the centre in medieval world maps’, Visual constructs of Jerusalem, ed. B. Kühnel, G. Noga-Banai and H. Vorholt (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 353–65. 18 Pascal Arnaud, ‘Les villes des cartographes. Vignettes urbaines et réseaux urbains dans les mappemondes de l’Occident médiéval’, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome. Moyen Age-temps modernes, 96 (1984), 545–50. Although no maps have survived from Antiquity, images of cities have been preserved: coins, objets d’art, and paintings, for instance. 16
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to illustrate the diversity of the urban world and how it has been integrated into the physical space in which humanity lives. The twelfth century is characterized by a striking revival of scholarly interest in physical space in all its forms.19 Urban topographies, as a digression, are from that point on quite common in historical and encyclopedic works. The Munich Map, whose distant model no doubt bore a large number of civitates, is perfectly adapted to this renewed interest in cities, centers of human activity and ‘civilized’ places par excellence. The lack of urban vignettes indicates, conversely, regions where human activity is less common: the south of Africa and the north of Asia. On the other hand, space devoted to monstra and the fantastic is strikingly underdeveloped, especially in comparison with other mappae mundi of the same family, such as the Hereford or Ebstorf maps, or even the small Psalter Map. More or less fantastic animals – ‘coluber mire longitudinis’ (‘surprisingly long snake’), ‘prester’ (‘venomous adder’), ‘simie’ (‘apes’), ‘leo’ (‘lion’), for example – occupy the southernmost regions of Africa, which, according to antique cosmography, became unfit for human habitation because of their hot climates. In these places, cities and men are rare, leaving room for exotic wildlife. I return to the remarkable lack of the monstra below, for there is reason to believe that it is the result of a conscious cartographic choice. Let us consider for a moment one characteristic feature of all mappae mundi: the graphic expression of textual information. And so, the columns of Alexander in India or the altars he erected in northern Asia are represented by a drawing, as are the Caspian Gates, and the islands where Gog and Magog are locked away, which are drawn, based on a reading of the Apocalypse of the Pseudo-Methodius (beginning of the eighth century), in the form of breasts.20 The map’s mix of drawings and legends attempts to make the physical space occupied by the world comprehensible, by allowing the identification of objects represented through imagery as much
19 P. Gautier Dalché, ‘Le renouvellement de la perception et de la représentation de l’espace au XIIe siècle’, in Renovación intelectual del occidente europeo (siglo XII), ed. García de Cortázar and José Ángel (Pamplona, 1998), pp. 169–217. On this phenomenon in northern England, see chapter three in this Companion. 20 The Munich Map represents Gog and Magog, the apocalyptic peoples living on two islands of the northern ocean, shown as a square and two rounded protrusions. Their particular shape is the graphic expression of ‘ubera Aquilonis’ mentioned for the first time in the Apocalypse of the Pseudo-Methodius, written in Syriac and translated into Greek and Latin at the beginning of the eighth century. The text evokes two mountains suspended from the sky, which Alexander obtains through his prayers in order to enclose Gog and Magog. They are designated as ‘Ubera aquilonis’ or in Greek, ‘Matou do bora’, ‘breasts of the north’, in Sibyllinische Texte und Forschungen, ed. F. Saschur (Halle, 1898), p. 73. At a point at which the map was being transmitted, an illustrator represented the ‘Ubera aquilonis’ as breast-shaped islands in the ocean. A variant of this association between the ‘breasts of the north’ and this insular space can be found on the Ebstorf Map, where two islands bear the inscriptions ‘Ubera’ and ‘Aquilonis’.
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as inscriptions.21 Thus, the island of Sicily is immediately recognizable by its triangular shape. The color of the Red Sea, a feature common on mappae mundi, makes it easy to identify and to locate. The map is first and foremost a visual rendering of geographical descriptions. Deciphering it is a process involving several phases. In phase one, the observer takes in an overview of the ecumene. From this standpoint, one cannot help but be struck by the use of color on the Munich Map, which clearly delineates terrestrial from aqueous space (seas and rivers) and allows the spatial arrangement of the ecumene to stand out. Terrestrial space is rigorously structured by mountains and rivers. For example, Asia is divided by the Caucasus mountain chain, drawn as the arc from which spring Asia’s chief rivers.22 The ecumene appears centered on the Mediterranean, the outer edges of which are carefully drawn so as to highlight its many gulfs and seas, whereas many mappae mundi display only more or less rectilinear shorelines, making little attempt to reproduce their sinuous nature. In phase two, a detailed examination of the map’s different sectors is facilitated by inscribed place names, which allow the identification of geographical objects and specify the contents of each region.
A CLOSE REPRODUCTION OF THE WALL MAP AT THE PARISIAN ABBEY OF ST VICTOR Hugh of St Victor’s ‘geography course’ is preserved in the Descriptio mappe mundi.23 The aim of this precise, realistic description of the St Victor mappa mundi is to make it intelligible.24 The specimen at the abbey of St Victor stood as the final copy of a map with antique origins. It was still used in the early fourteenth century by Jean of St Victor, author of a monumental universal history accompanied by a long treatise on descriptive geography.25 The Munich Map presents striking similarities to the Descriptio mappe mundi. These have already been pointed out, so I limit my analysis here to the most interesting ones, while adding a few clarifications.26
21 On reading maps, pairing them with books, and creating comprehensive cognitive maps, see chapters two and three in this Companion. 22 The large topographical features of medieval mappae mundi are medieval elaborations of information from antique cartography: this is the case in particular of the Caucasus mountain chain. See F. Prontera, ‘Materiali di reimpiego: il Caucaso-Tauro nell’iconografia dei mappamondi medievali’, Orbis disciplinae: hommages en l’honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché, ed. N. Bouloux, A. Dan and G. Tolias (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 319–44. 23 For more on teaching and maps, see chapter two in this Companion. 24 Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, pp. 59–86; idem, ‘“Réalité” et “symbole” dans la géographie de Hugues de Saint-Victor’, Ugo di San Vittore: atti del XLVII convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 10-12 ottobre 2010 (Spoleto, 2011), pp. 359–81, here p. 372. 25 Isabelle Guyot-Bachy, Le Memoriale historiarum de Jean de Saint-Victor. Un historien et sa communauté au début du XIVe siècle (Paris, 2000). 26 Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, pp. 81–5.
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Certain details, not found in the text of the Descriptio or on the Munich Map, that contrast with facts traditionally associated with medieval geography illustrate the relationship: first, on the islands of ‘Gades’ (‘Cadiz’) three columns of Hercules are drawn, whereas typically there are only two; second, the apocalyptic peoples of Gog and Magog are drawn as circular protuberances on a rectangular island in the northern ocean, across from the ‘regio amazonum’ (‘region of the Amazons’), whereas they are most often drawn in Asia and separated from the rest of the world by a wall said to have been erected by Alexander.27 Moreover, place names that are rare in medieval geography appear in the text and on the map; for example, the names and order of the islands in the Red Sea; in Asia, the map’s ‘Cathmorum gens optima’ (‘the Cathmi, the best people’) appears in the text as ‘gentem optimam Cathmorum’; and, in Africa, lake ‘Archipoleta’ and the ‘monasteria monachorum’ are found on no other mappa mundi. Additionally, features of the drawing are close to the text of the Descriptio: the ways the ocean islands are positioned with respect to the winds; the detailed contours of the Mediterranean, especially the tracing of its various gulfs (atypical of most mappae mundi); and the contour of the Alps, which divide Europe into two parts. There are also notable similarities between the text’s descriptive terms and their depiction on the map. With respect to Noah’s Ark, which the map situates on Mount Ararat in Armenia, the Descriptio reads: ‘In hac Armenia requieuit archa Noe super montes Ararath’ (‘In Armenia rests Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat’), which aligns precisely with the drawing.28 The vignette of Rome, which shows the River Tiber running through it, matches Hugh’s description: ‘Prima et precipua est Roma, que super Tyberim fluuium sita est’ (‘First and foremost is Rome, which sits on the River Tiber’).29 Hugh points out the columns erected by Alexander in India: ‘Sunt ibi super oceanum Indicum columpne Alexandri et oraculum eius’ (‘Where the columns and oracle of Alexander are on the Indian Ocean’). Three columns A text in Syriac, the Causa causarum, The book of the cause of causes (tenth–eleventh century), mentions that in the strait there are three statues of Heracles as well as tall columns. See Jean-Charles Ducène, ‘La géographie chez les auteurs syriaques: entre hellénisme et moyen âge arabe’, Migrations de langues et d’idées en Asie, ed. Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat and Michel Zink (Paris, 2015), pp. 30–1. The indirect source of this particular fact, insofar as it pertains to the Munich mappa mundi in the west, could be of Syriac origin; the three columns in Gades may have been inserted on the map at some undetermined point of its transmission. There are a few rare instances of other medieval maps showing three columns in Gades; in addition to the Psalter Map, this is also notably the case of a mappa mundi held in a manuscript dating from the middle of the twelfth century, where there are three columns of Hercules in western Gades. (At the three other cardinal directions figure three other Gades: Gades Alexandri, Gades Gamel and Gades Varacis – the term is used here as a common noun signifying fence or border, displayed by columns or altars erected by a ‘hero’.) Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14731, fol. 83v. 28 La ‘Descriptio’, line 307, p. 144. 29 La ‘Descriptio’, line 510, p. 152. 27
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appear on the map.30 Most mappae mundi, like Ebstorf and Psalter, associate the oracle of Alexander with the sun tree and the moon tree heralding his death, or they depict the altars of Alexander, as does the Hereford Map.31 In Africa, the course of the Nile bears a striking resemblance to Hugh’s description: In Ethiopia est quidam fluuius, Nilus dictus, qui etiam alio nomine Gyon dicitur uel Nichul. Hic oritur ad occidentem, non longe ab Hesperiis montibus, et inde per mediam Ethiopiam ad orientem cursum suum dirigit, usque ad deserta superioris Egypti, hoc est pene ad ostium maris Rubri, ubi mare Rubrum ab occeano deriuatur et ibi in lacum qui dicitur Archipoleta a terra absorbetur, et rursus oritur in loco qui dicitur Emporium Moisselon, et inde per multos circuitus inter Libiam et Egyptum reflectitur ad septentrionem usque Alexandriam et mare Egyptium, ibique in mare Magnum effunditur. In Ethiopia, there is a river, called the Nile, also bearing the name of Gyon or Nichul. It originates in the west, not far from the Hesperian Mountains, and from there flows toward the east, through central Ethiopia, to the deserts of Upper Egypt, that is to say, almost to the mouth of the Red Sea, at the place where the latter originates in the Ocean. In this spot, the Nile is absorbed by the earth in a lake called Archipoleta and springs forth again in a place called the Moisselon Emporium. From there, after much meandering, it turns northward again between Libya and Egypt, heading all the way to Alexandria and the Sea of Egypt, where it spills into the Mediterranean.32
The description of the course of the Nile is strongly influenced by Orosius and correlates to what we find on other medieval maps: ‘two’ Niles are represented. The first, further to the south, originating in western Africa (often called the Nichul), flows into a lake in eastern Africa, not far from the Red Sea.33 The second is the re-emergence of the first, according to Orosius: the waters of the river are lost in the desert sands, before springing forth again to form the Nile that brings water to Alexandria and flows into the Mediterranean. La ‘Descriptio’, lines 232–3, p. 141. The only other map that indicates columns in this place is the second map of St Jerome. It is likely that the original drawing of the arae was mistaken, at a time when the map was copied, for columns. On this point, see the comment by Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, p. 168. 32 La ‘Descriptio’, lines 360–8, p. 146. 33 Orose, Histoires contre les païens, I, pp. 29–33, ed. and trans. M.-P. Arnaud-Lindet (Paris 1990–1), vol. I, pp. 19–20. See Robin Seignobos, ‘L’origine occidentale du Nil dans la géographie latine et arabe avant le XIVe siècle’, in Orbis disciplinae: hommages en l’honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché, ed. N. Bouloux, A. Dan and G. Tolias (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 371–94. 30 31
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Two details indicated on the Munich Map clearly link it to the Descriptio: in addition to the lake’s name, Archipoleta, which is found only in two rare texts, there is remarkable consistency between the text and the map with respect to the lake’s position ‘pene ad ostium maris Rubri’ (‘almost at the mouth of the Red Sea’), into which flows the Atlantic Nile. On other mappae mundi of the same family, it is the source of the Nile of Alexandria, situated closest to the Red Sea.34 The consistency here between the text and the map is just as evident in its description of the Alps, considered to be a continuous mountain chain stretching from the south of Italy to the source of the Drava.35 Such matches – and this is but a brief illustrative selection – link the Munich mappa mundi to Hugh of St Victor’s Descriptio mappe mundi beyond a reasonable doubt.
NATURE AND USES OF THE MAP The connection is of the utmost importance if we want to understand how the map was perceived by twelfth-century users in the Parisian community where it originated. In this respect, the Descriptio itself provides useful indications that also apply to the small Munich Map and to all twelfth- and thirteenth-century mappae mundi. The Descriptio has been preserved in two versions: first, in a reportatio, that is, notes taken by a student, Lawrence of Westminster, during the master’s lecture course; second, in a version edited by Hugh himself that includes a prologue intended to explain his project and methods, which, thereby, provides a theory of cartographic representation:36 Sapientes viri, tam seculari quam ecclesiastica litteratura edocti, in tabula vel pelle solent orbem terrarum depingere, ut incognita scire volentibus rerum imagines ostendant, quia res ipsas non possunt presentare. Sed nec omnes valent circuire occeanum, ut positiones videant insularum, non omnes possunt adire longinquas regiones, ut aspiciant situs, qualitates et divisiones earum. Inde est, quod eadem descriptio que mappa mundi appellatur, diversis modis propter rerum diversitatem coloratur, ut alio quidem mare Magnum, alio mare Rubrum, alio flumina et alio montes colore vestiti, facilius ab invicem discernantur. Sed et singulis rebus que in hac mappa mundi depinguntur, titulus scripture apponitur, quia rerum incognitarum imagines sine scripture vel sermonis magisterio aut nullatenus aut difficile intelliguntur. Nos autem This is the Epistola de rebus in Oriente mirabilibus (version D), a catalog of monsters and marvels, from which the Liber monstrorum was drafted. Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, p. 72. 35 Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, p. 113. 36 On this point, see Dan Terkla, ‘Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) and Anglo-French cartography’, Imago mundi 65.2 (2013), 161–79, here 170–1. 34
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non depingere, sed describere mappam mundi proponimus in hoc opere, id est non res nec rerum imagines, sed potius significationes, non quas res ipse significant, sed quibus significantur volumus demonstrare. Wise men educated in both the profane and sacred sciences customarily portray the terrestrial orb on a wooden panel or piece of parchment to show, to those seeking to know what they do not know, the images of things, since it is impossible to show them the things themselves. There is no way for everyone to circumnavigate the ocean so as to see where the islands are located, and not everyone can travel all the way to faraway countries to contemplate their location, features and parts. That is why this description, which is called a world map, has been given a variety of colors as a function of the diversity of reality: the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, rivers and mountains have each been given their own colors, making it easier to distinguish one from another. A legend has nevertheless been provided for each of the realities depicted on this world map, for without the instruction of the writing or the word, the images of unfamiliar realities cannot be understood, or at least only with great difficulty. What we are proposing in this work is not to draw a world map, but to provide a description of it; that is to say, we are not trying to show the realities, nor the representations of these realities, but their significations; we want to show not those realities that the realities themselves signify, but those through which they are signified.37
This prologue is remarkable for more than one reason.38 It sets forth a pedagogical innovation that places the map at the forefront of geographical investigation and explains that it has been designed as a representation of reality. Hugh of St Victor begins by providing a definition of the map: it is a representation of the world based on a drawing and colors, comprising legends and painted on parchment or a wooden panel. It serves to show ‘those seeking to know what they do not know, the images of things, since it is impossible to show them the things themselves’. It is therefore an artifact intended to reveal the world to those who cannot know it through travel, for which it stands proxy.39 It makes geographical objects graphically appreciable and intelligible. It is therefore a representation of reality, but a complex one, requiring explanation by the master. The use of color allows Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, p. 133. For a French translation, Patrice Sicard, Hugues de Saint-Victor et son école (Paris and Turnhout, 1991), p. 73. 38 I refer in the following passage to my commentary that appeared in La Terre: connaissance, représentations, mesure, ed. P. Gautier Dalché (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 347–50. 39 On this theme, N. Bouloux, ‘La carte comme substitut au voyage’, A l’échelle du monde. La carte: objet, culturel, social et politique, du Moyen Age à nos jours, Cartes et géomatiques 234 (December 2017), 49–55. On virtual travel in monasteries, see chapter two in this Companion. 37
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identification and distinction of the geographical objects represented, just as its legends make it possible to identify what has been drawn. The use of color to complement drawn forms, a particularity of maps, is established by Hugh as a key pedagogical method. The use of color and graphical representations to facilitate memorization is an aspect of Hugonian pedagogy, set forth in the introduction to his Chronicon (or De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum, c. 1130–1), a didactic work summarizing basic historical information in the form of lists and tables.40 The master’s instruction, his commentary on the map, is the final touch that brings order to the world’s physical space and makes it understandable to students. But what reality is represented on the map? In other words, how high up the ladder of knowledge is geography? Is the map a medium for visual exegesis, subject to a reading in terms of the three scriptural senses: literal, allegorical and tropological? Is it subject to a symbolic reading in which what is drawn on the map signifies some invisible reality? In Hugonian pedagogy, the image plays a central role. It makes it possible to grasp, more effectively than do words, the meaning of what is represented and thereby allows us to contemplate the unseen and invisible.41 In his Libellus de formatione arche, Hugh offers an exemplary symbolic interpretation of a cartographic image. The Libellus describes how Hugh’s depiction of Noah’s Ark in St Victor’s cloister was put together. A representation of the orbis terrarum, a mappa mundi, was drawn between the ark and a figure of Christ in majesty, but the cartographic elements on it were simplified, such that only a few particularly significant places were represented: paradise, Babylon, Egypt and Jerusalem. In this case, the design layout serves a different function: to make the sinner’s soul whole again by revealing the spiritual realities that exist beyond perceivable realities. Thus, in the Libellus, the fact that Babylon is situated in the north signifies chastisement due to the sin of pride; the fact that Egypt is situated in the south signifies the concupiscence of the flesh.42 Therefore, ‘places have meaning’, according to the exegetical principle Hugh formulates in the De scripturis et scriptoribus sacris praenotatiunculae, but only in the spiritual framework in which they apply.43 It would be improper to transpose this rule to other domains, to think that the use of geography systematically applies to other symbolic undertakings. This is not the case in the Descriptio mappe mundi, as revealed by the final sentence of the prologue, which appears as a warning to students about what not to do. The commentator cannot show realities directly – only 40 Partial edition by Wallace M. Green, ‘Hugo of St. Victor: De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum’, Speculum 18 (1943), 484–93, here 488–92. 41 Patrice Sicard, Diagramme médiévaux et exégèse visuelle: le Libellus de formatione arche de Hugues de Saint-Victor (Paris, 1993); Gautier Dalché, ‘Réalité et symbole’, pp. 366–8. 42 Hugonis de Sancto Victore. De archa Noe. Libellus de formatione arche, ed. Patrice Sicard, 2 vols (Turnhout, 2001), p. 176. 43 J-P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Latina (Paris, 1878-90), vol. 175, col. 23.
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travel can do that. He is not acting as a cartographer: he does not draw ‘the representations of these realities’, but provides their ‘significations’; that is to say that he makes them intelligible through commentary. It is therefore not about proposing a spiritual interpretation of the world based on exegesis – and formulated as ‘not those realities that the realities themselves signify’ – but about elaborating on the artwork and legends ‘through which they [the realities] are signified’. The commentary is limited to explaining the terms written on the map and its shapes and colors; in a word, it describes the world as the map represents it. Geographical description lies in the domain of propaedeutic knowledge: it lays the foundation for more advanced study. Geographical description finds its own justification in the fact that it describes the realities of the world in which humanity acts; it also facilitates understanding historia, both profane and sacred. The prologue says nothing about whether it can serve the cause of symbolic exegesis; rather, it limits the master’s role to describing what is real, which a reading of the Descriptio confirms. Therefore, the map drawn on the abbey walls was, for Hugh and his students, fundamentally a representation of the real, useful in understanding the geographical organization of the world. Hugh describes a new way of thinking about the map, which he viewed as a sufficiently reliable medium for geographical investigation. This is all the more remarkable in that Hugh’s thoughts and pedagogy are geared toward using drawing to gain insight into the signifier that points to the unseen or invisible signified. Accordingly, the twelfth century appears as a crucial moment in the history of map usage, which the Munich Map and its association with Isidore of Seville’s geography demonstrate: the map is a depiction of the real, formed by the organized and orderly compilation of descriptive texts dating back to late Antiquity.44 The simple, and unusual, fact that the illustrator painted a detailed mappa mundi at a time when most of Isidore of Seville’s manuscripts contained only cartographic diagrams (schematic maps) takes on new meaning in light of Hugh’s prologue.45 Geography, in the form of texts or maps, focuses on the ‘location, features and parts’ of the world; in other words, on an objective, concrete awareness of space. Hugh observes that ‘without the instruction of the writing or the word, the images of unfamiliar realities cannot be understood, or at least only with great difficulty’. Placing a map, which is more than just a simple illustration, in a geographical text demonstrates that they are complementary means of representing the world. The idea that they shed light on one another 44 On Isidore’s sources, introduction by Olga Spevak, in Isidore de Séville, Étymologies, livre XIV, de Terra, text prepared, translated and commented by O. Spevak (Paris, 2011), pp. xxxv–xxxix. On Isidore’s geography, A. Merrills, History and geography in late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2005), and his ‘Geography and Isidore’s Etymologiae’, Mapping medieval geographies, ed. Lilley, pp. 45–64; N. Lozovsky, The earth is our book: geographical knowledge in the Latin West, c. 400–1000 (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000). 45 On schematic maps, see the preface to this Companion.
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and play fundamental roles in the intellectual apprehension of space was later recognized and developed in Franciscan spheres, first by Roger Bacon (c. 1214–92) and then Paolino Veneto (c. 1270–1344).46 Other aspects of the Munich Map are consistent with the geographical methods of Hugh of St Victor. Although wear wrought by time has faded the ink used for mountains, the use of color is particularly helpful in identifying the world’s largest structures. It is the graphical expression of his oral pedagogy, in which he carries out a ‘discretio locorum’, a distinction of place, in order to help his disciples understand and memorize elements of the physical world.47 Another important aspect of the Munich Map’s appearance is how it was manufactured. The cartographer had to select and adapt his model to a handwritten page, thereby engendering deformations and requiring him to make choices. The generally oval shape of the map is consistent with this adaptation. The lack of space reserved for Europe, in light of the extensive information provided on the model, also played havoc with the topographical order in Hugh’s description. But the technical difficulties of the copy should not distract us from the range of choices the cartographer had to make, made, at least in part, at his own discretion. It is worth reiterating here that, although maps were generally considered to be reliable by their users, some scholars criticized cartographers. Such was the case of Gervase of Tilbury (d. 1234). In his Otia imperialia (Recreation for an emperor), dedicated to Emperor Otto IV, he criticizes cartographers’ lack of seriousness and considers them to be little more than illustrators making adjustments on a whim without the knowledge to guarantee the validity of their rearrangements and, in so doing, undermining the map’s reliability: […] considerantes quod ipsa pictorum varietas mendaces effecit de locorum veritate picturas quas mappam mundi vulgus nominat,
46 On the Franciscans being influenced by Hugh of St Victor, K.A. Rivers, Preaching the memory of virtue and vice: memory, images and preaching in the late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 93–5, 108–9; B. Roest, Reading the book of history: intellectual contexts and educational functions of Franciscan historiography, 1226–c. 1350 (Groningen, 1996), pp. 255–6; S. Piron, ‘Franciscains et victorins: tableau d’une réception’, in L’école de Saint-Victor: influence et rayonnement du Moyen Age à la Renaissance, ed. D. Poirel (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 521–45; P. Rorem, ‘Bonaventure’s ideal and Hugh of St Victor’s comprehensive biblical theology’, Franciscan Studies 70 (2012), 385–97; D. Poirel, ‘De l’intégration au dépouillement: Thomas de Celano et sa réception de quelques thèmes d’Hugues de Saint-Victor’, Franciscan Studies 70 (2012), 341–66; D. Poirel, ‘Circulation des manuscrits, des textes et des idées: la réception des œuvres de Saint-Victor dans l’ordre Franciscain’, in Entre stabilité et itinérance: livres et culture des ordres mendiants, XIIIe–XVe siècle, ed. N. Bériou, M. Morard and D. Nebbiai-Dalla Guarda (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 289–302. See N. Bouloux, Culture et savoirs géographiques en Italie au XIVe siècle (Turnhout, 2002) (Terrarum orbis, 2), pp. 63–7; N. Bouloux, ‘Textes et cartes au service de l’histoire d’après Paulin de Venise’, in La Terre, connaissance, pp. 355–7. 47 Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, pp. 107–8.
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plerumque enim pictor, ut alias testi, cum de suo adicit, partis mendacio totam testimonii seriem decolorat. We consider that in these images, which common folk call a mappa mundi, the illustrators’ inconsistencies result in errors with respect to the accuracy of certain places; most often, the illustrator fills in gaps on his own and, like a witness in a trial, thereby corrupts, by lying about a given detail, the credibility of the overall testimony.48
With respect to the history of cartography, this criticism is highly interesting. It is evidence of a critical attitude with respect to the mappae mundi depicting the ‘veritas locorum’ (‘true location’), which was their objective. Gervase’s remark also displays a keen awareness of the conditions in which maps were transmitted. Just when we were thinking that cartographers were involved – that is to say, experts in cartography and geography – Gervase reminds us that the ‘cartographer’ was sometimes a simple illustrator, lacking substantive geographical knowledge. We might suppose that a map was the result of a group effort directed by a ‘cartographer’, a scholar who designed the map based on one or several models, especially for monumental works like the Hereford and Ebstorf maps. However, it was probably also the case that a lone illustrator did the work, especially when making a mural epitome like the small Munich Map. This is perhaps why we can attribute the use of blue for the city of Decusa, above Nicomedia, to a blunder committed by the colorist; the same goes for Theodosia, which is otherwise correctly situated between the Tanaïs and the Hypanis, in accordance with Hugh’s description.49 The conditions in which the map was copied explain why occasional discrepancies crop up between Hugh’s description and the map design. These considerations do not rule out the fact that choices made by the ‘cartographer’ about what should be depicted are significant. The illustrator had to select the elements that suited his own interests or, alternatively, those of the designer or sponsor. In the case of the Munich mappa mundi, these choices underscore the map’s preeminence as a conveyor of objective geographical knowledge. To determine this, we have points of comparison: first, of course, is the Descriptio mappe mundi, but we can also turn to mappae mundi in the same family. The Hereford Map and the Ebstorf Map, with respect to their size and content, are much alike: from a formal standpoint, each evokes two small-dimensional manuscript maps, the Sawley Map for Hereford and the Psalter Map for Ebstorf. A comparison of their shapes and nomenclature reveals that the mappa mundi described by Hugh of St Victor is close to the Ebstorf, while at the same time it possesses important similarities to Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia: recreation for an emperor, trans. and ed. S. Banks and J.W. Binns (Oxford, 2002), II, 25, p. 256. See my analysis of this passage in Gautier Dalché, La Terre, connaissance, pp. 350–2. 49 Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, lines 555–6, p. 153. 48
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the Hereford.50 Bettina Schöller’s recent study has brought to light striking correspondences between the Descriptio mappe mundi and the Psalter Map, in terms of structure and positioning of objects. Schöller tends to think that the map is a setting of the Descriptio map, but one cannot rule out the possibility of recourse to a map similar to the one at the abbey of St Victor.51 On the Munich Map, the designs adopted by the cartographer point to geography, natural history, profane history (especially Alexander’s deeds) as well as sacred history. Natural elements, like the ‘Palus Maeotica’ (‘Maeotian Swamp’), or even the Caspian Gates and the three islands of Gades were drawn so that the eye can easily situate and identify them. In the north, in Asia above the Caucasus and in northern Europe, decorative vegetal elements, which are also found on the Ebstorf Map, were drawn, perhaps to illustrate the forested and wild character of these regions. In northern Asia, two elements of this kind are near the place name ‘Hircania silva’ (‘Hyrcanian Forest’); on the Ebstorf Map, in the same location, a tree appears. This feature is consistent with the Descriptio, which describes these regions as poorly adapted for human habitation because of the density of their forests and overall wildness.52 Aspects of the story of Alexander – all references to Alexander in the Descriptio appear on the Munich Map – primarily function to indicate the limits of the known world: to the north, the three altars of Alexander that correspond in the east to the three columns of Alexander. Through his military action, the king revealed the entirety of the ecumene, in accordance with the well-known antique association of one’s power as a conqueror with one’s knowledge of the world, a notion the Middle Ages inherited. Finally, elements pertaining to sacred history, mostly from the Old Testament, correspond to certain realities: consequently, the Hebrews’ crossing of the Red Sea, once considered a miraculous event, appears, as does Noah’s ark, a ‘relic’ of the Flood. On the other hand, the Holy Land receives no particular emphasis, in contrast to large mappae mundi, like the Ebstorf and Hereford. 50 For further analysis of this question and a comparison with the map described by Hugh, Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, appendix 1. 51 See Bettina Schöller, Wissen speichern, Wissen ordnen, Wissen übertragen: schriftliche und bildliche Aufzeichnungen der Welt im umfeld der Londoner Psalterkarte (Zürich, 2015). One argument points to this being a copy of a map rather than a map drawn based on a text: for example, the geometric alignments identified by Schöller (see diagram 14, p. 299) that show, in her view, a complex design linking terrestrial paradise, Jerusalem at the center of the map, Noah’s Ark and the Hebrews’ crossing of the Red Sea, are all nearly identical on the Munich Map, on which the crossing of the Hebrews and Noah’s Ark occupy a similar position (the center of the map being Tyre and terrestrial paradise not being represented; the ark is, for its part, slightly offset, a byproduct of the copy and the oval shape of the map). The ‘geometric alignment’ probably had at first no spiritual signification; on the other hand, it might have played a crucial role in the construction of the map, that is to say, in maintaining topographical relationships. 52 ‘Deinde est Hircania et Hyberia et Armenia superior, que plene sunt siluis, montibus, feris et bestiis, terre deserte et inhabitabiles preter superiores partes ...’, Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, lines 297–8, p. 144.
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The Munich Map’s illustrator worked from a map not centered on Jerusalem and lacking the terrestrial paradise; and so, in a general way, was quite close to its model, which originated in late Antiquity.53 Moreover, he systematically eliminated all representations of the monstrous peoples in the Descriptio mappe mundi, although he preserved a few extraordinary animals in the ecumene’s south, where they populate regions thought to be uninhabitable, or where conditions, it was believed, made human survival difficult. One of the branches of the Nile delimits two distinct zones: to the north are the lion and the horned wolf, animals characteristic of African deserts; to the south are the serpent, the prester, the amphisbaena and an unusually large snake, signifying a proliferation of the extraordinary in the far reaches of the world, as opposed to its humanized, urbanized heart.54 This is significant. These monstrous peoples are found on the large mappae mundi and on the Psalter Map, which is comparable in size to the Munich Map and associated with a liturgical compendium; on these maps, they populate the southern part of the ecumene. Their presence on most mappae mundi (notably the one described by Hugh of St Victor) is not simply symbolic, pertaining to myth, or a fascination with the world’s wonders, a fascination thought to be a character trait of ‘medieval man’. Their appearance points to an important element of medieval culture, one inherited from antique culture and beginning in the twelfth century.55 Monstra fall first and foremost within the domain of natural history; the notion that they existed was the consequence of a rational understanding of nature’s inhomogeneity.56 Moreover, on medieval mappae mundi, monstra play an important role in visual exegesis, in response to St Augustine’s doubts regarding their existence: the divine word concerns all forms of human culture, including the monstra who, if they exist and are human – in other words, if they live in societies and engage in activities demonstrating
53 A comparison with the Psalter Map is enlightening in this respect. In contrast to the Munich Map, the Psalter Map displays an elaborate process of the Christianization of space, with special emphasis on the life of Christ. See Schöller, Wissen speichern, pp. 123–44. 54 The illustrator gave the prester the features of the amphisbaena (a head at each end of the body) and drew next to it a nameless serpent similar to the description that Hugh of St Victor gives of the prester: ‘Est ibi serpens quidam, prester appellatus, alas habens et caput cornutum et barbatum quasi capra, habens caudam multis nodis et flexuris tortuosam’ (Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio’, lines 375–7, p. 147). 55 On the many functions of the monstra in medieval culture, see J. Friedman, The monstrous races in medieval art and thought (Cambridge, 1981); Claude Lecouteux, Les monstres dans la pensée médiévale européenne (Paris, 1999); D. William, Deformed discourse: the function of the monster in medieval thought and literature (Montréal, 1996); and, especially, A.S. Mittman, Maps and monsters in medieval England (New York and London, 2006). 56 Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wonders and the order of nature (1150–1750) (New York, 2001); Lisa Verner, The epistemology of the monstrous in the Middle Ages (London and New York, 2005); and ‘Medieval monsters, in theory and practice’, Giornale de storia della medicina 26.1 (2014), 43–68.
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the use of reason – are the descendants of Adam.57 This is one of the reasons why they figure on most large mappae mundi: they adorn the world as part of divine creation. In this respect, the Ebstorf Map is especially noteworthy. It is drawn on/as the body of Christ: his nimbus is associated with the Alpha and the Omega, paradise overlooks the ecumene, and Jerusalem, at the center of the map, takes on the features of Revelation’s celestial Jerusalem, to cite only a few examples.58
CONCLUSION The Munich Map, dating from the first half of the twelfth century, is the small-scale reproduction of the large mappa mundi described by Hugh of St Victor in the Descriptio mappe mundi. It is one of the first surviving examples of the family of ‘Anglo-French’ maps, which is the focus of this Companion. The Munich Map depicts the entire inhabited world, while highlighting key geographical structures. Through the use of color, it contrasts terrestrial with maritime space. The map enables one to distinguish visually the major groupings that subdivide the ecumene and, above all, its topographical features; it portrays space as primarily urban, pushing thinly populated wild places to the northern and southern margins of the ecumene. The ultimate purpose of mappae mundi is spiritual; they facilitate the contemplation of divine creation, a practice endemic to the clerical milieu in which they were first developed.59 True to form, the Munich Map visually displays concretely the geographical space inhabited by humanity, in accordance with the teachings of Hugh of St Victor, with its focus on realia (the real world) and intent to base the spiritual interpretation of it on a literal exegesis in which historia plays a central role. The illustrator preserved the main features of the St Victor mappa mundi, in particular its characteristic absence of the usual signs of spatial Christianization. That choice is indicative of the map’s primary function: placed at the opening of Book XIV of Isidore’s Etymologies, the small Munich mappa mundi was designed primarily as a realistic, objective, St Augustine, The city of God, XVI, 8. On the Ebstorf Map, along with a rich bibliography and to serve as a primer, see E. Edson, Mapping time and space: how medieval mapmakers viewed their world, (London, 1997), chapter 7, pp. 232–9; Peter Barber, ‘The medieval maps of the world’, The Hereford world map, ed. P.D.A. Harvey, pp. 23–7, with bibliography. Reproduction and commentary in Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte: Kommentierte neuausgabe in zwei Bänden, ed. Hartmut Kugler (Oldenburg, 2007). Jürgen Wilke, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, Text- und Tafelband, vol. 39, (Bielefeld, 2001); Kloster und Bildung in Mittelalter, ed. N. Kruppa and Jürgen Wilke (Göttingen, 2006). 59 For the analysis of the Ebstorf Map with regard to contemplation, see P. Gautier Dalché, ‘Pour une histoire des rapports entre contemplation et cartographie au Moyen Age’, in Les méditations cosmographiques à la Renaissance (Cahiers V.L. Saulnier, vol. 26, 2009), pp. 19–40; M. Kupfer, ‘Reflections in the Ebstorf Map: cartography, theology, and “dilectio speculationis”’, in Mapping medieval geographies, ed. Lilley, pp. 100–26. 57
58
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visual presentation of the ecumene, in accordance with Hugh of St Victor’s pedagogy. For Hugh, a map was a complex artifact, requiring explanation by a master, who would help students discern the ecumene’s main structures and identify and locate particular places, thereby acquiring knowledge indispensable to understanding salvation history. This kind of geographical investigation conformed to Hugh’s vision of geography, the visible, as the foundation upon which one built a pathway leading to attainment of the invisible, the spiritual, which was, after all, his goal as magister. The Munich Map’s illustrator remained true to the Victorine master’s conceptions by not modifying the information conveyed by the model map, unlike illustrators of some thirteenth-century mappae mundi from the same family. The fact that the Munich Map was designed, first and foremost, to promote geographical knowledge by no means prevented it from being used for such purposes. In an abbatial or monastic context, a map that set the ecumene within a cosmic vision could be used for meditative purposes and as a basis for spiritual exercises.60 It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the cartographer’s objectives and how the map might have been used. By their very nature, maps are subject to different interpretations, none of which are mutually exclusive: from concrete awareness of the physical space in which humanity lives to meditation that leads the soul into union with the divine. In other words, maps are profoundly polysemous, which means that, like other cultural artifacts, they could serve purposes unforeseen by their creators.
Gautier Dalché, ‘Pour une histoire des rapports’, passim; also chapters two and three in this Companion.
60
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T
he Sawley Map (Plate III) has long been recognized as an important witness to the growth in the production of mappae mundi in the twelfth century.1 With 223 inscriptions, it is among the most detailed world maps to survive from the period prior to 1300.2 Its links with earlier maps, such as the Cotton Map (c. 1025, Plate I), and its especially strong connections with the Hereford mappa mundi (c. 1300, Plate VIII), accord it a pivotal role between maps preserved in manuscript books and the great wall maps that survive from the later Middle Ages.3 The Sawley Map – formerly, and inaccurately, known as the ‘Henry of Mainz’ Map – can be dated with confidence to the end of the twelfth century, on the basis of its script and the manuscript in which it appears.4 The manuscript, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66 (hereafter
1 See in particular Danielle Lecoq, ‘La mappemonde d’Henri de Mayence ou l’image du monde au XIIe siècle’, Iconographie médiévale: image, texte, contexte, ed. G. Duchet-Suchaux (Paris, 1990), pp. 155–207; P.D.A. Harvey, ‘The Sawley Map and other world maps in twelfthcentury England’, Imago mundi 49 (1997), 33–42; Leonid S. Chekin, Northern Eurasia in medieval cartography: inventory, text, translation, and commentary (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 137–9; and Nathalie Bouloux, ‘L’espace habité’, in La terre: connaissance, représentations, mesure au Moyen Âge, ed. Patrick Gautier Dalché (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 259–441, here pp. 367–72. Earlier scholarship includes W.L. Bevan and H.W. Phillott, Mediæval geography: an essay in illustration of the Hereford Mappa Mundi (London, 1873), pp. xxxvi–xxxix, and Konrad Miller, Mappae mundi: die ältesten weltkarten, 6 vols (Stuttgart, 1895–98), vol. 3 (1895), pp. 21–9. 2 See the appendix below for fresh transcriptions and consonances with those on the Hereford Map. 3 The ‘Cotton’ map is also known (and described elsewhere in this volume) as the ‘AngloSaxon’ mappa mundi. Neither is an entirely satisfactory title; my preference is for the former because the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ obscures the map’s connections with continental models, and may misleadingly imply the lack of any other Anglo-Saxon maps. 4 See Harvey, ‘Sawley Map’, p. 35 for explanation and refutation of this nomenclature. Norton favors a date of 1188 for the section of the manuscript in which the mappa mundi appears, since another text in that section, the De primo Saxonum aduentu, has an explicit recording its copying in 1188: Christopher Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, in Symeon of Durham: historian of Durham and the North, ed. David Rollason (Stamford, 1998), pp. 61–105, here pp. 71, 86–7; the possibility that the first folio, and hence the mappa mundi, was added slightly later, has encouraged others to date the map c. 1200.
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CCCC 66), belonged to the Cistercian abbey of Sawley (or Salley) in Yorkshire, as the prominent ex-libris ‘Liber Sancte Marie de Salleia’ (‘Book of St Mary of Sawley’) emphatically attests. Nevertheless, scholars have generally assumed that the map does not originate from Sawley, a small abbey founded in 1147/8 which, at the time of the map’s production, had only recently been rescued from financial destitution, and which did not possess an extensive collection of books.5 Instead, a strong consensus has formed in recent years that the map, along with the rest of its manuscript, must have been copied in Durham.6 Several factors suggest a Durham provenance, although none are conclusive. In the first place, the manuscript’s generally high quality and use of decoration points to a well-endowed scriptorium, rather than the modestly-resourced Sawley. Secondly, CCCC 66 previously formed part of a larger manuscript that contained material of particular relevance to Durham, including Symeon of Durham’s Historia Dunelmensis ecclesie, a list of holy relics belonging to Durham Cathedral, a history of St Cuthbert and an Old English poem about Durham.7 The manuscript may have been given to Sawley as a gift, or perhaps even commissioned for the abbey by a benefactor, such as Matilda de Percy (d. c. 1204), countess of Warwick and daughter of the abbey’s founder, who had come to Sawley’s aid in the late 1180s.8 The connection with Durham raises the tantalizing possibility that the Sawley Map may have been copied from a mappa mundi there. The obvious candidate is a ‘mappa mundi’ listed among the goods bequeathed to Durham Cathedral Priory by the bishop of Durham, Hugh du Puiset (c. 1125–95).9 It is unclear from the list whether the term ‘mappa mundi’ refers in this instance to a verbal description of the world in book form or to a free-standing world map; if the latter, it is tempting to think that Hugh’s mappa mundi was the exemplar for the Sawley Map. From this speculation further possibilities arise. Hugh was the grandson of Adela, countess of Blois (c. 1067–1137), herself a daughter of William the Conqueror (1028– 87). An exuberant poem by Baudri de Bourgueil (c. 1046–1130) from the early twelfth century describes a world map on the floor of Adela’s bedroom; scholars have long speculated about whether this map was real 5 Bernard Meehan, ‘Durham twelfth-century manuscripts in Cistercian houses’, AngloNorman Durham: 1093–1193, ed. David Rollason et al. (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 439–49, here p. 446. 6 Meehan, ‘Durham’; Norton, ‘History’; Harvey, ‘Sawley Map’; Bouloux, ‘L’espace habité’, pp. 367–72. For the argument that the manuscript emerged from a ‘Sawley School’ of historians see David Dumville, Histories and pseudo-histories of the insular Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1990), essays VIII–XI. 7 Harvey, ‘Sawley Map’, pp. 35–7 offers a helpful summary; Meehan, ‘Durham’, pp. 442–6 raises doubts about the Durham provenance. On Hugh du Puiset’s mortuary endowment and geospatial awareness in the north, see chapter three in this Companion. 8 Meehan, ‘Durham’, p. 446. 9 Catalogues of the library of Durham Cathedral, [ed. B. Botfield] (London, 1838), pp. 118–19.
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or a figment of Baudri’s imagination.10 Could it be that Hugh’s mappa mundi (and therefore the Sawley Map) descend from Adela’s map? Hugh himself had close ties with the Percy family; indeed he had at least two, possibly four, children with Countess Matilda’s sister, Agnes.11 Such a web of circumstantial evidence certainly supports the possibility that the Sawley Map was copied in Durham from Hugh’s map, but in the absence of further proof this scenario must remain plausible yet unproven.
THE MAP IN ITS MANUSCRIPT CONTEXT The contents of the Sawley Map’s manuscript, CCCC 66, offer insight into the function of the map and its broader role within medieval culture. The Sawley Map forms the frontispiece to a copy of a popular twelfth-century encyclopedia, the Imago mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis (c. 1080– 1157).12 Honorius’ work begins with a geographical description, but the details of his geography do not accord in precise detail with the map. Nor do any other of the many copies of the Imago mundi contain such a detailed world image. It seems unlikely then that the Sawley Map was intended as a reference tool for Honorius’ compilation; it is probably better to see it as an appropriate companion piece. That said, the character of the Imago mundi is similar in certain ways to the mappa mundi. Honorius compiled his geographical description primarily from classical and late antique sources, with a certain amount of judicious updating (chiefly in the German regions familiar to him). So, too, the Sawley Map does not present an image of the world as it was known c. 1200, filled with current toponyms. Rather, it is an image rooted in the geography of the classical world, but adapted to include regions and peoples unknown to classical geography. Thus the map shows north Africa, Asia Minor and central and southern Europe structured by the names and boundaries of Roman provinces; but it modifies and Christianizes this picture with biblical geography in the Holy Land and by recording modern places and peoples in central and western Europe. Extracts from some of the classical and late antique works that inform the map follow immediately after the Imago mundi in CCCC 66. Again, these extracts may not have been read directly in reference to the map, but Baudri de Bourgueil, ‘Adelae comitissae’, in Poèmes, ed. and trans. Jean-Yves Tilliette, 2 vols (Paris, 1998–2002), vol. 2, pp. 2–43; Patrick Gautier Dalché and Jean-Yves Tilliette, ‘Un nouveau document sur la tradition du poème de Baudri de Bourgueil à la comtesse Adèle’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 140 (1986), 241–57, esp. 250–53. See chapter three in this Companion on the Adelae, Hugh de Puiset’s extract and the Poppleton Manuscript containing it and an unfinished mappa mundi. 11 G.W.S. Barrow, ‘Puiset, Hugh du, earl of Northumberland (c. 1125–1195)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (2004): https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/22871 [Accessed 9 June 2019] 12 Valerie I.J. Flint, ed., ‘Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 49 (1982), 7–153. 10
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they reveal much about the encyclopedic contexts from which it arises. The first of the extracts comes from books seven and two of the Naturalis historia (Natural history) of Pliny the Elder (23–79), and offers a moral commentary on human vulnerability and venality. The opening books of this work provided medieval readers with a richly detailed account of the known world, but its medieval reception often occurred through Iulius Solinus’ Polyhistor (or Collectanea rerum memorabilium, Collection of memorable things), a radical reworking of the Naturalis historia produced at some time in the third or fourth century. Solinus’ work was widely disseminated throughout learned Europe by the twelfth century, and it lies behind numerous inscriptions on the Sawley Map (and many more on the Hereford Map). A brief extract from Solinus on the city of Babylon, relevant to the map’s prominent depiction of the tower of Babel, appears on page 62 of CCCC 66, followed by a longer extract from Martianus Capella’s fifthcentury encyclopedia De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the marriage of Philology and Mercury) on the size and extent of the earth, then texts on monsters and remarkable beasts – including the basilisk, the only one of the latter to appear on the map – and the major kingdoms in world history.13 It should also be mentioned that a subsequent section of the manuscript, which was separated from CCCC 66 in the sixteenth century, contains another map.14 This image, which appears as an illustration to Gildas’ ninthcentury Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons), shows no topographic representation, but lists provinces within Asia, Europe and Africa. An outer circle contains the names of the twelve winds and texts on the division of the world between the three sons of Noah; a further four winds are noted in French at the cardinal points. Text around and beneath the map lists peoples descended from Noah’s sons. This type of world image was fairly common, but it can be read here as a complement to the Sawley Map as well as to the manuscript’s themes of history and genealogy.15 All in all, the Sawley Map can be taken not as a reference tool, but as a striking opening to a manuscript whose geographical and encyclopedic contents it epitomizes. Although the map and manuscript as a whole was probably not compiled at Sawley, its contents broadly accord with the strong commitment to historical writing that scholars have detected within the Cistercian movement. Famously austere and relatively uninterested in
The extracts that follow the Imago mundi in CCCC 66 are as follows. Pp. 58–60: Pliny, Naturalis historia 7.1–5; 2.154–8; 2.174–5; 2.14. P. 61: an extract from a Victorine commentary on Nahum once attributed to Julian of Toledo: S. Julieni episcopi Toletani comment. in Nahum prophetam (Bishop St Julian of Toledo’s commentary on the prophet Nahum; Patrologia Latina 96, 715–16), 16–17. Pp. 61–2: unidentified (‘Mundus septem habet liquores …’). P. 62: short texts on Babylon (Solinus, Polyhistor 56.1), and Carthage (Orosius, Historiae 4.22.5–6). Pp. 62–3: Martianus Capella, De nuptiis 6.609–16; 6.703. P. 63: unidentified text on monsters. P. 64: unidentified text on kings and kingdoms. 14 Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.1.27, p. 25. 15 There is a brief discussion in Norton, ‘History’, p. 70. 13
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classical and philosophical texts, the Cistercians nevertheless consumed and composed historical works, and CCCC 66 is consistent with this interest.16
SPACE AND TIME ON THE SAWLEY MAP The Sawley Map represents an image of the world that, in its broad outline, was fairly standard in the twelfth century and remained current well into the fifteenth century.17 Nevertheless, it possesses certain distinctive features that offer clues to its provenance as well as to its connections with other mappae mundi. The Sawley Map shows the known world of Asia, Europe and Africa, surrounded by ocean and oriented to the east within an oval frame. The earthly paradise appears as an island in the far east, with four (unlabelled) rivers emerging from a single source. This depiction accords with both biblical authority and mainstream medieval tradition, which located paradise in the east, and identified the four rivers as the Ganges (the biblical ‘Phison’), the Nile (‘Gehon’), the Tigris and the Euphrates, all of which can be found on the map.18 Rivers indeed form a crucial structuring element of the map in all three of its partes. The Ganges and Indus rivers are particularly prominent in India, as well as lesser rivers such as the Hypanis (‘yppanis’), ‘Acesines’ and Hydaspes (‘ydaspes’). Further west, the Tigris and Euphrates define Mesopotamia and frame Babel’s tower, while in the Holy Land the Jordan (the confluence of the Jor and Dan) flows into the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The Nile in many ways dominates the map’s depiction of Africa. The river appears in two parts. One emerges from a source near the Red Sea, identified as ‘fialus’, and runs west and then north, eventually bifurcating around lower Egypt and entering the Mediterranean. The other Nile spans nearly the entirety of Africa, beginning in the far west near the Atlas Mountains, before progressing eastwards under its biblical name, ‘Gion’, past a basilisk, a tributary (Triton) and a lake (Calearsum), before disappearing into the sands of Ethiopia. The Sawley Map’s representation of the two Niles derives from Pliny’s Natural history, as distilled through Paulus Orosius’ early fifth-century Historiae adversus paganos (History against the pagans), but with significant input from Solinus’ Polyhistor.19 The dual Nile was a standard feature of mappae mundi, found on early examples 16 Elizabeth Freeman, Narratives of a new order: Cistercian historical writing in England, 1150–1220 (Turnhout, 2002), esp. pp. 50–1, 110–12. 17 The maps that illustrate manuscripts of the Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden are perhaps the best example of this longevity. 18 Genesis 2.10–14; see Alessandro Scafi, Mapping paradise: a history of heaven on earth (London, 2006), pp. 46–7. 19 Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia, ed. C. Mayhoff and L. Jan, 6 vols (Leipzig, 1892–1909), 5.51–4 (vol. 1, pp. 381–3); Pauli Orosii historiarum adversum paganos libri vii, ed. C. Zangemeister (Vienna, 1882), 1.2.27–33 (pp. 16–17).
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such as the eighth-century Vatican ‘Easter Tables Map’ (Figure 5.1), the eleventh-century Cotton Map, the Hereford and Ebstorf maps of c. 1300, as well as in Islamic geography.20 In eastern and central Europe, the dominant river on the Sawley Map is the Danube, which spreads tentacles to the north and south before reaching its terminus in the Black Sea. Less extensive rivers structure the map’s depiction of southern and western Europe: the Po (Padus) and Tiber in Italy; the unmarked Rhine, on which Cologne appears; the Rhône, Aisne (‘Auxona’), Seine and Loire in France; the Duero (‘Danius’), ‘Gallaco’ and Ebro (‘Hiberus’) in Spain.21 Alongside the rivers, a number of prominent mountain ranges constitute a major part of the Sawley Map’s topography:
5.1 EASTER TABLES MAP, BIBLIOTECA APOSTOLICA VATICANA, VAT. LAT. 6018, FOLS. 63V AND 64R. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.
20 Vatican City, Vatican Library, MS Vat. Lat. 6018, fols 63v–64r; London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B V (I), fol. 56v; Scott D. Westrem, The Hereford Map (Turnhout, 2001), e.g. pp. 180, 184; Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, ed. Hartmut Kugler, 2 vols (Berlin, 2007), esp. vol. 2, p. 102; compare the description of the Nile in the Descriptio mappe mundi attributed to Hugh of St Victor: Patrick Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio mappe mundi’ de Hugues de SaintVictor (Paris, 1988), p. 146 (15.360–8); on the Islamic Nile, see Robin Seignobos, ‘L’origine occidentale du Nil dans la géographie latine et arabe avant le XIVe siècle’, Orbis disciplinae: hommages en l’honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché, ed. Nathalie Bouloux, Anca Dan and Georges Tolias (Turnhout, 2017), pp. 371–94. 21 See Westrem, Hereford, p. 330 for the identification of the ‘Danius’ as the river Tagus (modern Duero). ‘Gallaco’ apparently derives from Isidore of Seville’s description of the
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those named include the Alps and Pyrenees in Europe, the ‘montes Ethiopie’ and the ‘montes Nibie’ in Africa, as well as several unnamed ranges, such as the Caucasus in Asia. An equally important element of the map is the human geography of cities, peoples, provinces and regions. This geography is at base that of the Roman Empire, with certain significant supplementations. Roman provincial order is perhaps most evident in the string of provinces that make up north Africa: Mauretania, with its three subdivisions (Sitifensis, Cesariensis and Tingitana); Africa; Bizacena; and Libia (Cirenensis). The imprint of Romanitas is equally strong in Europe. There a succession of Roman provinces divides lands from Constantinople to the tip of Spain: Moesia, Thrace, Dacia, Pannonia, Noricus [sic, for Noricum], Rhetia Major and Minor, Illyricum, Gallia Belgica and Hispania. In Asia the structure is less obvious, but Upper and Lower Egypt, Upper and Lower Media and ‘Celes’ (i.e. Syria Coele) extend across a significant swath of the map. These divisions contain significant omissions, and they do not accord with an image of the empire at any specific moment. The province of Syria Coele, for example, dates from the sub-division of the province of Syria during the reign of Septimius Severus (193–211), while Mauretania was divided into Tingitana and Caesariensis under Claudius around 42 CE, with Sitifensis the result of a sub-division under Diocletian (284–305).22 In Europe, the ‘terminus Danorum et Saxonum’ (border between the Danes and the Saxons) reflects a division within Carolingian, rather than Roman, Europe.23 This polychrony reflects the tendency of medieval geographers to work with summaries and to accrete information onto a base, rather than to seek rigid chronological precision. In so doing, the Sawley and other medieval maps followed the same practices as many classical and late antique authorities. The major sources of inscriptions on the Sawley Map – Solinus’ Polyhistor, Orosius’ Historiae and the seventhcentury Etymologiae (Etymologies) of Isidore of Seville – are themselves complex reworkings of earlier texts: Solinus adapted Pliny’s Natural history; Orosius drew on Pliny and other ancient sources; and Isidore made heavy use of both Solinus and Orosius.24 The classical and late antique bedrock of the Sawley Map has been heavily Christianized. The map in its entirety can be read as a geo-spatial representation of Christian history, beginning with the earthly paradise and the nearby city of Enos, the Book of Genesis’ ‘Enoch’ founded by river Minio (Miño) as ‘Mineus fluvius Galliciae’: Etymologiae XIII, ed. G. Gasparotto (Paris, 2004), 13.21.32 (p. 160). 22 Tilmann Bechert, Die Provinzen des römischen Reiches: Einführung und Überblick (Mainz, 1999), pp. 115, 158–9. 23 Bouloux, ‘L’espace habité’, p. 370. The division is noted in the Expositio mappe mundi. 24 On Solinus see Solinus: new studies, ed. Kai Brodersen (Heidelberg, 2014); on Orosius’ sources see Yves Janvier, La géographie d’Orose (Paris, 1982), pp. 221–60; for Isidore see Etymologiae XIV: de terra, ed. and trans. Olga Spevak (Paris, 2011), pp. xxxv–xxxix.
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Cain (4.17), and concluding with Revelation. Such a reading would take in the tower of Babel, the ‘horrea Joseph’ (the granaries of Joseph, as the pyramids were understood), and the understated and unlabelled division of the Red Sea indicating the passage of the Israelites. The Holy Land itself is heavily inscribed with Hebrew Bible history, in the form of the divisions of the twelve tribes of Israel, all of which appear on the map. Jerusalem, represented by a large basilica, and Bethlehem appear within the land of Benjamin. Elsewhere on the map, the rise and spread of Christianity is evident. Two structures attest to the geographical extent of monasticism: the ‘monastery of St Anthony’ in the map’s far south and east, a representative of the earliest eremetical impulses, and the striking significance accorded to Sabaria (modern Szombathely in Hungary), a Benedictine monastery and the birthplace of St Martin of Tours. It is notable that one of the largest structures in Europe is an unnamed city in Galicia, which can only be the pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela. Following the temporal conventions of other encyclopedic mappae mundi, the Sawley not only contains references to the Christian past and present, but also alludes to future time. The biblical Gog and Magog, a ‘foul breed’ (‘gens immunda’) destined to be released at the end of time, appear in an enclosure in northern Asia, just beyond the Caspian Sea. The map’s frame, with its four angels, has been convincingly interpreted as a reference to events foretold in the Book of Revelation.25 Tellingly, the angel at the top left of the image points directly at the map’s depiction of Gog and Magog, indicating their irruption from confinement, and announcing the hour of judgement (Rev 14.6–8). The other angels, accordingly, announce the reward of the righteous, the fall of Babylon and the judgement of those who worship the beast.26 A reader of the map could, then, perceive simultaneously the beginning and end of human life on earth. Yet the wealth of Christian allusion does not mean that classical (pagan) myth and legend have been banished from the map. After all, the Sawley Map is centered on the Cyclades and the unnamed island of Delos, unlike later Jerusalem-centered mappae mundi, such as the Hereford and Ebstorf maps, and its westernmost extent is marked by the columns of Hercules. Like the Hereford Map, the Sawley’s Mediterranean features Scylla and Charibdis near to Sicily, and its array of classically-derived exotica, while smaller than Hereford’s in number, includes Hyperboreans, anthropophagi (cannibals) and cynocephales (dog-heads) in the far north and troglodites in the south.27 All of these features could with little trouble be subsumed into a Christian narrative, in which mirabilia are part of God’s creation.28 Scafi, Mapping paradise, pp. 141–4; cf. Norton, ‘History’, p. 94. Scafi, Mapping paradise, pp. 143–4. 27 Westrem, Hereford, p. 346 28 On mirabilia, see Asa S. Mittman, Maps and monsters in medieval England (New York, 2006); Inconceivable beasts: the wonders of the East in the Beowulf manuscript (Tempe, 2013) 25
26
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SOURCES AND CONNECTIONS The affinities between the Sawley and Hereford maps are striking to all who compare them in detail.29 With few exceptions, the inscriptions on the Sawley Map can also be found among the inscriptions on the Hereford Map.30 The latter number over a thousand, so it is evident that a great deal of the information on the Hereford Map is absent from the Sawley Map. Nevertheless, the correspondence between the two extends not only to nomenclature, but also to the placement of inscriptions, the shape of coastlines and the depiction of interior features such as rivers and mountains. Research on the Hereford Map over the past two decades has contributed a more detailed if still incomplete picture of its origins than was previously available, and that picture in turn can inform us about the origins of the Sawley Map. It now seems certain that the Hereford Map is a copy of a world map in existence in the second half of the twelfth century. The Hereford Map’s exemplar is lost, but a version of it was described in detail in the twelfthcentury Expositio mappe mundi.31 The Expositio as we have it is incomplete, but the substantial extant portion of it aligns remarkably closely with the Hereford Map, proving that a map like Hereford must have been in existence in twelfth-century England. Moreover, the Expositio has strong connections with Yorkshire: a late twelfth-century copy of the text was once possessed by another Cistercian house, Rievaulx Abbey, and it is conjectured that the text’s author was the chronicler Roger Howden, a Yorkshireman in the service of Hugh du Puiset.32 A reasonable working hypothesis then is that the Hereford Map is a largely faithful copy of a twelfth-century map, and that the Sawley Map too was copied from a version of that map – probably not, that is, the one from which the Hereford Map was copied, but one very close to it. In this regard, some of the relatively few differences between the Sawley and Hereford maps are instructive. The most obvious difference is the Hereford Map’s centering of the world image on Jerusalem, with and The Ashgate research companion to monsters and the monstrous (Farnham, Surrey, 2012). 29 Bevan and Phillott, Mediæval geography, pp. xxxviii–xxxix; Miller, Mappaemundi, vol. 3, pp. 28–9. 30 Five of the twelve tribes of Israel are absent from the Hereford Map, while six regions appear on Sawley but not Hereford (Asia minor, Galilea, ‘Iturea et traconitidis’, Amazonia, Galicia and Alemannia; for the latter Hereford has ‘Germania superior et inferior’). The bulk of the remaining inscriptions on Sawley but absent from Hereford comprise mountain ranges (three), rivers (two, including the Tanais), Nile-related inscriptions (three), one city (Sidon) and the ‘terminus asie et europe’. 31 Edited with extensive commentary and discussion in Patrick Gautier Dalché, Du Yorkshire à l’Inde: une ‘géographie’ urbaine et maritime de la fin du XIIe siècle (Roger de Howden?) (Genève, 2005). 32 Gautier Dalché, Du Yorkshire a l’Inde, pp. 45–8. For a complete listing of the two maps’ concordances, see the appendix in Westrem, Hereford, pp. 445–50. On the Expositio and Roger, see chapter three in this Companion.
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the attendant image of Christ on the cross immediately above the city to the east. Evidently, the compiler(s) of the Hereford Map wanted to bring Jerusalem into alignment with the Last Judgement scene at the top of the map, as well as with the tower of Babel (far larger on Hereford than it is on Sawley), to assist a reading of space in terms of Christ’s death and consequent redemption of humanity from sin.33 Certainly, the copyist of the Sawley Map would not have made the decision to center the map on the Cyclades had that feature not been present on his exemplar. Then there is the entirely schematic representation of the British Isles on the Sawley Map, against the richly detailed image offered on the Hereford Map. Pressures of space may be to blame for the decision not to offer even a rudimentary topography and toponomy of Britain on the Sawley Map; a lack of interest seems unlikely. Beyond these obvious differences, there are numerous slight and therefore less obvious points of divergence between the maps, aside from size and detail. There are a number of minor differences in toponomy, which point to the Sawley Map being a more accurate copy of its source text than the Hereford Map, and which suggest that certain errors entered onto the latter when it was being copied.34 One notable toponym on the Sawley Map is the French ‘roem’ for Rouen, against Hereford’s Latin ‘Rotomagus’. This, along with the emphasis on St Martin given by the prominent depiction of his birth place, may strengthen the case for a Norman provenance for the exemplar that lurks behind the Sawley Map. That exemplar is highly likely to have been compiled in the twelfth century, but it was certainly a compilation based on an earlier map or maps. So much is clear from the correspondences visible between the Sawley Map and two earlier world images, the Vatican ‘Easter Tables Map’ and the Cotton Map. As previously noted, the depiction of the Nile on these two maps is substantially similar to that on the Sawley Map. This correspondence extends to the presence of particular toponyms and inscriptions. The Sawley Map’s ‘hic mergitur’ (‘here it is immersed’), referring to the submersion of the western Nile in sands, is a version of the Cotton Map’s inscription ‘hic arenis inmergitur’ (‘here it is immersed in sands’), the common source being Orosius’ statement that, according to some authors, the Nile descends from the Atlas Mountains and is submerged forthwith in sands (‘et continuo harenis mergi’).35 33 See Marcia Kupfer, Art and optics in the Hereford Map: an English mappa mundi, c. 1300 (New Haven, 2016), pp. 97–9; and Scafi, Mapping paradise, pp. 125–31. 34 The Sawley Map [Saw] in a number of instances agrees more closely with the Expositio mappae mundi [EMM] than does the Hereford Map [Hf]: EMM ‘Nysam ciuitatem’; Saw ‘nisa c.’; Hf ‘Nuam civitatem’. EMM ‘fluuius Crisoreas’; Saw ‘Fl. crisoroas’; Hf ‘Cristoas civitas’. EMM ‘Bisacena regio’; Saw ‘BIZACENA regio’; Hf ‘Bruncena regio’. EMM ‘Rapharrica insula’; Saw ‘Rapharrica insula’; Hf ‘Capharica insula’. EMM ‘Abaltia insula’; Saw ‘abaltia insula’; Hf ‘Albatia insula’. EMM ‘insula Taprobana’; Saw ‘Taprobana insula indie’; Hf ‘Taphana insula Yndie’. 35 Orosius, Historiae, 1.2.29.
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In Asia and Europe, too, it is possible to see strong resemblances both at the level of design and toponomy between the Sawley and earlier maps. The Vatican map shows a series of five rivers in Asia descending from the ‘mons Taurus’ (Taurus Mountains): from east to west, Crisocoras, Fison, Indus, Tigris and Euphrates, the last four of which reach the Red Sea. Precisely this sequence of rivers is shown on the Sawley Map, descending from an unnamed mountain range in north Asia. Similarly, in its depiction of Palestine, the Vatican map shows the Jor and Dan descending from Mount Lebanon, flowing as the Jordan into the Sea of Galilee and then on to the Dead Sea. Although the depiction of the river differs somewhat on the Sawley Map, the basic structure remains. In Europe, the Vatican, Cotton and Sawley maps show the same basic array of Roman provinces around a prominent depiction of the Danube (albeit with some significant differences of toponymy), with the Alps and Pyrenees bordering Italia, Gallia and a roughly triangular Hispania. Three aspects of Sawley Map show particularly telling correspondences with the Cotton Map. In Scandinavia, Sawley shows a peninsula labelled ‘Ganzmir’, connected to another peninsula labelled ‘Noreya’. This arrangement is mimicked to the west by a peninsula labelled ‘Island’, connected to the ‘Sinus Germanicus’. In the same region, the Cotton Map shows a large island marked with the toponym ‘Island’ and the ethnonym ‘Scridefinnas’, two unlabelled islands and a peninsula marked ‘Neronorroen’ (Norwegians). Clearly, there are significant differences here, but the depiction of Norway/Northmen, Iceland, and, on Sawley, the mythical island of Ganzmir (probably a corruption of Scandza) suggest a shared attempt to map an area ill-defined by classical sources.36 The second area of correspondence is the presence of inscriptions derived from the eighth-century Cosmographia of Aethicus Ister, a pseudoantique compilation of uncertain origin. On the Cotton Map, two, possibly three, inscriptions in north Asia derive from this problematic source, while four or five inscriptions on Sawley seem clearly Aethican in origin: Gog and Magog, ‘Rapharrica insula’, ‘terraconta insula’, ‘Griffe’ and ‘Cynocephales’.37 Third, and perhaps most significant, is the presence of the tribes of Israel on both maps. Within the corpus of extant medieval mappae mundi this feature is found only on the Cotton, Sawley and Hereford maps. The Cotton Map shows nine of the twelve tribes, located on either side of the Jordan, with boundaries between each people heavily marked. The source for this part of the map can be identified as a map designed to illustrate the Book
Westrem, Hereford, p. 192. On the Cotton Map’s appeal to an audience familiar with Ohthere of Hålogaland and Wulfstan of Hedeby’s voyages around the Baltic and Scandinavia, see chapter two in this Companion. 37 The cosmography of Aethicus Ister, ed. and trans. Michael W. Herren (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 26 (‘homines cenocefalus’), 30 (‘Griphas gentes’), 32 (‘Taracontas insolas’; ‘Gog et Magog’), 18 and 42 (‘insola Riffarrica’), 48 (‘gog et magog’). 36
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of Joshua, in which the tribal divisions are outlined.38 The implications of this are not that the Sawley Map or its exemplar was copied directly from the Cotton Map. While not impossible, there is no evidence to suggest that this was the case, and the many differences between the two maps indicate otherwise. The Cotton Map carries a heavy debt to the description of the world that opens Orosius’ Historiae. But while some Orosian-derived place names and topography can be found on the Sawley Map, it shows the influence of Solinus’ Polyhistor much more than does the Cotton Map. Precise genealogies for medieval maps are notoriously difficult to establish, but the general route of transmission for the Sawley Map seems to have originated in a world map with a broadly Orosian scheme (comparable to the eighth-century Vatican Map). To this map was added material from a Joshua commentary map (and other material, such as the northern toponyms from the Cosmographia of Aethicus), resulting in a version of the Cotton Map. That map then underwent the addition of significant amounts of material from Solinus, conceivably in Normandy, where a version could have been owned by Adela of Blois, and/or her grandson Hugh du Puiset. From this Solinus-inflected map the the Sawley Map was copied. Such a line of transmission is speculative, and other possibilities could certainly be advanced. At least, however, it is clear that the Sawley Map is almost certainly an edited copy of a larger and more detailed twelfthcentury mappa mundi, which itself must have derived from earlier models. As such, it witnesses the continuing importance of classical and late antique geographical description. That antique legacy was shaped to conform to Christian interests and expectations, and its image of northern and western Europe revised to include a limited number of peoples and places not recorded in classical texts. Like many medieval mappae mundi, the Sawley Map appears at the beginning of its manuscript. This position appears to reflect its thematic compatibility with the texts that follow it, but again, quite typically of medieval world maps, it was not intended to act as a consistent or precise point of reference for the rest of the manuscript. Mappae mundi were independent texts with an existence outside of, as well as inside of, the medieval book.
APPENDIX: INSCRIPTIONS ON THE SAWLEY MAP The following list aims to record all the inscriptions on and around the Sawley Map. Abbreviations have been silently expanded, except for ‘c.’ (civitas); ‘Fl.’ (‘fluvius’), and ‘m.’ (‘mons’, ‘montes’). Previous transcriptions include Miller, Mappae mundi, vol. 3, pp. 21–9; Lecoq, ‘La mappemonde d’Henri de Mayence’, pp. 162–3; and Chekin, Northern Eurasia in medieval 38 For the Joshua map, see Thomas O’Loughlin, ‘Map and text: a mid ninth-century map for the Book of Joshua’, Imago mundi 57 (2005), 7–22.
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cartography, p. 139 (partial transcription). A transcription can be found online at the Virtual mappa project (https://digitalmappa.org), and the entirety of CCCC 66 is accessible in digital form (https://parker.stanford. edu). Correspondences with the Hereford Map (Hf) are noted, based on Westrem’s edition in Hereford. OUTSIDE THE MAP ORIENS; AQVILO; OCCIDENS [rubr] ASIA enos c. [Hf] Fl. yppanis [Hf] cotonare portus [Hf] Fl. crisoroas [cf. Hf ‘Cristoas civitas’] Fl. octorogorra [cf. Hf ‘Octoricirus civitas’] Fl. Acheron [cf. Hf ‘Fluvius Boemaron’] Gog et Magog gens immunda [Hf] Fl. oxus [Hf] Fl. Ganges [Hf] INDIA [rubr] [Hf] aurei montes [Hf] Fl. Acesines [Hf] Fl. ydaspis [Hf] mons Sefar [Hf] Fl. indus [Hf] nisa c. [Hf ‘Nua’] carmania [Hf] elamite [Hf] Media Superior [Hf ‘Medea’] Media inferior rages c. [Hf] bactria [Hf] Fl. tigris [Hf] persipolis c. [Hf] sinus persicus Mesopotamia [Hf] Fl. cobar [Hf ‘Corarus’] ARABIA [Hf ‘Terra Arabica’] arabica deserta [Hf] madian [Hf] Fl. eufrates [Hf] babel [Hf] silua piperis [Hf]
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Arnon [Hf] hircania [Hf ‘Hircani’] ARMenia [Hf] Amazonia Gens Yperborea beatissima sine morbo et discordia [Hf] caspie porte [Hf] cholcos [Hf ‘Colcorum provincia’] albania [Hf ‘Albani’] Antropophagi [Hf] Apterofon. Hic frigus eternum [Hf] m. Rifei [Hf] pactolus [Hf] frigia [Hf] Asia minor [rubr] Troia [Hf] mons Amanus [Hf ‘Montes Augee’] Fernus fl. [Hf] Antiochia c. [Hf] celes Siria [Hf] m. Libanus [Hf] damascus c. [Hf] mons Galaad [Hf] iturea et traconitidis regio Decapolis regio [Hf] fons Ior [Hf] fons Dan [Hf] mare Galilee [Hf] Ruben et Gad et dimidia tribus manasse Neptalim Zabulon [Hf] Ysachar [Hf]
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ASER [Hf ‘Asen’] DAN [Hf] effraim et dimidia tribus manasse [Hf] Beniamin IVDA [Hf] Simeon Jaboc [Hf ‘Laboth’] Amorrei [Hf ‘Amonne’] mare mortuum [Hf] Galilea superior Galilea inferior Sidon TIRUS [Hf] tabor [Hf] iericho [Hf] ierusalem [Hf] bethleem [Hf] bersabee [Hf] cesarea [Hf ‘Cesarea Philippi’] ascalon [Hf] m. Sina [Hf] Rinocorua [Hf] Ramesse [Hf] horrea Joseph [Hf] fialus Fons Nili [Hf] porte Nibie [Hf] egiptus Superior [Hf ‘Terra Egipti’] meroe insula [Hf] egiptus inferior [Hf] Alexandria c. [Hf] terminus asie et affrice [rubr] [Hf] EUROPE terminus asie et europe [rubr] fl. tanais Hic habitant Griffe homines nequam [cf. Hf ‘Hic habitant Griste, homines nequissimi’] cynocephales [Hf] cardia [Hf] C. Constantinopolis [Hf] TRACIA [Hf] Macedonia [Hf] Achaya [Hf] Corinthia [Hf]
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ILLIRICUS [Hf] histria [Hf ‘Istria’] fl. hister [Hf] draua [Hf ‘Dravus’] Moesia [Hf] Dascia et Russia [Hf] Danubius [Hf] PANNOnia [Hf ‘Pannonia inferior’] Sabarria c. Sancti martini [Hf] Sarmathe [Hf] NORICVS [Hf] Retia maior [Hf] Retia minor [Hf] Ganzmir [Hf] Noreya [Hf] Island [Hf] Sinus Germanicus [Hf] terminus danorum et saxonum [Hf] Alemannia fresones [Hf] colonia [Hf ‘Agrippina Colonia’] mosel [Hf] magontia [Hf] Alpes [Hf] Longobardia [Hf] padus [Hf] mumbard [sic] Italia [rubr] [Hf] TVSCIA [Hf] Pisa [Hf] Fl. tiberis [Hf] Roma [Hf] apulia [Hf] calabria [Hf] Brucii [Hf] lucania [Hf] campania [Hf] Gallia Belgica [Hf] Fl. auxona [Hf] Fl. Rodanvs [Hf] Róém [Hf ‘Rotomagum’] parisius [Hf] Liger fl. [Hf] andagauis [Hf] Fl. Garumna [Hf ‘Gerunda’] pictavis [Hf]
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mons pireneus Fl. danius [Hf] terracona [Hf] Fl. Gallaco Fl. hiberus [Hf] Hispania [Hf ‘Hispania citerior/ inferior’] Galicia terminus europe et Affrice [rubr] [Hf] AFRICA m. Ardens [Hf] montes Nibie [Hf] Hic mergitur monasteria Sancti Antonii [Hf] ethiopia [Hf] montes ethiopie [Hf] mons catabathmon calearsus lacus [Hf] templum Iovis [Hf ‘Oraculum Jovis vel Templum Ammonis’] basiliscus [Hf] fl. triton [Hf] lacus [Hf ‘Lacus et fluvius Triton’] trogodite [Hf] Fl. GION [Hf] Lacus maximus nilides lacus LIBIA [Hf ‘Libia Cirenensis’] Sirtes maiores [Hf] Lethon fl. [Hf] are filenorum [Hf] Sirtes minores [Hf] BIZACENA regio [Hf ‘Bruncena regio’] AfFrica [Hf] Kartago [Hf ‘Cartago magna’] Numidia [Hf] Yppone regium [Hf ‘Ippone regnum’] MAVRitania sitifensis [Hf] MAVRitania cesariensis [Hf] MAVRitania tinguitania [Hf] mons mons Athlas [Hf] mons hisperus [Hf]
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SEAS AND ISLANDS paradisus [Hf ‘Paradis[i] porte’] Taprobana insula indie [Hf ‘Taphana insula Yndie’] Britannia insula [Hf] Hibernia [H Orcades [Hf] terraconta insula [Hf] Rapharrica insula [Hf ‘Capharica insula’] Mare caspium [Hf] abaltia insula [Hf ‘Albatia insula’] Tiles insula [Hf ‘Tile insula’] mare cimericum [Hf] mare propontidis [Hf] insula prochenissa hellespontus [Hf] Cyprus [Hf] Rodos [Hf] cyclades insule [Hf] creta insula [Hf] canopus insula [Hf] mene insula [Hf] mare Veneticum [cf. Hf ‘Venicia’] Sicilia [cf. Hf] caribdis [Hf] scilla [Hf ‘Svilla’] Sardinia [Hf] corsica [Hf] maiorga [Hf] minorga [Hf]
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Resurget frater tuus. (Your brother will rise again.) The Raising of Lazarus, John 11.23, Latin Vulgate
THE STATE OF THE MAP
T
he Vercelli Map, one of the largest maps to survive from the Middle Ages, has not received the attention it merits (Plate IV). This is likely the result of its very poor state of preservation, which has been a constant theme in what little has been published on it.1 There are several studies that make brief mention of the map, and a few studies focused on it. The most significant publication is Carlo F. Capello’s 1976 volume, Il mappamondo medioevale di Vercelli, 1191–1218, which includes a transcription of its inscriptions by region and an alphabetical gazetteer of toponyms.2 In essence, the Vercelli Map has been noticed in a number of studies of medieval geography and cartography, but there have not been any sustained discussions of it since Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken’s 1990 essay. The Vercelli Map’s scholarly neglect and the substantial conceptual transformations in the history of cartography since the 1990s makes this
* My thanks to Dan Terkla for inviting me to write this essay, and then for his voice of calm when I panicked about actually doing so. 1 See, for example: Carlo Errera, ‘Un mappamondo sconosciuto nell’archivio capitolare di Vercelli’, Atti della Reale accademia delle scienze di Torino 46 (1910/11), 8–11, here 8–9; Anonymous, ‘Un mappamondo medioevale ritrovato a Vercelli’, Rivista geografica Italiana 18 (1911), 107; Carlo F. Capello, Il mappamondo medioevale di Vercelli (1191–1218), Memorie e studi geografici 10 (Torino, 1976), pp. 5–6; Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ‘Monumental legends on medieval manuscript maps: notes on designed capital letters on maps of large size (Demonstrated from the problem of dating the Vercelli Map, thirteenth century)’, Imago mundi 42 (1990), 9–25, here 9–11; Leonid S. Chekin, Northern Eurasia in medieval cartography: inventory, texts, translation, and commentary (Turnhout, 2006), p. 142; P.D.A. Harvey, ‘Maps of the world in the medieval English royal wardrobe’, Foundations of medieval scholarship: records edited in honour of David Crook, ed. Paul A. Brand and Sean Cunningham (York, 2008), pp. 51–5, here p. 51. 2 See note 1.
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6.1 VERCELLI MAP. PANORAMA, DETAIL OF LESBOS. VMAPPA MUNDI_011_ UVPASS_ADJ. PHOTOGRAPH BY LAZARUS PROJECT. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.
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map ripe for reappraisal; fortunately, recent technological developments make it newly available for examination. The Lazarus Project, a multi-spectral imaging initiative, scans vellum and parchment with a series of wavelengths from ultraviolet through infrared to reveal texts and images that are not visible to the unaided viewer.3 The Vercelli Map was one of the first manuscripts to receive full imaging by the Lazarus Project, along with the more famous Vercelli Book, one of four manuscripts containing an extensive collection of Old English poetry.4 I have based my work here on the Lazarus images.5 They provide clearer views of the map and its contents than have been available since Carlo Errera noticed it early in the twentieth century, and perhaps an even clearer view than he had. The digital files are massive, and small-scale print reproductions cannot convey their utility and clarity.6 There are, though, areas of the map that are utterly lost, areas – especially Europe – where the damage is too extensive for the text to be recovered, even by this process, and others that remain stubbornly illegible. 3 ‘About’, Lazarus Project: http://www.lazarusprojectimaging.com/about-the-project/ [Accessed 23 June 2016]. 4 ‘Vercelli Book Project’, Lazarus Project. 5 My thanks for the generosity of Timoty Leonardi, Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Capitulary Library, Vercelli; Gregory Heyworth, Professor of English at the University of Rochester and Director of the Lazarus Project; and Chet Van Duzer, independent map scholar and member of the Lazarus Board of Directors, who first introduced me to the project. 6 Pixel dimensions: 18993 × 23061.
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Two examples show the immediate utility and the limitations of the Lazarus scans. For the inscription on a Mediterranean island, Capello’s examination of the parchment provides, ‘Lesbos insula unde sunt____’.7 On the Lazarus image, the full inscription is clear: ‘Lesbos insula unde fuit uxor superi’ (‘Lesbos is an island where the wife is superior’) (Figure 6.1).8 For a second example, we turn to a narrow band at the eastern edge of the map containing an inscription for which Capello provides two different readings: ‘hic … andro(po)fagi …’ and ‘hic sunt andro (po) fagi... (illeggibile il resto)’.9 Chekin provides a more complete reading: ‘hic sunt andropofagi carnes …’, which he then translates as ‘the Anthropophagi are here, flesh’.10 This section of the map is quite badly damaged, and even the new scans do not render it fully legible, but they provide additional words and further data on which to base analysis. From the Lazarus scan, we can read ‘hic sunt andropofagi qui … carnes. Habent civitatem …’ (‘Here are the Anthropophagi, who … flesh. They have a city …’). What do we gain from these small additions? First, more text is simply more text, and that helps us collect more information about the map and the period in which it was produced. Second, we see that Chekin’s partial transcription and translation are a bit off, since they do not account for the lost passage between ‘qui’ and ‘carnes’. This finding raises a larger concern regarding all previous transcriptions and translations of the map’s legends and demonstrates that the Lazarus data should be the fons et origo of work on the Vercelli Map. Third, we can probably reconstruct this lost passage as something that approximates ‘eat’, ‘consume’ or ‘live upon’, though of course it might have been something more elaborate and gory, such as ‘delight in the consumption of ’. Fourth and finally, even a few words might help us locate map and/or textual sources for the inscriptions. These images and the technology with which they were produced are astonishing, but we should bear in mind that the scans do not show us what the map originally looked like. Rather, they allow us to recover lost images and texts and so to know more about the map’s content. They do not provide the experience of viewing an undamaged document, but that is neither the claim nor the point of the project. The Lazarus images are informative and recuperative; they recover, but do not – cannot – restore, lost information. Nonetheless, these images could well enable something of a resurrection, not of the map – that remains as damaged as it was before the images were produced – but of scholarly interest in it. Perhaps, then, thanks to the work done by the Lazarus Project, map scholars, following John 11.23, will be able to say to the Sawley (Plate III), Hereford (Plate VIII), Ebstorf, Psalter (Plate Capello, Il mappamondo, p. 22. Since the site is not in northern Eurasia, Chekin does not provide a transcription. 8 Produced by stitching together a series of detail images of the map shot under longwave, ultraviolet A light (wavelength of 365 nm). 9 Capello, Il mappamondo, p. 67. 10 Chekin, Northern Eurasia, pp. 144–5. 7
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VI), and Duchy of Cornwall (Plate VII) maps, ‘resurget frater tuus’ (‘Your brother will rise again’).11
DESCRIPTIO MAPPE MUNDI The descriptions of the Vercelli Map merit updating. In the most basic terms, the map is approximately 33 inches in height and 28 inches in width (840 mm x 710 mm), and so just under a yard (0.9 m) in diameter; it is too large to be codicological, but large enough for teaching. However, if we trace the inner and outer curves of the remaining oceanic sections in the east and west, we find that they meet surprisingly well, given the amount of distortion to the parchment. Doing so reveals that the map was almost certainly circular, like the Hereford, Ebstorf, Munich (Plate II) and the Duchy of Cornwall maps. Reconstituting the circular ocean gives us a good sense of how much has been lost. We can get a further sense of that by superimposing the Vercelli Map onto the Hereford Map (Figure 6.2). This is only a rough approximation, but the results are revealing. In the areas within the reconstituted Vercelli circle, the Hereford Map has nearly one hundred inscriptions, over fifty in the north and nearly as many in the south. Therefore, while much of the Vercelli Map survives, its losses are considerable. As early publications note, the map is based on the traditional T-O design, with east at the top, and is filled with places, peoples, events and creatures drawn from classical, biblical and legendary sources.12 Errera notes, in particular, the human monsters and mythical beasts, waterways, mountains and cities of varying size and importance.13 These elements are conventional and so familiar to students of medieval mappae mundi; most are found on other maps in this volume: an eastern orientation, the presence of water courses, mountain ranges, city icons, mythical, fantastical, classical and Christian materials. There are other points of commonality: monstrous humans and beasts are prominent on the Hereford, Psalter, Duchy of Cornwall and Munich Isidore maps and present on the Sawley. The Red Sea, outlined in red on the Vercelli Map and parted toward the base for the travels of the Israelites, is common to all of these maps, as is the appearance of the Caspian Gate. Even this brief comparison makes clear that the Vercelli Map is an important member of the Anglo-French group of mappae mundi discussed in this
11 Biblia sacra: iuxta vulgatam versionem, ed. Bonifatius Fisher, Robert Weber and Roger Ryuson (Stuttgart, 1994). 12 Anonymous, Rivista geografica, 107; and Errera, ‘Un mappamondo’, 9–11. On this collection of mapped information and its connection to Hugh of St Victor’s theography, see the introduction and chapters three, four, and ten in this Companion. 13 Errera, ‘Un mappamondo’, 10.
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6.2 VERCELLI MAP WITH DIGITAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CIRCLE OF THE OCEAN, SUPERIMPOSED ONTO THE HEREFORD MAP. ARCHIVIO CAPITOLARE, VERCELLI, ITALY. PHOTOGRAPH BY LAZARUS PROJECT. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. AUTHOR’S SUPERIMPOSITION.
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book, a fact not readily apparent from reproductions of it in its damaged state.
PROVENANCE AND PLACEMENT As with many medieval artifacts, we cannot assign a certain provenance to the Vercelli Map, since ‘neither author nor orderer [i.e. patron] nor provenance is known’.14 This means that the range of theories about its provenance is wider for the Vercelli Map than for others in this Companion. Still, there is a broad consensus on the map’s date: Errera, Destombes, Crone, Morgan, Woodward, von den Brincken, Edson, and Unverhau all date it to the thirteenth century, though their estimates range from 1200 to 1270.15 On the other hand, the map’s place of origin is, so to say, all over the map. Errera makes no guess as to place, stating reservedly that ‘per ora è da notare, – senza nulla volerne inferire in proposito, – che fra le regioni europee le più ricche di nomi sono l’Italia e l’Iberia’ (‘for now it is to be noted, without wanting to infer anything about it, that among the European regions, the richest concentration of names are in Italy and Iberia, but not without serious errors here as elsewhere’).16 He does draw attention to a curious image in northwestern Africa of a crowned king with a flail, riding a highly stylized giant bird that bears a horseshoe-shaped item in its beak. This is perhaps the iron-eating ostrich. The accompanying inscription is, like many, abraded. Capello gives ‘philip[us] rex f[ra]ncie’ (‘King Philip of France’).17 A more likely reading would be ‘philip[us] rex f[ra]ncor[um] (‘King Philip of the French’), the more common phrasing for kings of France
von den Brincken, ‘Monumental legends’, 10. Errera, ‘Un mappamondo’, 11; Marcel Destombes, ed., Mappemondes a.d. 1200–1500 (Amsterdam, 1964), p. 193; G.R. Crone, ‘New light on the Hereford Map’, Geographical journal 131:4 (December 1965), 447–58, here 455; Nigel Morgan, Early gothic manuscripts, II, 1250–1286, Survey of manuscripts illuminated in the British Isles 4:2 (London, 1988), p. 197; David Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, The history of cartography, volume one: cartography in prehistoric, ancient and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, 1987), pp. 286–370, here p. 362; AnnaDorothee von den Brincken, ‘Christen im Orient auf abendländischen Karten des 11. bis 14. Jahrhunderts’, XXIV Deutscher orientalistentag: vom 26. bis 30. September 1988 in Köln: ausgewählte Vorträge 24, ed. Werner Diem and Abdoldjavad Falaturi (Stuttgart, 1990), pp. 90–8, here p. 94; eadem, ‘Roma nella cartografia medievale (secoli IX–XIII)’, Roma antica nel Medioevo: mito, rappresentazioni, sopravvivenze nella ‘Respublica Christiana’ dei secoli IX–XIII, atti della quattordicesima settimana internazionale di studio, Mendola, 24–28 agosto 1998 (Milan, 2001), pp. 209–29, here p. 222; Evelyn Edson, Mapping time and space: how medieval mapmakers viewed their world (London, 1999), p. 135; and Dagmar Unverhau, Geschichtsdeutung auf alten Karten: Archäologie und Geschichte (Wiesbaden, 2003), p. 60. 16 Errera, ‘Un mappamondo’, 11. 17 Capello, Il mappamondo, p. 110. 14 15
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through the reign of Philip the Fair (1268–1314).18 Errera wonders which King Philip it might be, noting that only Philip III went to Africa and that he died at Tunis.19 This, he suggests, might be an argument for a Frankish provenance. Von den Brincken thinks that ‘a French king documents French interests’ and sees the figure as convincing evidence that the map should be connected to Philip II, III or IV. Then, centering on Philip III on the same basis as Errera, she presses further, asserting that there is less water on Vercelli than other thirteenth-century maps: ‘the Vercelli Map offers waves in the sandy desert of Sahara, a kind of sandhills. The painter was not interested in seas but in deserts. This is a unique mark of this map. Might he have accompanied King Philip to Africa?’20 There seems to be no evidence to support speculations that the map is connected to Phillip III beyond the abraded inscription, nor that the mapmaker would have been to Africa, and from Errera’s suggestion to the present, these have not been prevailing assumptions. Destombes and Crone think the map is Italian.21 Unverhau places its creation in northern France or England.22 A few years before connecting Vercelli to Philip III, von den Brincken improbably ascribed it to the Spanish Beatus tradition, with which it has little in common.23 Capello offers multiple origin theories, including Spain and Italy, since there are greater concentrations of toponyms in these regions than elsewhere.24 Woodward vaguely writes that ‘[i]ts inspiration may well have been English’, which is not the same as saying that the map is English.25 Morgan adroitly sums up the situation by declaring it ‘of a different’ – and unspecified – ‘pedigree’ than the Hereford and Ebstorf maps.26 Harvey suggests England and Dan Terkla offers the more precise possibility of Westminster Abbey.27 In addition to these suggestions – England, France, Italy and Spain – some scholars raise the possibility that this confusion results from multiple provenances. Capello suggests that ‘a pergamena sia stata portata in Italia non ancora completata, e che su suolo italiano sia stata poi accresciuta (ma non finita)’ (‘the scroll was brought into Italy not yet completed, and on Italian soil was then enhanced [but not finished]’).28 Von den Brincken also thinks that some of the legends were added or amended after the map was 18 John W. Baldwin, The government of Philip Augustus: foundations of French royal power in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 360–1. 19 Errera, ‘Un mappamondo’, 11. 20 von den Brincken, ‘Monumental legends’, 11, 17. 21 Destombes, Mappemondes, p. 193; and Crone, ‘New light,’ 455. 22 Unverhau, Geschichtsdeutung, p. 60. 23 von den Brincken, ‘Christen im Orient’, 94. 24 Capello, Il mappamondo, p. 11. 25 Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 305. 26 Morgan, Early gothic, p. 197. 27 P.D.A. Harvey, Medieval maps (Toronto, 1991), p. 25, and Dan Terkla, ‘Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141) and Anglo-French cartography’, Imago mundi 65:2 (2013), 161–79, here 171. 28 Capello, Il mappamondo, p. 122.
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finished elsewhere, for example in Ireland, though this portion of the map – in the extreme lower left – is the most damaged part, and there is very limited evidence of a medieval Irish cartographical tradition. This lack of evidence and consensus leaves me hesitant to make paleographical claims about these inscriptions, even after using the enhanced Lazarus images. The most interesting suggestions regarding the origins of the map center on a powerful, politically influential, thirteenth-century Italian cardinal, Guala Bicchieri. He was the son of a celebrated crusader from a prominent Vercelli family, after whom he was named. Guala may have studied law, though his library suggests a stronger interest in theology. He served as a papal legate in France, where he preached the crusade, and later as papal legate to England (1216–18) under King John (1167–1216) and at the start of the reign of Henry III (1207–72). Guala was deeply involved in the civil war, and worked to resettle the church after various crises.29 When he left England in 1218, Guala stopped off in Vercelli en route to Rome, and while in his home town founded the Augustinian abbey of St Andrea, which was ‘colonized by canons from the abbey of St Victor in Paris’, an institution with a strong mapmaking tradition.30 He donated his library, ‘perhaps the finest private library possessed at that time in western Europe’, comprising approximately one hundred volumes, to the monastery and its school, and it is possible that the map was included in this bequest.31 Such a map could have been displayed and used there in teaching. It would be worth investigating – following the model provided by Dan Terkla in chapters two and three of this volume – whether there are links between Guala’s books and the map. Guala also spent time at St Victor. Although Hugh of St Victor (born c. 1096) died in 1141, Guala could nonetheless have seen Hugh’s mural map at the abbey. As Terkla theorizes: [It] could have hung on St Victor’s library wall, in a way similar to the mappamundi at Merton College, Oxford, where the library was the venue for lectures. Perhaps this is the abbey map of Hugh’s that Jean of St Victor, in his Memoriale historiarum (c.1308–1335), noted was still in use during his time.32
While systematic comparisons between the Vercelli Map and Victorine writings would help bolster such claims, even a cursory search for such ties has yielded suggestive evidence. In the north-east quadrant of the map, just below a charming image of a sheep, there is a long inscription that begins, ‘Asia minor habet provincias 29 Nicholas Vincent, ed., The letters and charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, papal legate in England (1216–1218) (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. xxxi–xxxiii. 30 Vincent, Letters, p. xliii. On the Victorine presence in twelfth- and thirteenth-century cartography, see the introduction to this Companion and chapters three and nine. 31 Albert S. Cook, ‘Cardinal Guala and the Vercelli book’, University of California library bulletin 10 (1888), 3–8, here 8. Vincent, Letters, p. xliv. 32 Terkla, ‘Hugh’, 164.
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Bathiniam, Galathiam […]’ (‘Asia Minor has the provinces of Bithynia and Galatia […]’). This text seems to be borrowed, with some alterations, from Richard of St Victor’s Liber exceptionum.33 Richard was one of Hugh’s students and an important Victorine scholar in his own right. Jean Châtillon writes that Richard was indebted to Hugh’s De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum, id est personis locis temporibus (The three best aids for learning history; namely persons, places and occasions), also known as the Cronica, with its list section beginning ‘iste sunt tres partes mundi’ (‘There are three parts of the world’).34 This passage further demonstrates Hugonian/ Victorine connections, and, given Guala’s strong ties, helps make the case for his patronage of the map. It is conceivable that Guala had the Vercelli Map made in England and took it with him when he left for Vercelli, that it was, as Evelyn Edson argues, ‘perhaps a souvenir brought home by Gualo [sic] Bicchiere’.35 James Fergusson provides evidence for Guala’s interest in English artistry, stating that he ‘brought back with him an English architect called, it is said, Brigwithe, and entrusted him with the erection of this church in his native place’.36 It is conceivable – remarkably – that we might be able to identify the exact box in which he carried the map: Guala’s ornate traveling chest survives in the Museo Civico d’Arte Antica in the Palazzo Madama, Torino (Figure 6.3). The chest is wooden and decorated with champlevé enamels bearing images of beasts and monsters. While the media and style are quite different, both prominently feature coiling serpentine and fierce avian creatures. The Vercelli Map and traveling chest also contain undercurrents
33 Liber exceptionum: texte critique avec introduction, notes et tables, ed. Jean Châtillon (Paris, 1958), p. 124. Migne mistakenly attributes the Liber exceptionem to Hugh. See Hugonis de S. Victore, ‘Excerptionum allegoricarum, liber tertius: de situ terrarum’, Opera omnia 3, ed. J-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, Vol. 177 (Paris, 1854), p. 212. 34 Hugh of St Victor, Cronica, ed. Rainer Berndt, Hugonis de Sancto Victore operum editio auspiciis Gilduini abbatis procurata et IV voluminibus digessa, ed. Rainer Berndt and José Luis Narvaja (Aschendorff, 2017), pp. 43–164, here p. 92. See also Mary Carruthers and Jan Ziolkowski, eds, The medieval craft of memory: an anthology of texts and pictures (Philadelphia, 2002), pp. 32–40. The title translation is a modification by Carruthers and names the elements of human and biblical history that Hugh believed those seeking spiritual restoration should have in memory before moving on to higher-level studies. These are the categories of information found on mappae mundi. For more on this, see the introduction to this Companion and chapters three, four, nine, and ten. 35 Edson, Mapping, p. 135. 36 James Fergusson, A history of architecture in all countries: from the earliest times to the present day, 4 vols, 2nd edn (London, 1874), vol. II, p. 324. Fergusson does not provide citations to clarify the source of this claim, though an anonymous piece in The quarterly review (‘The ecclesiastic architecture of Italy, from the time of Constantine to the fifteenth century ...’, 150 (March 1845), 334–403, here 398) argues for the English style of the building: ‘The plan of Sant’ Andrea is entirely English … There is somewhat of a foreign accent, if we may use the expression, apparent, if you closely examine the details; yet, in spite of this foreign accent, you might almost suppose yourself at Salisbury’. Albert S. Cook surmises this reviewer to have been the noted antiquarian John Britton (Cook, ‘Cardinal Guala,’ 3).
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6.3 CARDINAL GUALA BICCHIERI’S TRAVELING CHEST. ABBEY OF SANT’ANDREA DI VERCELLI. MUSEO CIVICO D’ARTE ANTICA, PALAZZO MADAMA, TURIN. BY PERMISSION OF THE CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE 2.0, BELGIUM (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
of anti-Judaism conveyed through monstrosity:37 one of the roundels, now detached and in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, contains a wyvern with a human head. This head is presented in full profile, with a long beard, wearing a pilleus cornutus, the wide-brimmed, pointed hat mandated for Jews at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. It is worth noting that Guala was made legate to England just after this council, ‘so that we would expect him to have played a leading role in introducing the Council’s decisions to England’.38 The Vercelli Map, in a move similar to that on Guala’s traveling chest, conflates the monstrous hordes of Gog and Magog with Jews, reading just outside the Caspian Gate: ‘hic sunt portes q[ua]s fecit d[omi]n[u]s p[re]cib[us] alexandri. ne iudei int[er]hisi [?]possint exin[de] ad dep[re]da[n]dam orbe[m]’ (‘Here is the gate that God made through the prayers of Alexander, so that the Jews are not able to come out from there to plunder the world.’) This is a minor point of correspondence, but it is enhanced by the fact that the chest is just the right size (the exterior is 33.8–34.3 in. wide [860–870 mm]) to contain the rolled parchment, if its original width were about the same as its current height (33 in., 840 mm). This is plausible, since the map was almost certainly circular. Depending on
For more on anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism on medieval mappae mundi, see Asa Simon Mittman, ‘Mandeville’s Jews, colonialism, certainty, and art history,’ Postcolonising the medieval image, ed. Eva Frojmovic and Catherine Karkov (London, 2017), pp. 91–119; Mittman, ‘England is the world and the world is England,’ postmedieval 9:1 (2018), 15–29; and Mittman, ‘Gates, hats, and naked Jews: sorting out the Nubian guards on the Ebstorf Map,’ FKW: Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur 54 (2013), 89–101. 38 Vincent, Letters, p. lxxiv. 37
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the thickness of the wood, the type of lining and, the original width of the roll, it just might have fit. We do know that Guala was a collector; he had what was, for his day, an astonishingly large collection of books. In addition, when he returned to Vercelli from England, he took with him relics of Anglo-Saxon saints for his new abbey of St Andrea. In 1888, Albert S. Cook made an extensive and fairly convincing case that Guala also took with him the famous tenthcentury Vercelli Book of Old English poetry, which includes the Andreas, a verse life of Andrew that would be a fitting inclusion for the library of this new abbey dedicated to this saint. These items and the rolled-up map could have been accommodated in the traveling chest, as a group of artifacts with which to endow his new abbey and establish the teaching materials for its school.39 Terkla provides what is at present the most convincing claims about Guala’s role in the provenance of the map: The Vercelli fragment looks like a working draft for what would have been a larger map that Guala intended for display and self-aggrandizement – his ego was legendary – at Sant’Andrea. Following from what we know of the map’s Hugonian character, Guala’s affection for the Victorines, … Capello’s argument that Guala had the map made at St Victor on his way to Rome is less satisfying than Paul Harvey’s theory … that the map is English in origin, and it is not too far-fetched to see Westminster Abbey’s scriptorium as the place where the map was made.40
Terkla further suggests that this was likely the scriptorium that produced that Psalter Map.41 This is a most appealing theory, however incompatible with von den Brincken’s argument for Philip III commissioning the map, since Guala died before his reign. Still, there is more circumstantial evidence connecting the map to Guala than to Philip III, since the latter theory relies on a chain of inferences from one detail, the figure on the bird. The Guala theory, in contrast, provides an origin that places the map in close association with other important maps of the period, narrows the possible date range substantially, offers a patron, a vector to get an English map to Vercelli and provides a use for it in the abbey and its school. Of course, much here is unproven and, at least at present, unprovable, but it does suggest a richly international context for the production of this likely Anglo-French map of the world. Even if this theory turns out to be incorrect, it reminds us that European powers were not isolated in the thirteenth century, that there were many such individuals traveling from court to court and monastery to
For similar benefactions, see chapters three and nine in this Companion. Terkla, ‘Hugh’, 171. 41 Terkla, ‘Hugh’, 171. On the Psalter Map’s provenance, see chapters six and seven in this Companion. 39
40
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monastery, carting ornate chests full of books and ideas along with them, as Terkla discusses in chapters two and three of this Companion. There are other routes to take in pinning down the location and date of the map’s production. Lawrence Nees, writing about insular material, deconstructs traditional dating schemes to a rather devastating degree, and concludes that ‘[w]e should try to resist giving dates that are at least implicitly more definite than we know, and prefer ranges of good probability, as when radiocarbon dates are properly reported’.42 These technologies are rapidly improving.43 There is similar promise in new scientific methods that may locate the origins of skins used to make books and maps that could augment or replace paleography and dialect analysis.44 Of course, we need to bear in mind that the origin of the vellum need not be the same as the place where it was written or drawn on.45 Still, conducting Accelerator Mass Spectrometry and genetic analyses – if the Vercelli Map’s condition permits it – would provide substantial new information about this and other medieval maps.46
CHARTING NEW PATHS Such is the state of scholarly work on the provenance of the Vercelli Map: admittedly, something of a mess. We really do not know where, when, by whom, for whom, or for what purposes the map was produced. In medieval studies, this a familiar, if frustrating, state of affairs. While it presents certain difficulties that are frequently lamented, it also opens possibilities. Because these paths are dead ends at present, barring more precise scientific and diplomatic analyses, we can and should turn to others. With scholars of the history of cartography having long ago (for the most part) abandoned the quest to determine medieval maps’ ‘accuracy’ or their place in a teleological progression, and without precise contextualization, what can we do? There are several productive paths that we might take with respect to the Vercelli Map, and which we might follow when studying maps about which 42 Lawrence Nees, ‘Recent trends in dating works of insular art’, Insular and Anglo-Saxon art and thought in the early medieval period, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, 2011), pp. 14–30, here p. 26. 43 Richard Burleigh and A.D. Baynes-Cope, ‘Possibilities in the dating of writing materials and textiles’, Radiocarbon 25:2 (1983), 669–74, here 672; F.J. Santos, I. Gómez-Martínez and M. García-León, ‘Radiocarbon dating of medieval manuscripts from the University of Seville’, Nuclear instruments and methods in physics research B 268 (2010), 1038–40, here 1038 and 1040. 44 Timothy L. Stinson, ‘Counting sheep: potential applications of DNA analysis to the study of medieval parchment production’, Codicology and palaeography in the digital age II (Norstedt, 2011), pp. 191–207, here p. 196; Timothy L. Stinson, ‘Knowledge of the flesh: using DNA analysis to unlock bibliographical secrets of medieval parchment’, The papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 103:4 (December 2009), 435–53, here 449. 45 Stinson, ‘Counting sheep’, pp. 204–5. 46 On such new technologies and medieval maps, see chapter eleven in this Companion.
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we have more information. We could (1) more often consider the layout of the map and its contents in the wider context of European Christian mapmaking; (2) pull the map into wider conversations about book history, manufacture and use; (3) perform close visual analyses of details and close readings of inscriptions – first and foremost, by observing the original object(s), rather than standard reproductions, and by relying on advanced imaging technologies, including those from the Lazarus Project; (4) engage in readings based on new materialist, postcolonial, gender and monster studies and/or hybrids of these approaches. These paths are not new or radical, but they have not frequently been followed in studies on medieval cartography, especially in their various admixtures. By doing so, we can build new and unique readings of difficult objects like the Vercelli Map. In what follows, I attempt to employ a combination of these methods. A few properties come into focus, when we stand back and take in the entire Vercelli Map. The first impression the map gives is familiar. The modified, elaborated T-O format recalls the Hereford, Psalter, and Ebstorf maps and is dominated by a vertical Mediterranean Sea.47 Capello noted that ‘[t]uttavia la scarsità di superfici coperte dalle acque, lo rendono molto diverso dagli altri mappamondi coevi e da quelli precedenti, poichè è l’unico tra quelli pervenutici a presentare tale caratteristica’ (‘however, the scarcity of surface covered by water makes it very different from other contemporary maps of the world and from previous ones, as it is unique among those surviving in presenting this feature’).48 As we have seen, von den Brincken notes this and speculates on the reason for it. The seas and ocean are so filled with islands that they cease to appear as bodies of water and instead echo the forms and patterns of the rivers that flow into them. Further, the world is densely filled with cities, inscriptions, monsters and other details. Cities are adjacent to one another, and islands nearly abut one other, so there are not only no roads or sea routes indicated, but there is little room for them to have been indicated. Where is the space for the viewer to undertake what Daniel K. Connolly calls ‘imagined pilgrimage’?49 We can scan the map’s surface, but cannot easily imagine physically traveling the roads of its world from city to city, since there is no space for them. Moving clockwise from the top center, other dominant elements include: a large, clear square filled by a cross; the Red Sea, slicing downward like a dagger, with the lower fifth separated by a narrow spit of land to signify the sea’s parting during the Exodus narrative; primarily in the south, along the right edge, many monsters and beasts (and there were likely more, 47 Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, pp. 296–9, problematically calls these maps the ‘transitional type’. They should not be defined by ways in which they might (or might not) ‘anticipate in many ways the Renaissance’, but rather, by their own features and internal logic. 48 Capello, Il mappamondo, p. 17. 49 Daniel K. Connolly, The maps of Matthew Paris: medieval journeys through space, time and liturgy (Woodbridge, 2009), p. 40.
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since the southern edge of the map is lost); and, in the upper left, the Caucasus Mountains and Alexander’s Gate, holding in Gog and Magog. These elements, familiar from many medieval maps, illustrate a world embedded in multiple narratives and genres drawn from biblical, classical and medieval sources. The overall impression is revealing. The three landmasses, Asia above, Europe to the lower left and Africa to the lower right, are distinct from one another. Even without examining details on each landmass, we can gain insights into the mapmaker’s and patron’s views of the world. Asia is filled with text.50 Europe (insofar as it survives) is almost filled, between its waterways, with icons of cities.51 Africa is presented as a less populated wilderness or wasteland. These design choices are neither neutral nor natural, but rhetorical moves that present arguments about the nature of each component.52 As Denis Wood writes, ‘maps are arguments, and the mapmaking is a rhetorical exercise’.53 Elements on maps are not geographical ‘representations’, in that they are not ‘re’-anything. There are external referents, of course – landmasses, rivers, cities, peoples and so on – but the maps do not, cannot, should not, and will not encapsulate a base reality or an underlying ontology. Instead, they are ideological presentations, encapsulating and extending the perspectives and goals of their patrons and makers. Maps also show us persons, places and events in time, borrowed from texts and other maps – themselves embedded in similar ideological perspectives – as rhetorical re-presentations of human historia.54 The Vercelli Map therefore constructs a world that the mapmaker and his patron(s) wanted to see, and in some cases, wanted to create (e.g. through the Crusades) as a lived reality. The differences between the three landmasses reflect contemporary thinking about the nature of the regions, and might also be connected to Guala and his history, as discussed below. The emphasis on text in Asia reflects and reinforces European Christian notions about that area as the locus of biblical narratives, the home of scripture and the region wherein ‘Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis’ (‘the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us’).55 In the heart of Asia is a walled square framing an equal-armed cross. The region around this contains the longest block of text on the map, identifying the square, not as Jerusalem, but as the earthly paradise. 50 This accords with ninth- to early twelfth-century clerical reading lists, which privileged biblical excerpts and the Fathers, with geography used in aid of the lectio divina. See chapters two, three, and four in this Companion. 51 On this phenomenon, see chapter four in this Companion. 52 On map rhetoric, see the introduction to this Companion. 53 Denis Wood, with John Fels and John Krygier, Rethinking the power of maps (New York, 2010), p. 43. 54 On historia, see the introduction to this Companion and chapter three. 55 Vulgate, John 1.14.
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The mapmaker’s understanding of the east is conveyed through a curious textual maneuver: the letters of ‘ASIA’ are divided and relocated within the first line. They appear as ‘A h[ic] terra vocata est a S I no[m]i[n]e cui[s] dam regi[n]e q[ue] fuit re A gina / in terra ista’. This is a paraphrase of a passage in Isidore’s Etymologies: ‘Asia ex nomine cujusdam mulieris est appellata, quae apud antiquos imperium tenuit Orientis’ (‘Asia is named after a certain woman who, according to the ancients, had an empire in the east’).56 The Vercelli passage is not translatable without rearranging the letters, although the sense is clear: ‘This land is called “Asia” after the name of a certain queen who ruled this land’. The translated text might be more precisely rendered as ‘A this land is called S I after the name of a certain queen who was queen A in this land’. The inscription’s syntax conflates land, toponym and royal namesake. The rest of the long inscription continues, however loosely, to track the Isidorian passage, noting that Paradise is the source of the rivers Gihon, Pison, Tigris/Hiddekel, and Euphrates, and that the garden is ‘igneo muro clausis est usque ad celum’ (‘closed with a wall of fire reaching to heaven’).57 The square ‘wall of fire’ surrounding the cross constitutes the garden’s boundary and is reminiscent of the Ebstorf Map’s rendition of paradise. The square boundaries also suggest a city wall. The garden is represented in plan-view, though, as is common on mappae mundi, the preponderance of structures are shown in profile. The use of plan-view renders the space schematically, such that it becomes a symbol of the garden rather than a representation of it. The centered cross is in the same green ink as the rivers and seas, with a circular yellow aureole where the arms meet. This cross seems to be a sign of the sacred presence rather than a representation of a cross-shaped structure in the middle of the Garden. Given the choice of color, it is possible that this is a schematic presentation of the four rivers of Paradise, mentioned in the text around the Garden, but they have nothing visually in common with the rest of the waters apart from color. Instead, and like the text around it, this figure seems another abstract symbol to interpret, either as the rivers or as the cross of Christ – or, in typical medieval polysemy, as both. The emphasis on text in the east follows medieval thinking about the region. As David Woodward argues, ‘[t]he function of the mappaemundi was primarily to provide a visual narrative of Christian history cast in a geographical framework’, an assertion that stresses the ideological natural of such mapping.58 Alessandro Scafi notes that eschatological maps like these present this narrative as the spatio-temporal ‘progression of history 56 Isidore of Seville, Sancti Isidori Hispalensis episcopi etymologiarum libri xx, 11.1.146, Patrologia Latina 82, col. 496B, emphasis added. English in Isidore of Seville, The etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof, with Muriel Hall (Cambridge, 2006), p. 285. 57 Capello, Il mappamondo, p. 83. 58 David Woodward, ‘Reality, symbolism, time, and space in medieval world maps’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 75:4 (December 1985), 510–21, here 519.
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6.4 VERCELLI MAP. PANORAMA, DETAIL OF UNLABELED EUROPEAN CITIES. VMAPPA MUNDI_011_UVPASS_ADJ. PHOTOGRAPH BY LAZARUS PROJECT. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.
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from east to west’ over the so-called Six Ages of Man, which ‘lies at the heart of the mappa mundi’.59 Following this logic, the east is the land of the past, which is congruent with the east being the locus of biblical events. In this sense, Asia – the name of which is folded into an Isidorian text about an ancient, exotic empress – is presented as there and then, and not here and now, as terrestrially inaccessible. The map’s presentation of Europe differs from that of Asia, land of history and scripture. Instead of large blocks of text, there are clusters of cities (Figure 6.4), which are consistently rendered, with a few exceptions. They have a band, usually yellow, at their base, surmounted by a rectangular panel. When there is a toponym, the panel frames it, and that toponymic panel is then capped by another band, sometimes yellow. That second band is followed by one or two panels seated on a yellow band, and the whole is capped by a roof canted inward on each side and denoted by a ridgepole that extends past the roof. The cities chosen for representation are of interest, but it is also clear that they were less important to the designer than was conveying the sense that Europe is a civilized land, a land of civitates, of cities. This is most notably indicated by the narrow stretch of land between Byzantium and Turkey that includes Smyrna and Sista/Sestos, which Scott Westrem identifies as modern Yekikabat.60 The landmass is easily identified, because Constantinople is shown as a large, four-tiered, crenellated city. The identity of the adjacent region, however, is unclear. Macedonia is due south of Constantinople, Bulgaria west of Turkey, and so on. The horizontal strip does not bear the sort of regional inscription used to name many other territorial segments, but it does contain four city icons, all unlabeled. In sum, it seems that the mapmaker wanted this region to be filled with markers of civilization, even though he does not seem to have known what the region was, or what cities it contained.61 As we look at the surrounding regions, we find several other unlabeled cities. There are over a dozen still clearly visible, as well as a few more in the badly damaged sections of Europe that seem to be unlabeled. This could be because the map had a few inscriptions added after its completion: Capello believes there are at least two hands responsible for the inscriptions, as noted above; von den Brincken agrees that it ‘seems to have been corrected in the Middle Ages and to be completed’, though it is not in any conventional sense ‘complete’ now.62 If the map is a ‘working draft’, as Terkla suggests, 59 Alessandro Scafi, Mapping paradise: a history of heaven on earth (Chicago, 2006), p. 127. As Scafi points out in this section, this conception of human history moving across the map from east to west derives from Hugh of St Victor. For more on this, see the introduction to this Companion and chapters three, four, nine, and ten. 60 Scott Westrem, The Hereford Map: a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (Turnhout, 2001), p. 207. 61 On this conception of human expansion, see chapter four in this Companion. 62 Capello, Il mappamondo, p. 122, and von den Brincken, ‘Monumental legends’, 18.
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these cities might eventually have been filled in, or might have been erased from the map entirely.63 Regardless, this map, which has survived for eight centuries, does contain these unnamed cities, so they do bear meaning. In a general sense, they fill in the European landmass, showing it to have no open space or topography. In contrast, as Michael Gaudio writes, Matthew Paris’ mid thirteenth-century itinerary maps include empty space that is treated ‘negatively as a space of discontinuity between sites of civilization … Emptied of meaning, the natural world thus becomes a non-space that allows human interpretation to enter into the cartographic text.’64 In the Vercelli Map’s presentation of Europe, there is virtually no nature, no ‘nonspace’. Instead, there is the urban world of power and political intrigue familiar to Guala and those in his orbit.65 And so, on the Vercelli Map, Asia is the land of history and scripture, Europe is the land of cities; Africa, on the other hand, is the place of monsters and wastelands. Blank spaces can be particularly alluring, providing space for the viewer’s flights of fancy and amorphous longings.66 On the Vercelli Map, though, they are more threatening than alluring, hostile environments populated by dangerous monsters. The blank spaces are primarily concentrated in the regions surrounding the Sahara Desert, which is presented as a sand sea, crested by waves and marked by numerous red dots to suggest intense heat. This distant area is, following medieval notions of the effect of climate on human and animal life, a land of monsters. There are leopards, dragons, cyclops, four-eyed Maritime Ethiopians, camels, and unidentified creatures. To the east and the south of the burning sand and to the north of the cyclops and Ethiopians are large barren tracks. These open spaces – so notably absent from Vercelli’s presentation of Europe – are crammed in between Scylla and Charybdis, as it were, between the uninhabitable Sahara and the deadly monsters beyond its borders. It is worth remembering that these ‘continents’ are not our continents. For example, we would generally consider Egypt to be part of Africa; however, according to Isidore, it is part of Asia, and so it appears thus on most mappae mundi.67 The question is not where Egypt is located, but where the boundaries between the landmasses are drawn. In other words, why are they located in what became conventional areas? What is the origin
Terkla, ‘Hugh’, 171. Michael Gaudio, ‘Matthew Paris and the cartography of the margins’, Gesta 39:1 (2000), 50–6, here 50. 65 A future project will attempt to chart overlaps between Guala’s own travels and writings and the cities selected for inclusion on the map. Initial work suggests at least thirty-six sites of correspondence. 66 Asa Simon Mittman, ‘A blank space: Mandeville, maps, and possibility’, Peregrinations: journal of medieval art & architecture 5:2 (Autumn 2015), 1–22, passim. 67 Isidore, Etymologiarum, col. 500A–500B. 63
64
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of this topographical convention, and how does asking these questions help us grapple with this and other medieval mappae mundi? Doing so leads to the realization that continents are not medieval constructs. As Isidore writes, ‘Continens, perpetua terra, nec ullo mari discreta, quam Graeci ἤπειρον vocant’ (‘A mainland [is] continuous land, not divided by any sea, which the Greeks call continent’).68 Tellingly, when Isidore describes the earth, he does not define the three main landmasses as ‘continentes’, but as ‘partes’: ‘Quas tres partes orbis veteres non aequaliter diviserunt’ (‘The orb is divided into three parts, but the ancients did not divide them equally’).69 This indicates that Isidore understood that these divisions are not natural but cultural and that the divisions that lingered in his own period were set by ‘the ancients’. The implication, then, is that regional characteristics are not rooted in the landmasses, but in the cardinal directions, which are human inventions; so these characteristics are cultural, not geographically neutral. On the Vercelli Map, the north contains more cities, the south empty wastes. The east is filled with text, the west with images. These are broad generalizations, but this is the impression with which the Vercelli Map leaves us. The implications of these generalities reflected and reinforced notions medieval Christians held about the main ‘partes’ of their world.
AS IT NOW STANDS In closing, I would argue that we should not only try to reconstruct the map on which the intervening centuries have taken their toll, but that we should reflect more deeply on the artifact that we have.70 Scholars generally try to ignore the damage to such objects, to see around or through the damage caused by time and accidents and attacks, to see back to some imagined pristine state, rather than taking the damage itself as meaningful and revealing. None of the lamentations about the damage to the map cited at the start of this essay, for example, are followed by reflection on the experience of the object as it now is. Ernst Badian argues that epigraphers frequently invent history by inserting reconstructions within brackets in their texts.71 Such insertions are also frequently made on maps, literally and conceptually, in images and in their text-image amalgams. We reimagine the color lost from the Hereford Map, the missing sections on the Vercelli Map or the entirety of Henry III’s lost Westminster Map. But the Vercelli’s
Isidore, Etymologiarum, col. 525B, emphasis added. Isidore, Etymologiarum, col. 495D. 70 Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim, Inconceivable beasts: the wonders of the east in the Beowulf manuscript (Tempe, 2013), pp. 215–34. 71 Ernst Badian, ‘History from “square brackets”’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 79 (1989), 59–70, here 59. 68 69
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damaged state, however unintentional, is meaningful, and we should read it as such. The world presented by the Vercelli Map seems to be retreating into its core, with its extremities withered and crumbled away. In this, it recalls so many lepers in medieval art, with withered limbs and bandaged stumps. Most of Europe’s remains, in particular, seem to be moldering away. Many of its cities are blurred beyond recognition and its texts obliterated. Some of its waterways have dried up, leaving behind them dull brownish riverbeds. Other waterways, which were painted green, have eaten away the vellum that once supported them. This suggests that the green was produced with the pigment verdigris, an acetate of copper that is ‘[i]nfamous for being destructively reactive’ in the presence of moisture.72 This moisture might have been the result of an ill-conceived and luckily aborted 1970s attempt to clean the map.73 The attempt produced linear voids, empty channels from which the vellum has gone, leading to an inland sea of nothing, to the missing heart of Europe. In a sense, this corrosion literalized the pervading fear of medieval Christendom, that Europe was at constant risk of being eaten away, of being dissolved by incursions, by poisonous, toxic invasions. This paranoia is reflected on many medieval maps, as well as in texts such as The Book of John Mandeville.74 The Vercelli Map’s current state, then, is something of an accidental index of some of the very concerns that might have led to its creation, and which are reflected throughout the corpus of medieval mappae mundi. The Vercelli Map, badly damaged, newly visible, familiar to students of medieval cartography and different in noteworthy ways, is ripe for fresh studies, rooted in more recent approaches that cast off problematic legacies of the field to chart new directions across its scarred terrain.
72 Michael Douma, ‘Verdigris’, Pigments through the ages: http://www.webexhibits.org/ pigments [Accessed 29 August 2016]. 73 Lazarus Project, ‘Vercelli Book Project’. 74 Mittman, ‘A blank space’, passim.
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IN THE COMPANY OF MATTHEW PARIS: MAPPING THE WORLD AT ST ALBANS ABBEY *
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S
ometime around 1250, Matthew Paris (c. 1200–59) drew his one surviving mappa mundi (Plate V), which is contained in his magnum opus, the Chronica majora.1 When first confronted with this map, even seasoned historians of medieval maps will wonder just what they are looking at. It would take significant geographic flexibility to turn this map into a reasonable semblance of how thirteenth-century cartographers typically pictured the world’s landmasses on a mappa mundi. A quick comparison with the famous Hereford Mappa Mundi (Plate VIII) nicely illustrates the point. Its landmasses – Europe, Asia, Africa (mislabeled though they are) – are organized along the traditional ‘T’ set within an ‘O’, the ‘O’ being the circular frame of the great Oceanus and the ‘T’ the three other bodies of water: the Mediterranean Sea and the Don and Nile rivers, which together separate the world’s three landmasses.2 According to Genesis (10.1–32) and later Christian exegesis, these landmasses had been populated by the sons of Noah. Paris’ map (measuring 13.9in. x 9.1in., 353mm x 231mm), on the other hand, achieves no such organizational clarity. Instead, we see the shapes of land as almost constrained by the page on which they were drawn. If there is an organizational structure, it is again one that is based on geometric forms: a trapezoidal western Europe is separated from Africa to * Short passages of this study have previously been published in my The maps of Matthew Paris: medieval journeys through space, time and liturgy (Woodbridge, 2009) and are reprinted here with kind permission of Boydell & Brewer. 1 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, p. 284v. 2 On ‘mislabeled’, see chapter ten in this Companion. See also David Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, The history of cartography, volume one: cartography in prehistoric, ancient and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, 1987), p. 296.
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the right by a crescent shaped Mediterranean, while on the left, rectilinear land shapes and bulbous water features represent eastern Europe and the eastern seaboard of the Adriatic. At the base of the map, closest to the viewer’s body as one holds the chronicle, rivers lead the eye across France to the Alps and Apennines, through the named places of Italy and the sea labeled ‘adriaticum’ to arrive at a spot, a scar on the page beneath the map’s
7.1 MATTHEW PARIS, THREE HOLY FACES. CAMBRIDGE, CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, MS 26, FOL. VII(R). BY PERMISSION OF THE MASTER AND FELLOWS OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
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explanatory text. On the recto of the mappa mundi, Matthew drew his wellknown, icon-like figures (Figure 7.1): above, in heaven, a crowned Mary and Christ child with nimbus; below, a dead Christ with nimbus and a living Christ with nimbus. This last has been identified as one of the earliest Veronica images in the Latin West.3 Matthew drew his map of the world sometime around 1250, a date that had shaped his cartography to focus upon the city of Jerusalem as the site of what he considered the imminent apocalypse. On 16 December 1250, for example, Matthew brought his chronicle to a premature close with a series of verses, while referencing the date of Easter during that Jubilee year.4 This is his only surviving map of the world, though in its inscription he mentions another autograph mappa mundi that he produced in a now lost ordinal, a service book. Sometime later in the thirteenth century, a copy of this map was placed amidst the prefatory material of a presentation copy of the Chronica majora.5 Medieval cartographers struggled with how to map the world in the face of their own ignorance about the shapes of its landmasses and their distribution on the globe. They were, of course, aware that the earth was spherical. Many an ancient source told them so and lunar eclipses and horizonal observations confirmed it. Philosophers, beginning with Aristotle (c. 384–322 BCE), and followed by the Greek grammarian and Stoic philosopher, Crates of Mallos (fl. 2nd century BCE), began to fill in the otherwise unknown areas of the globe both with landmasses and eventually people to inhabit them. These philosophers may have been inclined to view Nature as conforming to laws of symmetry or balance; thus did climate zones mirror each other across the equatorial divide. From scraps of Strabo (early first century) and Ptolemy (fl. second century) that were passed down in the writings of Pliny (23–79), Macrobius (fl. early fifth century) and Martianus Capella (fl. 410–20) to these latter encyclopedists’ own theories, medieval cartographers were equipped with vague and inconsistent accounts of the world’s spaces that, moreover, seemed to be at odds with what scripture and Christian tradition taught. Soon after the supposition of these other landmasses and their inhabitants, the Stoics’ sense of a universal and life affirming Nature meant that the whole world would be populated. As the Greek Cleomedes (c. second century) had written in his treatise, On the circular motions of the celestial bodies, ‘Nature is life-loving, and reason requires that she has filled all the world, wherever possible, with 3 Otto Pächt, ‘The “Avignon diptych” and its eastern ancestry’, De artibus opuscula: essays in honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. M. Meiss (Princeton, 1961) pp. 402–21, here pp. 405–6, and Hans Belting, The image and its public in the Middle Ages: form and function of early paintings of the Passion (New Rochelle, NY, 1990), pp. 132–3. 4 Daniel K. Connolly, The maps of Matthew Paris: medieval journeys through space, time and liturgy (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 13–19. 5 London, British Library (BL), Cotton MS Nero D V, fol. 1v, see also Richard Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 110ff.
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7.2 JOHN OF WALLINGFORD, CLIMATE MAP. LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, COTTON MS JULIUS D VII, FOL. 46R. BY PERMISSION OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY, © BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
creatures both possessing intellect and not’.6 Macrobius borrowed from Crates of Mallos the understanding that the great Ocean divides the four parts of the world from each other: two on each side, and each side’s lands divided by a torrid, impassable, equatorial ocean. Thus were there four ‘quarters’ or ‘parts’ to the world. The ancient Greeks gave different names to the lands beyond the ecumene (the known, inhabited lands), and some medieval authors employed specialized vocabulary: the antoikoi, opposite 6 James S. Romm, The edges of the earth in ancient thought: geography, exploration, and fiction (Princeton, 1992), p. 131.
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7.3 ANONYMOUS, PREFATORY MAPPA MUNDI. COURTESY OF THE WARDEN AND SCHOLARS OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD. MS 274, PREFATORY MAP.
the ecumene; the antikthones, opposite side of the earth; and the perioikoi, around from the ecumene.7 At times, medieval writers confused these lands and their peoples, and would generally refer to them as the Antipodes – those whose feet are opposite ours, as in Macrobius’ Commentary.8 As we will see, Matthew’s mappa mundi engaged this ancient tradition, even as he found a way to recast it in a more Christian presentation, turning his map into a meditative, devotional aid to imagined pilgrimage in the form of a summary of the itinerary maps that preceded it.9 Matthew’s map also set the stage for the production of two more world maps that were produced at the Benedictine abbey of St Albans in the thirteenth century: the climate map by Matthew’s friend and brief successor in cartographic endeavors, John of Wallingford (d. 1258), made about Alfred Hiatt, Terra incognita: mapping the Antipodes before 1600 (Chicago, 2008), p. 3. Macrobius, Commentary on the dream of Scipio, trans. William H. Stahl (New York, 1990), p. 3. 9 For the itinerary maps that preceded the mappa mundi, see https://parker.stanford.edu/ parker/catalog/rf352tc5448 [Accessed 19 February 2019]. 7
8
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1252 (Figure 7.2), and a late thirteenth-century map by an anonymous mapmaker (Figure 7.3). Like Matthew’s mappa mundi, not only do these maps not fit comfortably into our expectation of what a medieval world map looks like, but they, perhaps more remarkably, look nothing like each other. These are the only mappae mundi from the abbey to survive from the Middle Ages, and, while they do not look like each other, they share a particular commonality: a concern to shape the spaces of the world to fit their purposes. They each also answer a question handed down from Antiquity: if we occupy just one half of the northern hemisphere, are there southern landmasses, and are they inhabited by people? That is, are we alone on the planet? This essay explores the intellectual contexts that surrounded and informed the production of these mappae mundi at the abbey in the second half of the thirteenth century and poses these questions: how did those contexts affect the production of these mappae mundi, and why do they look so different? The disparity between the maps calls into question the stature that Matthew Paris’ cartographic oeuvre might have achieved at the abbey and suggests that the subsequent artists sought different expressions as they shaped the world in new, even unprecedented, ways. As we shall see, Matthew Paris likely drew upon the map of Europe in the Liber floridus by Lambert of Saint-Omer (d. 1121). Interestingly, in his concern to represent the world as a whole, the later, anonymous mapmaker, who was attempting to illustrate book three of Pliny’s Natural history, may himself have looked to a mappa mundi like Lambert’s as a source for his design. In the end, we will reaffirm the idea that medieval mapmakers had a variety of understandings of how the world’s landmasses were shaped and arranged (and of the methods by which to render them) and that they sought, not necessarily the ‘true’ depiction of the earth (which they likely suspected could not be known), but rather to express a truth about reality that best responded to the demands of the circumstances in which they worked.
MATTHEW PARIS AND HIS MAPPA MUNDI Matthew Paris was a Benedictine monk, artist and the main chronicler at St Albans in Hertfordshire, a large and prestigious abbey in thirteenth-century England. Matthew signed his name in his own works as Parisiensis (the Parisian), or less often de Parisius (of Paris), suggesting that he had spent time in the city of Paris, perhaps studying there, or that he may have come from there.10 We know from his writings that he entered the abbey in 1217, and so he was likely born around the turn of the century. (It was common 10 Michael Clanchy, From memory to written record, England 1066–1307, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1993), p. 215.
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for young men to become oblates in their teens, though they could often be several years younger, and, of course, much older.) Matthew was well traveled for a monk. He made several trips throughout England and one to Norway, probably by way of Paris.11 As far as we know, he never made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or traveled in southern France or Italy, areas that feature on most of his maps. In 1237, he took over the writing of history at St Albans from Roger of Wendover and became a prodigious chronicler, illustrator and mapmaker. Indeed, his corpus of maps is one of the largest from a single medieval artist and is rivaled only by that of Lambert of SaintOmer. In addition to his travels, Matthew Paris was one of the most widely informed monastic historians of the thirteenth century. He moved easily amongst the nobility and royalty and relied on them for information about the goings-on in England and on the Continent. He was keen to include in his chronicles not only the events of distant lands and important people, but also copies of documents as source materials of those events. Matthew led the abbey’s efforts in chronicle writing, and his Chronica majora, his largest and most thorough project, was the most comprehensive history written in England at the time. As such, it places Matthew Paris in the center of a very rich and vital tradition of history writing.12 Matthew’s mappa mundi is well known among scholars of cartography, mostly for the information its inscription gives about other, now lost, world maps, which has invited conjecture about their appearance.13 Matthew’s is indeed an oddly shaped map that does not follow the conventions of medieval mappae mundi and few scholars have paid much attention to the map itself. In his opus on world maps, Marcel Destombes chose not to include Matthew Paris’, but thought that the map belonged in a separate volume on regional cartography.14 Some scholars place it in the context of traditional, square-shaped mappae mundi like the Anglo-Saxon Map of the early-to-mid eleventh century (Plate I); these also show a cursory rendering of the coasts as wavy lines and are sometimes referred to in the older literature as Orosian type maps.15 In our case, that square format seems mostly contingent on the shape of the page on which Matthew drew the map, as if he chose to mimic the codex format in shaping the spaces of
Vaughan, Matthew, pp. 6–7. Antonia Gransden, Historical writing in England c. 550 to c. 1307 (Ithaca, NY, 1974), p. 359. 13 Evelyn Edson, Mapping time and space: how medieval mapmakers viewed their world (London, 1997), pp. 123–4. 14 Marcel Destombes, Mappemondes A.D. 1200–1500 (Amsterdam, 1964), sect. 54, 1–2, p. 246. 15 On the Anglo-Saxon Map, see chapter two in this Companion. See also Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 347; also c. Raymond Beazley, The dawn of modern geography, vol. II: a history of exploration and geographical science from the close of the ninth to the middle of the thirteenth century (c. A.D. 900–1260) (Oxford, 1901, repr. New York, 1949), pp. 586ff. 11
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the world.16 Designating the shape of this map as ‘traditional’ has led others to see it as one of Matthew’s least interesting or innovative.17 The original map now resides at the end of its volume of the Chronica, with a modern pagination of 284; but an earlier folio number (vii) in the upper right-hand corner of the icons page indicates that it was once the seventh folio, and so was originally part of the Chronica’s prefatory materials, just as the later copy of the map is.18 In fact, in the upper right-hand corner, in different colored ink, Matthew indexed notes on the laws of Alfred the Great to the genealogy that would have followed on folio eight. In that position, the map and the icons on its reverse followed and, in a way, gave summary to Matthew’s itinerary maps and their palpable expressions of the monastic desire to access the Holy City of Jerusalem through a form of spiritual or imagined pilgrimage.19 The dynamic mechanics of page turning and flapfolding, necessitated by those itinerary maps, merged their geographic movements with the viewer’s bodily movements and thereby encouraged mental movements towards the goal of their journey, Jerusalem. Matthew’s is not so much a map of the world as it is a shaping of Europe set within other parts of the world. It is not encyclopedic like the later Hereford, or Ebstorf (both c. 1300) mappae mundi, or even the small Psalter Map (c. 1265, Plate VI), with which it shares the most place names. Matthew’s map is rather a highly edited and distilled presentation of parts of the world, one clearly focused upon the triangular shape of western Europe. As a summary of the preceding itineraries, that triangular shape compels an engaged, embodied reading by the viewer – progressing up the page by following its forms.20 The map shows, at its base, the western seaboard of Europe. Following the courses of rivers through France, one crosses the Alps into Italy, then across the Mediterranean to reach the goal of this mappa mundi, a scar on the parchment situated just below Paris’ phrase, ‘quae est triangularis fere’ (‘which is almost triangular’). This scar, I think, takes on multiple significations: it comes to signify the location of Jerusalem, an interpretation adopted by the map’s thirteenthcentury copyist;21 it emphasizes the materiality of the skin on which it is drawn and painted, and this materiality unites its movements towards Jerusalem with the Veronica on its recto, an image said to have been Suzanne Lewis, The art of Matthew Paris in the ‘Chronica majora’ (Berkeley, 1987), p. 372. Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ‘Jerusalem on medieval mappaemundi’, Studien zur universalkartographie des Mittelalters, ed. Thomas Szabó (Göttingen, 2008) (Studien), pp. 683–703; and Lewis, The Art, p. 372. 18 BL, Cotton MS Nero D V, fol. 1. 19 Connolly, The maps, p. 171. 20 On the somatic projection of the viewer into the space of vision, see M. Merleau Ponty, ‘Eye and mind’, The Merleau-Ponty reader, ed. Leonard Lawlor and Ted Toadvine (Evanston, IL, 2007), pp. 231–78. 21 Connolly, The maps, p. 167, and Asa Simon Mittman, ‘Revision and revisionism in Matthew Paris’ maps of the Holy Land’, paper delivered at the International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, 16 May 2015. 16 17
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created during Christ’s Passion in that city.22 For its part, the Veronica image is a peculiar kind of icon, one that was simultaneously a relic. Having touched the face of Christ, the cloth is certainly a touch relic, but as well, that touch left an imprint, an image miraculously generated in that exchange between Christ’s holy visage and Veronica’s humble kerchief. The first mention of this relic may be as early as the eighth century, but its popularity as a devotional aid exploded when the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople in 1204, opening the Latin West to a flood of new icons and the devotional practices that accompanied them.23 In 1207, Pope Innocent III (c. 1160–1216) processed the relic through the streets of Rome and then granted indulgences to anyone saying a special prayer before it, one that he had composed.24 Matthew made at least three copies of the Veronica, two of which were accompanied by Innocent’s text.25 By saying the prayer in front of a copy of the image, the devout would receive the same number of indulgences as if he or she had made the pilgrimage to it. Matthew’s copy thus made the relic present, just as his map made mental travel to the place of its origins possible. Matthew associates that place on his map with a scar, a wrinkle of skin, a navel in the body of the world (the omphalos), which is at once the culmination of the ‘almost’ triangle’s progression up the page and the site of the Holy City, Jerusalem. As a scar, it also represents loss, both the loss of uniformity in the parchment, but also, I suspect, the loss of Jerusalem in the course of multiple failed crusades. As the navel of the world, it is the site of disconnection, the omphalos, a severance of the world from its divine origins in the generative, sustaining speech that is Christ Logos.26 Jerusalem sits isolated and alone, with no elaboration, not even the simple frame that Matthew had given the other cities in Asia. Longing for the lost city seems to echo in the relative emptiness surrounding it. While the focus on Jerusalem would have made easy sense to his monastic audience, the shapes of the landmasses by which Matthew presented that focus conflict with what had evidently become their conventional representation. He clearly knew that his presentation was unconventional because, in his inscription, Matthew sought to explain the map to his audience, telling his fellow monks what the drawing was and how they should think about it: Summatim facta est dispositio mappa mundi magistri Robert de Melekelia et mappa mundi de Waltham. Mappa mundi regis quidem est in camera sua apud Westmonasterium, figuratur in ordinali mathei de parisius. Verissimiliter (?) autum figuratur in 22 23 24 25 26
Connolly, The maps, pp. 153–5. Belting, The image, pp. 203–21. Lewis, The art, p. 489. Connolly, The maps, pp. 154–7. Connolly, The maps, pp. 167–71.
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eodem ordine quod est quasi clamis extensa. Talis est scema nostra partis habitabilis secundum philosophos, scilicet quarta pars terrae quae est triangularis fere. Corpus enim terre spericum est. ([This] is a summarily made arrangement of the map of the world of Magister Robert Melekely and the map of the world of Waltham [Abbey]. The king’s map of the world, which is in his chamber at Westminster, is figured in the ordinal of Matthew Paris. Moreover, it is truly figured in this ordinal, which is as if a chlamys spread out. Such is the scheme of our habitable part according to philosophers, that is to say, the fourth part of the earth, which is almost triangular. For the body of the earth is spherical.)27
This inscription performs multiple tasks: it identifies the sources of this map in other thirteenth-century religious houses; it locates similar copies (including his own in his ordinal); and it attempts to explain its design by reference to those copies and to itself. None of the maps to which Matthew refers survive; this is the only record of them, and there remains no ordinal or other service book by him. Waltham Abbey was an Augustinian foundation of regular canons, which had recently been re-endowed by King Henry II (1133–89); it lay just over eighteen miles from St Albans.28 We know nothing about a Magister Robert Melekely; however, Matthew uses the term magistri, a title associated with a school setting. This text presents difficulties for the historian of cartography, but through a careful reading, we can tease out essential implications about Matthew’s map from the way he goes about explaining its shapes to his original audience. And yet, it is a peculiar explanation, for most of the text is concerned with the copy of the king’s map in the ordinal of Matthew Paris – a copy, it is understood, different from the one upon which we are gazing. Presumably, St Albans readers could go to one of the several book cupboards or ‘aumbries’ within the abbey church and compare this map with the one in the ordinal.29 And as his text expects, they would have seen quite the difference, for the map in the ordinal is unlike this world map. This one, his text implies, is not really a mappa mundi; rather, it is a ‘summarily made arrangement’ of other maps. As an adverb, summatim can mean ‘briefly’, ‘cursorily’, or even ‘compendiously’. But as the rest of the passage diverts our attention to more ‘truly figured’ maps, we gather that this one is not so 27 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, p. 284v. I wish to thank Ann Marie Yasin and Jill Connelly for their generous assistance translating this passage. Any errors are my own. Compare Lewis, The art, p. 372 and notes, and Konrad Miller, Mappaemundi: die ältesten Weltkarten 3 (Stuttgart, 1895), pp. 70–3. 28 One of Paris’ maps of England (BL, MS Cotton Claudius D VI, fol. 12v) singles out Waltham Abbey with a big cross, between St Albans and London, on the route from the North East to Dover. See David Knowles, The monastic constitutions of Lanfranc (London, 1951), pp. 141 and 359. 29 Connolly, The maps, p. 147.
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truly figured, that it perhaps captures the essence of those maps, but with no great fidelity. There is, however, one point on which this map and its text align, and that is the ‘almost triangular’ shape of western Europe, that shape being ‘as if a chlamys spread out. Such is the scheme of our habitable part according to philosophers, that is to say, the fourth part of the earth.’30 Beginning with the viewer’s body, at the base of the open codex, the western seaboard of Europe stretches out along the bottom margin; reading from right (south) to left (north): ‘Brita[n]nia’, ‘Nor[m]a[n]ia’, ‘Fland[ria]’, ‘Braib[antia]’, ‘Suine’ (possibly a river?), ‘hola[n]di[a]’ and ‘Dacia’.31 There is some question as to what ‘Britannia’ might have referenced. On Matthew’s map (and the later copy in London), the label clearly reads: ‘Britānia’, which should be expanded to ‘britannia’, as Konrad Miller did and then grouped with other islands on the map; Richard Gough, however, rendered it as ‘Britanie’ and suggested it meant Bretagne. As an island, Miller clearly understood that it represented Britain, and yet, as a squat, triangular form, it looks nothing like Britain or Matthew’s other, well-known maps of Britain. The triangle that is the island of Britain appears to mimic the overall triangular shape of Europe, the latter of which would have aided in an embodied, imagined pilgrimage to Jerusalem.32 With the map oriented to the east, the rivers of western Europe snake up the narrowing landmass, pointing to the Alps and across and into the peninsula of Italy. There, an even greater rate of constriction pushes the viewer up the page, through the labels ‘Ytalia’, ‘Roma’, ‘Apulia’ and across the Adriatic and the island of Rhodes to reach the goal of this map turned itinerary, Jerusalem. As the apex of the implied triangle that is western Europe and the terminus of the journey, the scar links the ‘almost triangle’ of western Europe to the descriptor above it, ‘which is almost triangular’. In doing so, it creates a visual tension: the scar competes for attention with its different signifieds, or rather those signifieds (Jerusalem, triangularity) compete within their own triangle – the scar to the left, the label of Jerusalem to the right – and above and between, beginning and ending at one and the other, the word, ‘triangularis’. Europe is clearly the landmass of most concern in this map. Of the other two, Africa receives practically no elaboration; it is labeled in the lower 30 Matthew clearly means to reference the fourth part, the habitable part, as Western Europe, and not one of the four quarters of the globe, ecumene, a point we will take up later. 31 A complete transcription is available in Miller, Mappaemundi, pp. 71–3; here, I only highlight some of the more interesting place names. See also Richard Gough, British topography. Or, an historical account of what has been done for illustrating the topographical antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1780), p. 66, and Lewis, The art, pp. 372–4. 32 Lewis transcribes it as Brittannia and decided that that means ‘Brittany’, Lewis, The art, p. 374. In Matthew Paris’ autograph version, the ‘Bri’ of Britannia is inscribed over part of Normandy and may have signaled English aspirations of one day re-claiming that fiefdom. Vaughan, Matthew, dates the copy (BL, Cotton MS Nero D V, fol. iv), which shows ‘Britannia’ as strictly insular, to the late thirteenth century, by which time those aspirations may have expired with the Treaty of Paris in 1259.
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right ‘dist[ri]cta affrice’, along with the ancient city of Cádiz (‘Gad[es] s[unt] h[er]cul[es], which identifies the Straits of Gibraltar. Asia, on the other hand, receives a bit more attention with cities, regions and seas labeled (at the top and farthest east): ‘mare caspiu[m]’ (‘Caspian Sea’), ‘capadocia’ (‘Cappadocia’), ‘Nichomedia’ (‘Nicomedia’), and next to it, ‘pathmos i[n] sula’ (the ‘Island of Patmos’). Two labels recall the early apostolic era: ‘Sicia. ubi p[e]t[ru]s p[re]dicav[it]’ (‘Scythia, where Peter preached’), while another, ‘Jerapol[is]’ (‘Hierapolis’) is rendered as a castle with a legend to its right: ‘(h[ic] p[rae]dicav[it] philipp[us] ap[osto]ll[u]s’ (‘here preached Philip the Apostle’). Asia is otherwise filled with Matthew’s explanatory text and extra notes. Europe is more fully formed, and the ‘almost triangular’ shape of western Europe, which receives so much attention in the legend above, begs further explication. In the passage, Matthew deploys an age-old metaphor, that of the chlamys, to explain the scheme of the fourth part and therein cites the authority of ‘philosophers’ as a way to bolster the veracity of his depiction. The passage moves in a concatenation of references ever more remote from the map before us, which creates a tension between what we see and appreciate and what we read: ‘The King’s map of the world … is truly figured … as if a chlamys spread out. Such is the scheme of our habitable part according to philosophers, that is to say, the fourth part of the earth, which is almost triangular. For the body of the earth is spherical.’ Matthew here shifts the viewer’s attention away from the ‘summarily made arrangement’, his map on this page, to more famous maps, one of which, Henry III’s, is ‘truly figured’ elsewhere – in the missing ordinal. Implicit in the use of the word, ‘truly’ is, I think, recognition that the map in this chronicle, the one before the viewer, is not a true or accurate copy of the maps of Robert Melekely, Waltham Abbey or Henry III. They are like a chlamys spread out, while this ‘arrangement’, Matthew’s map, is to be understood by some oblique or indirect reference to the chlamys.
THE CHLAMYS AND THE FOUR PARTS OF THE WORLD A rich circuit of associations and meanings would have radiated from the ancient Greek term, chlamys. One of the ‘philosophers’ to whom Matthew refers was likely the fifth-century encyclopedist, Macrobius, who, in his Commentarii in somnium Scipionis (Commentary on the dream of Scipio), used the analogy of the chlamys to describe the ecumene’s overall shape.33 Macrobius’ commentary was a sustained interpretation of an excerpt from Cicero’s De re publica (The republic), called the Somnium Scipionis (The dream of Scipio), which had fascinated medieval authors for its 33
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Macrobius, Commentary, II, 9, p. 8.
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wide-ranging discourse over all things Neoplatonic and what later medieval culture considered science. There can be little doubt that Matthew was relying directly on Macrobius’ Commentary. In his abbey’s copy of that text, he would have read Cicero’s description of the shape of our habitable part of the earth: From our diagram we shall also understand Cicero’s statement that our quarter is narrow at the top and broad at the sides. As the Tropical Circle is greater than the Arctic Circle, so our zone is narrower at the top than at the sides, for the top is pressed together by the smallness of the northern circle, whereas the sides extend in either direction over the broad expanse of the tropics. Indeed, the ancients remarked that the whole of our inhabited quarter was like an outspread chlamys.34
Macrobius was clearly working from a diagram that must have resembled a zonal map of the earth with a northern orientation; thus is the Arctic Circle narrower at the top.35 While primarily drawing upon Cicero’s text, Macrobius’ analogy of the chlamys dates back to Strabo’s and later Ptolemy’s use of the term to capture the constriction of space in the projection of the globe onto a two-dimensional surface.36 As the earth is spherical then, the tropical zone will be much wider than the Arctic zone, creating the trapezoidal-shaped ecumene. The chlamys was an ancient military, often imperial, cloak that was trapezoidal in shape.37 There are no surviving maps from before the fourteenth century that show the ecumene in any kind of cloak-like, trapezoidal shape, but Matthew’s text instructs us to understand those now lost maps in terms of that shape. I believe Matthew’s analogy of the shape of the king’s map and of its copy in his ordinal as being like a chlamys spread out was not describing the shape of the ecumene, as Macrobius says, but the overall shape of the maps themselves – not their geographic contents. When we look at the later Hereford Mappa Mundi, for example, we readily see the analogy at work, for the geography of the world is a great circle, bounded by Oceanus; it looks nothing like a trapezoid or a chlamys spread out.38 But what does look like a trapezoid is the shape of the vellum on which it and its A copy of Macrobius’ Commentary and Cicero’s Dream were together in the same mid to late twelfth-century manuscript in the St Albans library (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 71). See Rodney M. Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey 1066–1235 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 49 number 4; and Macrobius, Commentary, II, 9, pp. 7–9. 35 Hiatt, Terra incognita, p. 149. 36 Strabo was apparently the first to use the chlamys analogy, here Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 156, p. 167. 37 Since the early Byzantine period, the chlamys had become an integral part of the imperial raiment of the emperor and his court, see Elisabeth Piltz, ‘Middle Byzantine court costume’, Byzantine court culture from 829 to 1204, ed. Henry Maguire (Washington, DC, 1997), pp. 42 and 47. 38 The same might have been true of the late thirteenth-century Duchy of Cornwall Map fragment (Plate VII). On the map, see chapter nine in this Companion. 34
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accompanying inscriptions were drawn: broad at the base and rising up and narrowing at the top to form a neck.39 Combining this material analogy with Matthew’s text allows us to see that the king’s world map, not its landmasses, not the circle that defines the world, but the overall, framed area, including whatever inscriptions, captions or expository vignettes there may have been, took on the shape of, or was framed by, a chlamys-shaped trapezoid. As well then, its copy in the ordinal (and likely other large, display maps) would also have had the shape or frame of a trapezoid or been drawn on or framed by a trapezoidal ground. Without access to the work of Strabo or Ptolemy, the analogy of the chlamys must have indeed been bewildering, and in searching for a way to ground his work in the received authority of classical tradition, Matthew both reinterpreted how large display maps like the king’s could assume the overall shape of the chlamys, and, as we shall see, reinterpreted what constituted his habitable part of the earth. Suzanne Lewis interpreted Matthew’s analogy differently; in her magisterial study of his illustrations for the Chronica majora, she understood the inscription’s reference to the chlamys to mean that the king’s map and its copy in the ordinal showed the geography of the world in a trapezoidal shape. She then concluded that the king’s map and Matthew’s copy ‘resemble … maps based on the views of Strabo and Ptolemy’, which would then represent a particularly significant thirteenth-century cartographic development: the accurate representation of the linear distances across the curving surface of the earth.40 Ptolemy had converted those measurements to fit onto a curvilinear, trapezoidal shape that could then suggest the world’s true spherical form. However, the text of Ptolemy that contains these projections and calculations was not translated from the Greek until 1406 in Constantinople and was not otherwise available to the Latin West.41 But there were other, more immediate associations that Matthew’s audience would have drawn from the chlamys analogy. During the late Middle Ages, ‘chlamys’ was also often used interchangeably with ‘chasuble’ (Figure 7.4), quite possibly because medieval interpretations of liturgical wear often ascribed their origins to ancient royal or executive raiment, including the robes worn by Christ at his crucifixion.42 For example, the Gospel of Matthew uses ‘clamydem’ when describing the robe that the The vellum of the Hereford Mappa Mundi is from a single calf, which may well have determined its shape. Nonetheless, it still assumes the overall shape of a chlamys. 40 Lewis, The Art, p. 372. Such a projection occurs in a fourteenth-century Byzantine manuscript containing Ptolemy’s writings (BL, Add. MS 19391, fols 17v and 18; and O.A.W. Dilke, ‘Cartography in the Byzantine Empire’, Harley and Woodward, History, volume one, pp. 269–70. 41 Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 316, and Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘The reception of Ptolemy’s geography, The history of cartography, volume three: cartography of the European Renaissance, ed. David Woodward (Chicago, 2007), pp. 285–364. 42 J. Tatlock, ‘St Amphibalus’, Essays in criticism 4, 2nd ser. (Berkeley, 1934), pp. 249–57, and Pauline Johnstone, High fashion in the Church: the place of Church vestments in the history of art from the ninth to the nineteenth century (Leeds, 2002), pp. 2–3. 39
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7.4 CHASUBLE WITH MAPPULA, ENGLAND OR SICILY, LATE TWELFTH CENTURY, TREASURY OF NOTRE DAME, BAYEUX. AFTER MARIE-MADELEINE GAUTHIER, HIGHWAYS OF FAITH: RELICS AND RELIQUARIES FROM JERUSALEM TO COMPOSTELA, TRANS., J. A. UNDERWOOD (NEW YORK, 1986), ILLUS. 18.
soldiers gave to Christ, mocking him en route to Calvary.43 The chasuble was the main outer liturgical vestment worn by officiates during the liturgy. In addition, the chasuble was often accompanied by a special handkerchief, symbolizing the priest’s bodily purity, called a ‘mappula’.44 Matthew 27.28–31. Johnstone, High fashion, pp. 2–3 and Connolly, The maps, pp. 163-4. See also the preface to this Companion for more on the word’s history, its etymology, and its relationship to ‘mappa’ and ‘map’. 43
44
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On his surviving map, Matthew clearly meant to underscore the ‘almost triangular’ shape that he gave to western Europe by having it point to the word ‘triangularis’. He borrowed the overall, trapezoidal shape of the chlamys/chasuble as he rendered the part of the world that he inhabited as its own triangular form. As an almost triangle, western Europe becomes here the fourth part of Matthew Paris’ world and assumes the shape of a small chlamys spread out. Matthew’s inscription doubtless relied on Macrobius, who, citing Cicero, stated that, ‘our quarter is narrow at the top and broad at the sides’; and that, ‘the whole of our inhabited quarter was like an outspread chlamys’. In his map, the analogy of the chlamys as the scheme of his habitable part turns Europe into the fourth part of Matthew’s world. On the map, he gives only the slightest attention to Asia and Africa, clearly focusing the viewer on Europe. In the course of that focus and by his inscription, he thus denies the classical tradition of four parts of the world dispersed around the globe and, in its stead, offers an analogy in which the chlamys becomes a small trapezoid representing only Europe. And, unlike in Macrobius’ Commentary, wherein Cicero’s diagram had a northern orientation, Matthew’s map is oriented to the east, so his habitable part points to Jerusalem. It thus becomes broader in the western seaboard of Europe, which only then could act as a base from which the viewer could progress up its narrowing sides to confront that mini-triangle: Jerusalem, the parchment’s scar and the word, triangularis. That Paris’ copy of the Veronica image is on the obverse of his map of the world and that the Veronica was itself a kerchief suggests that Matthew intended a play of meanings in these materials and their associations. A rich exchange thus resounds from the term chlamys, beginning with the cloak Christ wore during the Passion to late medieval liturgical vestments, including a mappula, to the handkerchief of Veronica on which Christ had left his holy visage while on the road to his crucifixion. The scarred skin of the parchment, on which this map and the Veronica image were drawn, becomes the vehicle by which we understand how the movements towards Jerusalem that are generated by the shape of western Europe could lead the thirteenth-century monk toward a deeper contemplation of the Passion of Christ represented on its other side.45 An eastern orientation is common on medieval mappae mundi, but, combined with its designation of Europe as the fourth part of the world, Matthew’s map is nearly unprecedented in medieval cartography. There is only one other map – Lambert of Saint-Omer’s Map of Europe (Figure 7.5) – that even faintly resembles it.46 Because these properties are so unusual, I suspect that Matthew relied on Lambert’s map of Europe when he fashioned his.
45 46
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7.5 LAMBERT OF ST OMER, MAP OF EUROPE. GHENT UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, MS 92, FOL. 241. BY PERMISSION OF THE CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE 2.0 BELGIUM (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
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MATTHEW PARIS AND LAMBERT OF SAINT-OMER Lambert was a canon at the Benedictine abbey of Notre-Dame, SaintOmer, in northern France, perhaps just a day’s travel south and east of the port town, Calais, on the road to Paris, or so says Matthew in his itinerary map.47 At Notre-Dame, Lambert seems to have devoted his life’s work to the production of a vast and wide-ranging encyclopedia, the Liber floridus, possibly the first illustrated encyclopedia of the Middle Ages.48 Lambert worked on it until his death in 1121. The Liber floridus became well known in and around Paris, and there were several copies made in the twelfth through the early sixteenth centuries.49 Matthew’s interests in rotae, wind diagrams, and the different forms and types of maps is remarkably parallel to Lambert’s. In his Liber floridus, Lambert drew ten different kinds of maps, including wind diagrams, a T-O map with lists of populations, a rota and various zonal or climatic maps – maps that showed the world’s spaces divided into habitable and uninhabitable regions or zones.50 Two of Lambert’s maps showed the world surrounded by the planets and zodiac. His map of Europe was likely excerpted from his world map, or what he called a ‘sfera geometrica’, which Woodward classified as a hemispheric, zonal map because of its inclusion of the torrid equatorial ocean and a description of the climate of the landmass in the southern hemisphere.51 While it no longer appears in his autograph Liber floridus, it was doubtless there, as he refers the reader to it, and all of the copies include it. The copy in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (Figure 7.6), is one of the oldest and considered the most faithful.52 The similarity of Matthew’s map to Lambert’s map of Europe suggests that Matthew had access to it or one of its many copies. Matthew’s and Lambert’s maps display a marked emphasis on Europe, though each claims participation in different genres of maps. Lambert understood his as a specifically regional map, as we see in his title, ‘EUROPA MUNDI PARS QUARTA’ (‘Europe the fourth part of the world’), while Matthew avoided the designation of mappa mundi altogether (though that has not dissuaded later scholars). Despite the different labels, they look remarkably similar. Lambert clearly took as his starting point the typical medieval T-O map, where Europe is the lower left quarter, Africa is to the right, and Asia lies above.53 But he expanded upon that, adding to Europe details of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, fol. 1r. Albert Derolez, The making and meaning of the ‘Liber floridus’: a study of the original manuscript Ghent, University Library Ms. 92 (London, 2015), p. 25. 49 Derolez, The making, pp. 189–98. 50 For more on climate maps, see the preface to this Companion. 51 Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 353. 52 Cod. Guelf. 1 Gud. Lat., 69v, 70r, second half of the twelfth century, Derolez, The making, p. 190. 53 Derolez, The making, pp. 147–9. 47
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topography and place names. He outlined in red the different realms of Europe and tells us so in the accompanying text.54 But even so, Lambert’s Europe remains one distinct and integral landmass rising from the greater ocean. We understand Matthew Paris’ landmasses, on the other hand, to be excised from a surrounding geography so that what we have are, as he saw them, the key components of Europe in its geographical context. Still, one discerns certain similarities: the rivers of Spain and France lead the eye up the page towards Italy; both maps show eastern Europe wrapping up and around the northeast and east of Germany, France and Italy. In fact, one senses that the curvature of the western and northern coastlines, which Lambert imported from a T-O map, are here converted by Matthew, the rectilinear layout allowing for a map more focused on Europe to fit onto the square page. But even as Matthew had eastern Europe wrap up and around Italy, he imparted to the latter a much more pronounced triangular shape. It is as if the quarter circle that is Lambert’s Europe is, in Matthew’s map,
7.6 ANONYMOUS COPY OF LAMBERT OF ST OMER’S ‘SFERA GEOMETRICA’ OR MAPPA MUNDI, SECOND HALF OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY. WOLFENBÜTTEL, HERZOG AUGUST BIBLIOTHEK, COD. GUELF. 1 GUD. LAT., FOLS 69V, 70R. BY PERMISSION OF THE HERZOG AUGUST BIBLIOTHEK,
As transcribed and translated by Derolez, ‘Regnovero que sunt colore rubeo circumscripta ad Romanorum Francorumque pertinent imperium’ (‘The realms outlined in WOLFENBÜTTEL. red belong to the Roman and the Frankish Empire’), Derolez, The making, p. 148. 54
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tightened and concentrated upon the upward progression of the map from the western seaboard. How had Europe, in either Matthew’s or Lambert’s map, become the fourth part of the world? Very likely, Matthew was following the lead of Lambert, who had written above his map: ‘Europa mundi pars quarta. Julio Cesare imperante a theodoto dimensa nominator pars tercia. Sed vere est quarta. Nam asia continent partes duas et affrica terciam, europa quartam’55 (‘Europe, the fourth Part of the World. While Julius Caesar was ruler, (it was) measured by Theodotus, surveyor of the third part. But truly it is the fourth. For Asia contains two parts, and Africa a third, Europe the fourth.’)56 These are the only two medieval mapmakers I know of who refer to Europe as the fourth part of the world. More typical, when the four parts of the world were discussed at all, was to follow the ancient ‘philosophers’ who had posited the four habitable landmasses distributed evenly around the globe. Europe, Africa and Asia (the ecumene) were north of the Torrid Zone and to the south of that were the unknown (and unknowable) Antipodes. On the other side of the planet were similarly arranged landmasses, also unknowable and separated from the ecumene and each other by uninhabitable and impassable torrid and frigid zones.57 Though drawing generally on Macrobius for his understanding of the disposition of landmasses and habitable zones, on his mappa mundi Lambert cited Martianus Capella as a direct source for its cosmography and geography; for example, that the circumference of the earth is 31,500 Roman miles.58 Lambert was thus very familiar with that tradition. But in his map of Europe, he turns to a more local version of mapping, and relies on Julius Caesar’s commission of a survey of the ecumene. The red lines on his map outline different political boundaries, and on the page opposite (fol. 240v), Lambert wrote out lists of rulers and bishops, including a list of Frankish kings. Perhaps the political nature of the map called for a political model, and not the more speculative geography of ancient Greeks. As for designating Europe so insistently as the fourth part, Lambert may have been following St Augustine, who had speculated on the proportional sizes of the different continents.59 Matthew’s insistence on the ‘almost triangular’ form of western Europe, coupled with his designation of it as the fourth part of the earth, demonstrate a determined conflation of ideas taken from Macrobius and from Lambert’s map. Likely, Matthew insisted upon this triangular, chlamys-shaped Europe Derolez, The making, pp. 148. My thanks to Nick Dobson for his generous assistance with this passage; any errors are mine alone. 57 Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 300, and Macrobius, Commentary, II, 5, p. 106. 58 Danielle Lecoq, ‘La mappemonde du Liber floridus ou la vision du monde de Lambert de Saint-Omer’, Imago mundi 39 (1987), 9–49, here 12. 59 Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ‘Europa in der Kartographie des Mittelalters’, Studien, pp. 149–63, here p. 155. 55
56
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with an eastern orientation for two reasons: so that Europe could point to Jerusalem and so connect with the shared geography of the Veronica image on its obverse, and because he wanted to impart to the map the same embodied sense of progression that had driven the design of the preceding itinerary maps.60 Viewing the map draws the attention inexorably to Jerusalem, and all that the Holy City connoted for a medieval monk. Besides the formal similarities of these maps, there is other evidence that Matthew drew upon a Lambertian tradition of map making. There is, for example, a generous overlap in their use of toponyms. Indeed, after the Hereford, Ebstorf and Psalter mappae mundi, Matthew’s shares the most place names with Lambert’s world map.61 In fact, this overlap led AnnaDorothee von den Brincken to first suggest that Matthew had looked at or used Lambert’s map.62 As noted above, there is every likelihood that Matthew had seen either the original, autograph manuscript of the Liber floridus, or one of the many copies produced in and around Paris in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.63 As his name suggests, Matthew must have spent more than a few years in Paris; in his itinerary map, an abbreviation of his name, Paris’ (‘Parisius’, of Paris), appears above the city of Paris, as if claiming it as his birthplace. Matthew’s use of signa (signs, or indicators), his theory of history and his name tell us that he probably went to school there.64 Later in life, he likely traveled again to Paris. In 1248, acting under papal mandate, Matthew made a trip to Norway to help reform a Benedictine abbey. He also delivered to King Haakon of Norway a letter from the French king, Louis IX, which suggests that he traveled by way of Paris.65 Finally, on the first page of his itinerary map, Matthew gave prominent position to the town of Saint-Omer, labeling both it and its more famous Benedictine abbey of St Bertin.66 It is worth noting that in the later presentation copy of this Connolly, The maps, pp. 50–89. I arrived at this conclusion having compared the tables published by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ‘Mappa Mundi und chronographia’, Studien, pp. 17–81, here pp. 58–63, and the transcriptions of Lecoq, ‘La Mappemonde’, p. 17 and p. 29. These comparisons include Lambert’s map of the world, of which his Europe is generally agreed to be an extract, see Derolez, The making, p. 148. 62 von den Brincken, ‘Europa’, Studien, p. 162. 63 On the different copies, see Derolez, The making, pp. 189–98. 64 Vaughan, following Madden (vi), argued for a diminished significance of his name, believing it was a common enough patronymic in thirteenth-century England, here Vaughan, Matthew, p. 1. Clanchy sees in Matthew’s use of signa a distinctly Victorine attitude and, in combination with his name, believed he was a product of the Paris schools, here Clanchy, From memory, p. 215. On Matthew’s use of Victorine theories of history and geography see Connolly, The maps, pp. 90–108. 65 It is unclear how Matthew got those letters or whether he was known to the French monarch, here Vaughan, Matthew, pp. 6–7. 66 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, fol. 1r. Matthew also included St Omer in his preparatory sketch for the itinerary maps, found in BL, Cotton MS Nero D I, fols 183v and 184r. Both images are reproduced in Connolly, The maps, plate 1 and figure 10, respectively. 60 61
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itinerary (London, British Library, MS Royal 14 c vii), the copyist omitted all reference to the town, suggesting that it was Matthew’s penchant for autobiography that led him to include the town in his autograph itinerary.67 In summation, then, Matthew’s one surviving, and rather peculiar, mappa mundi imposes an ‘almost triangular’ shape onto his habitable quarter that is Europe and so seems to have imported to the abbey of St Albans a tradition of map making that conflated the ancient philosophers’ descriptions of the world’s geography with a northern French tradition established by Lambert of Saint-Omer some 130 years before him. The popularity of Lambert’s Liber floridus in its five twelfth- and thirteenth-century copies and Matthew’s time in Paris ensured that Matthew had access to Lambert’s map.
MATTHEW PARIS, JOHN OF WALLINGFORD AND A CHLAMYS RESHAPED In 1252, John of Wallingford, previously the infirmarer at the priory of that name, which was a cell of St Albans, made a different kind of world map, a climate map (Figure 7.2).68 John had moved to St Albans sometime in late 1246 or early 1247 and, according to Matthew, continued as infirmarer at his new abbey.69 The map was tipped into the codex as fol. 46 and comes after Matthew Paris’ portrait of John on fol. 42v. On fol. 43r and after are excerpts from the writings of St Bernard of Clairvaux, and on fol. 45v are the calculations of tides of the River Thames at London Bridge. On the map’s verso is the introduction to John’s autograph chronicle, a universal history. Wallingford’s map engages the ancient philosophers’ ideas by describing the Antipodes and declaring their habitation as unknowable. It also focuses our attention, not on the shapes of any landmasses, but on the sphericity of the earth, on its different climate zones and, in one textual passage, on the shape of the ecumene as a chlamys spread out. In making his map, we will see that John gave his fellow monks a purposefully different interpretation to the shape of the chlamys, one that appears tendentiously designed to accommodate his map and to contradict his friend, Matthew Paris. David Woodward categorized John’s map as a ‘tripartite/zonal’ type, a ‘curious hybrid’ that combines a zonal map with a hemispheric Y-O mappa mundi.70 Yet, with East at the top, the Y-shaped division of the northern hemisphere does not correspond with the Mediterranean Sea’s separation of Africa from Europe, much less the other rivers’. John also included a description of the southern hemisphere. Von den Brincken counted Connolly, The maps, pp. 171–82. BL, Cotton MS Julius D VII, fol. 46r. 69 Richard Vaughan, ‘The chronicle of John of Wallingford’, English historical review 73, 286 (1958) 66–70, here 66–7. 70 Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 357. 67
68
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only four climate maps of any type to survive from the Middle Ages and thought John’s to be unique.71 It seems not to have specific connections to its surrounding texts, except that, just as Matthew Paris placed a variety of cartographic materials at the beginning of his chronicle, so did John. In fact, von den Brincken saw such a reliance on Matthew’s work that she considered John’s map to be an amalgamated illustration of texts found in different manuscripts by Matthew.72 Unlike Matthew’s world map, John’s shows us (and its texts refer to) the globe that is the earth. Not only that, but the tradition of zonal or climatic maps often sought to place the earth within the context of the universe, as the lowest and sometimes also then, the most central planet in a cosmos made up of concentric spheres. The earth’s changing relationship with the sun becomes the driving force in the creation of the different climatic zones. The medieval theories of the climatic map followed a reasonably empirical observation: people do not inhabit those regions that are too hot or too cold. The equatorial belt, for instance, was an oceanic zone that was considered too hot to be either habitable or even passable. North and south of the equator were habitable zones of increasingly cooler temperatures until one reached the frigid arctic zones, which again were uninhabitable. The two landmasses of the hemispheres (sometimes four landmasses, if the author adhered strictly to the ancient tradition) were surrounded by the great ocean, which was itself divided by massive rivers flowing through the oceans; these ocean rivers thus separated the different hemispheres.73 Climate maps typically show the world as a globe, which is divided into seven zones or belts that wrap around the earth, following a tradition that reaches back to Crates of Mallos of the second-century BCE. The tradition was kept alive through copies of Pliny’s first-century Natural history and Bede’s (c. 673–735) repetition of Pliny’s ideas in De temporum ratione (The reckoning of time).74 John’s map, however, increases the number of climate zones to eight, giving greater definition to the northern regions, which were little known to the ancient Greeks. In the southern hemisphere, the text discusses the climate and the possibility of an inhabited land. While the map has east at the top, texts within the map, and on the page itself, are shown from different vantage points.75 On the left side, the texts of the northern hemisphere are shown with a southern orientation, and the Y-pattern that divides the space has Jerusalem at its bifurcating center. At the center of the map, however, is written ‘Aren civitas’ (‘the city 71 Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ‘Die Klimatenkarte in der Chronik des Johann von Wallingford – ein Werk des Matthaeus Parisiensis?’, Westfalen 51 (1973), 47–56, here 48. Reprinted in Studien, pp. 137–48. 72 von den Brincken, ‘Klimatenkarte’, 56. 73 Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 163 74 See Edson, Mapping, p. 119. 75 Matthew Paris’ itineraries also adopt such shifting viewpoints as a strategy to more fully engage the bodies of readers.
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of Arim/Arin’), the center of the world and the seat of demons in Islamic traditions.76 Straight lines then divide the different climates, and within those are located various topographic features and important cities: ‘India’, ‘Rubrum Mare’ (‘the Red Sea’), ‘Alexandria’, ‘Antioch’ and so on.77 Below the map, written as parallel extensions, are the labels for the corresponding zones. Coursing down the middle of the map is a pair of wavy lines that divides the globe in two. Adopting the opposite orientation, its label reads: ‘mare equinoctiale quod dividit duas partes totius aride’ (‘the equinoctial sea which divides the two whole dry parts’).78 The passage beneath describes a dry land that is the third part of all the earth, which is a globe. Here, John specifically repeats the ancient ideas of the Antipodes, but it is unclear why the southern hemisphere is the third part. Perhaps those on the other side of the globe were the first and second parts, and the ecumene was the fourth (in contradistinction to Matthew Paris’ designation). The rest of the text repeats the cosmology of De philosophia mundi (Philosophy of the world) by the twelfth-century scholastic and Neoplatonist, William of Conches, a copy of which was almost certainly in the St Albans library. Matthew Paris made the drawings and designs that illustrate William’s text.79 Among those was a wind diagram that is very much like the one copied by John of Wallingford into his chronicle.80 William’s cosmology describes the earth as being at the center of the universe, suspended in an all-encompassing, watery matrix, just as the white surrounds the yolk of an egg.81 The passage ends with the observation that, ‘quando nos habemus diem illi noctem quando nos heimem ille estate’ (‘when we have day, they [have] night; when we have winter, they [have] summer’).82 Significantly, this language repeats Lambert’s on his own mappa mundi, which was itself derived from Martianus Capella, the late antique encyclopedist, whose De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the marriage of Philology and Mercury) was immensely popular throughout the Middle Ages, having laid the ground work for the study of the seven liberal arts as the structure of medieval pedagogy.83 The last passage of the southern hemisphere runs perpendicular to and interrupts the previous text and describes the ‘media pars, que est ultra torridam’, the exceedingly hot zone. It then makes clear von den Brincken, ‘Klimatenkarte’, 48. For a full transcription of the map and this page, see von den Brincken, ‘Klimatenkarte’. 78 While the transcriptions are borrowed from von den Brincken, the translations are my own, and, as ever, so are their errors. 79 Vaughan, Matthew, pp. 254–5. 80 BL, Cotton MS Julius D VII, fol. 51v. 81 That is, ‘aride id est terre, que scilicet est tercia pars tocius terre, que est globus spericus; scilicet terra, que elementum eius meditullium est centrum tocius mundi, ubi dicitur esse infernus vel abissus, que est matrix aquarum omnium, que sunt circa globum terre sicut albumen circa vitellum in ovo’, von den Brincken, ‘Klimatenkarte’, 50. For a translation, see Hiatt, Terra incognita, p. 142. 82 Transcription in von den Brincken, ‘Klimatenkarte’, 50. 83 Hiatt, Terra incognita, pp. 108 and 124. 76
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that it is not known whether it is inhabited, for no one ever, from that part, crosses over to us: ‘si inhabitetur nescitur; numquam enim aliquis ab illa parte ad nos vel econtra transmigravit’.84 Tucked into the three corners surrounding the map are texts that continue the cosmology of William of Conches. And in the passage beneath the map, John gives his new interpretation of the chlamys, even as he credits Martianus Capella: ‘Dicit Marcianus et omnes philosophi et astrologi ad hec concordant, dicentes, quod nostra terra habitabilis similis est clamidi extense, id est spacio semicirculari’ (‘Martianus says, and all of the philosophers and astrologers on this concur, saying that our habitable land is like a chlamys spread out; it is a semicircular space’).85 In order for the analogy to make sense, not only must the chlamys now be semicircular, but John must be referring not to its landmasses, but to the entire northern hemisphere, the only known and inhabited part. Previously, we saw Matthew give particular emphasis to the ‘almost triangular’ shape of the chlamys. Here, John blithely redefines its shape to be ‘semicircular’, probably as a witty critique of his friend’s work. All indications suggest that Matthew and John were close friends at the abbey, such that they would have been aware of each other’s work. John borrowed extensively from Matthew’s writings and Matthew had drawn a portrait of John.86 The map and the aforementioned materials were added to the manuscript, and some of those other materials are in Matthew’s hand: the portrait of John, with the label infirmarer, and one of Matthew’s maps of England, which seems to have suffered some damage. This map is often considered a draft of Matthew’s later, more finished maps of England, and Vaughan suggested that perhaps John had rescued it from a scrap heap, cut it into quarters and added it, along with various notes in his own hand, to his enterprise.87 Finally, John’s chronicle relies quite heavily on Matthew’s work, which indicates that Matthew gave him relatively unfettered access to his materials.88 That John chose a different interpretation of the chlamys’ shape becomes more interesting, then, given their friendship. The landmasses of the northern hemisphere were, according to the ancient philosophers, understood to be triangular, broader at the equator and narrowing towards the Arctic, like a chlamys spread out. But John did not depict any of its landmasses, and so his rather abstract schema of the world can quite correctly show his northern half of the globe as a semicircle. But in depending upon Martianus and ‘all philosophers and astrologers’, he changed the shape of the chlamys to be semicircular. Clearly, not only was the shape of the world’s geography malleable in the service of a given philosophy or ideology, but so also was the shape of a chlamys. However, if we accept von den Brincken’s thesis 84 85 86 87 88
My translation. von den Brincken, ‘Klimatenkarte’, 51. Vaughan, ‘Wallingford’, 67. Vaughan, Matthew, p. 243. Vaughan, ‘Wallingford’, 66–9.
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that the map is a copy of Matthew’s work, and that it does not reflect John’s assimilation of the material, then we arrive at a different understanding of the same ‘malleability theory’: that Matthew, when confronted with the challenge of illustrating the work of William of Conches, readily abandoned the limitation of an ‘almost triangular’ chlamys shape, and instead, having given emphatic notice of the global, spherical shape of the earth, he then redefined the shape of the chlamys to make the analogy work in a new context. In either case, philosophy trumped geography, as well as liturgical costume.
MATTHEW PARIS AND NEW COLLEGE MS 274, FOL. I In the latter part of the thirteenth century, certainly after Matthew’s death in 1259 and possibly as late 1300 or so, an unknown artist designed the last known, medieval mappa mundi from St Albans (Figure 7.3).89 The map takes on the role of a frontispiece to the text that follows, the abbey’s prized copy of Pliny’s Natural history. As frontispiece to a prestigious text, the rather humble, if not incompetent, attempt at a mappa mundi presents a series of disparities and begs a host of questions: did its draftsman have any training in illustration, or did he just lack the requisite models? Was he uninformed in the traditions of medieval cartography? Or did he make choices from the sources available to him and, if so, was there an ideology driving those choices? The abbey’s copy of the Natural history was one of several beautifully prepared, lavishly formatted and elegantly written books that had been commissioned by Prior Raymond during the abbacy of John de Cella (r. 1195–1235). Those books were later acquired by John’s successor, William of Trumpington (r. 1214–1235) and presented to the abbey.90 These texts were written in double columns on high quality parchment, with elaborated initials and exquisite red and blue ink filigree. The same hand that copied the Pliny text was also responsible for the most lavish of Raymond’s books, the Historia scholastica of Peter Comestor, which included diagrams and texts by Matthew Paris that were added to its first prefatory folios.91 Surely any scribe working at the scriptorium in the late thirteenth century, especially if he were working on a map, would be aware of Matthew Paris’ work and of the corpus of cartographic materials that he bequeathed to the abbey. Recall as well that Matthew had what he considered a ‘truly figured’ copy of the king’s world map in an ordinal that was kept in one of the many Oxford, New College, MS 274, fol. i. Matthew Paris’ history of St Albans Abbey, Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, provides most of the evidence for these abbots. See Thomson, Manuscripts, pp. 70–5, here p. 112 number 60 and p. 95 number 28. 91 Thomson, Manuscripts, p. 95 number 28. 89
90
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library cupboards or aumbries that the abbey maintained. Our artist was likely aware of Matthew’s (and John’s) mappae mundi, and so it appears that he chose to ignore the shapes that Matthew and John had proposed for the earth’s landmasses and went in a different direction. He may have done this because the task of illustrating Pliny’s Natural history with a mappa mundi that would, in some manner, recapitulate Pliny’s ideas required a conventionally formatted map, one that attempted to show the entire world, as opposed to an excerpt of it. Oddly enough, it is the one mappa mundi from St Albans that most comfortably fits its genre. In fact, it is prominently labeled ‘mappa mundi’. Our anonymous mapmaker seems to have embraced a conflict that lies at the heart of medieval cartography, a conflict between the authority of what the ancient philosophers had handed down and what the Bible said was so. The map has east at the top and shows a spherical earth, the horizons of which are defined by curving waves of Oceanus all around. In the midst of these waters lie the familiar landmasses of the ecumene, along with various islands, marine life and two sailing ships. Paradise is at the top of the map and is shown with the doors of its gate left open. In the southern hemisphere, there are only water, fish and a few small islands. This absence of another landmass in the southern half of the globe makes for a somewhat frustrating experience, both in its modern viewing, and, I suspect, for the earlier monastic audience. For the purpose of a hemispheric mappa mundi, such as this, was precisely to theorize on the possibility of other, unknown lands and peoples.92 Surely, the more educated monks of St Albans were generally aware of the different, conflicting theories of the distribution of the world’s landmasses; their library was one of the best equipped, and included works by Augustine, Macrobius, Bede, Isidore, William of Conches and, of course, Pliny – all of which dealt in various and sometimes incompatible ways with the layout of the world’s landmasses. But here is presented a rather unique vision of the world.93 Europe, Africa and Asia, the ecumene, comprise the northern half and within these landmasses, the major countries, ancient cities and significant, scriptural features are given labels (for instance, the Red Sea and paradise). From the western extreme and close to the viewer’s body, reading the texts progresses from the British Isles, across Europe, and south-east into Asia: ‘hybernia’, ‘wallia’, ‘anglia’ and ‘scotia’. Across the Channel in ‘Europa’ appear ‘hispani[a]’, ‘fra[n]cia’, ‘g[er]mania’, ‘grecia’ and ‘roma’. Across the Don River in ‘Asia’ are ‘t[ro]ia’, ‘Jer[usale]m’ and ‘arab[ia]’. Near the inlet is ‘rubru[m] mar[is]’ (Red Sea) and above it ‘india’. At the extreme eastern edge and across the water, and therefore separate from the known world, is
Hiatt, Terra incognita, pp. 68ff. This map, so far as I am aware, is yet to be published and what follows is a first reading of its contents. 92 93
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‘paradis[us]’. Moving west, back down through ‘Affrica’, we find ‘egypt[us]’, ‘ethiop[ia]’, ‘ca[r]ptaga’ (Carthage) and lastly, ‘mauritania’. Hemispheric, zonal maps seem to have formed the basis or model for this later, St Albans map: maps like Lambert’s or John of Wallingford’s that discussed or showed the differing climates of the world, usually as parallel zones. They thus emphasized the sphericity of the world, but they also contained references to the other hemispheres of the globe as inhabitable regions. This anonymous mapmaker may well have turned to the very materials used by Matthew Paris, maps by Lambert of Saint-Omer; perhaps Matthew had made some sketches to bring back from his travels. However, in distinct contrast to Lambert’s mappa mundi (Figure 7.6), which includes a great many more explanatory texts, including those that fill the southern hemisphere and, at the bottom of the page, the Antipodes, this St Albans map is bereft of any such geographic elaboration. Its maker chose instead to focus our attention on the known, inhabited land, the ecumene, avoiding then any reference, visual or textual, to other landmasses or other peoples. This is a sparsely illustrated and labeled map, quite minimalist in its display of medieval cartographic knowledge. With its wavy coastlines and desultory emptiness, there is a sense of incompleteness, of some unfinished business that leaves the viewer to wonder why such a lackluster attempt at a mappa mundi would preface the prestigious text that follows. The answer, as one would reasonably suspect, must lie in the text above it: Hec est vera p[ro]porcio geometr[ic]a tocius terre habitabilis ad quantitatem Octiavi maris quod totam t[er]ram coop[er]it preter q[ua]rtam ej[us] parte[m], que sola inh[ab]itat[ur] et per ingressu[m] ej[us]dem maris in arridam a p[ar]te occidentis et a septent[ri]one dividit[ur] in aliam, Europam et Affricam, sicud infra patet libro t[er]cio.94 (This is the true geometrical likeness of the whole habitable earth to the extent of the eighth sea that covers the whole earth except one-fourth part of it, which alone is inhabited, and is divided by the intrusion of that same sea into the arid zone from the western side and from the northern side into another, Europe and Africa, just as in the third book.)95
Gone is the concern for the ‘almost triangular’ shape of our habitable part (though the shape of Europe does still vaguely resemble a triangle). Gone is the insistence on the sphericity of the earth; though it is certainly a given in the map’s format. Gone also is any reference to a chlamys, which, in our previous examples, had functioned as the lens through which to understand 94 Based upon the transcription in Henry O. Coxe, Catalogus codicum MSS. qui in collegiis aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur. Pars I. (Oxford, 1852), p. 97. 95 My thanks to T.J. Singleton and Nick Dobson for their assistance with this translation. Any errors are mine alone.
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the shape of our habitable part. Gone even is the need to designate it as ‘our’ habitable part (over and against some ‘others’’ habitable part). Instead, we are presented a new vision of how the world is shaped and populated, one, by the way, not in general keeping with the description given by Pliny in the texts that follows. Although read as all one sentence, the text treats two themes: the habitable part of the earth and how this map coordinates with Pliny’s text. The inscription insists that we are looking at the ‘whole habitable earth’ and admits of no doubt or speculation otherwise. There is only the ocean, which covers all but one quarter of the world, the only inhabited part; the other three quarters, therefore, are all ocean and small islands. Pliny, in books two and three of the Natural history, understood the relationship of water and land to be essentially antagonistic: everywhere water invades the earth; water is above, on it and within it. The ‘third book’, of course, is that of Pliny’s Natural history, one of the main conduits by which the ancient Greek tradition of zonal or climatic geographies entered the medieval Latin West.96 And as we have seen, this zonal theory necessitated understanding the earth as a globe or sphere. In fact, this is why the chlamys had come to be so significant a metaphor for the shape of the ecumene; its trapezoidal shape conformed to the narrowing of space as one moves towards the frigid, arctic zone. In the classical tradition, the spherical earth almost necessarily gave rise to speculation about what lay in the other, unseen, and supposedly unknowable parts, those parts being divided from us by impassable, torrid or frigid zones. And indeed, Pliny, in numerous passages of his Natural history, continues the speculation about the existence of peoples in other parts of the world, though he is admittedly inconsistent in his assertions. In chapter sixtyfive of the second book, for example, Pliny rehearses a debate between the learned and the common people. The former, he says, understand the world to be round and to have people distributed all around it. The unlearned would question why, if those people stand with their feet opposite ours, they do not fall off, and Pliny answers that our situation is no different relative to theirs and that those in the other parts might well ask the same question about us. Implicit, of course, is the logic that, in keeping with Stoic sensibilities and their universal view of Nature, what applies to them ought also to apply to us. The roundness of the earth and its supposed inhabitants continue to occupy Pliny through the rest of book two, where he turns the shape of the world and the seclusion of those other parts from us into a moral argument for the constraints of Roman vanity of conquest and greed for land.97
Edson, Mapping time, p. 119. Pliny, and H. (Harris) Rackham, Natural history, with an English translation by H. Rackham (London and Cambridge, MA, 1938), here Book 2, 67–8. 96 97
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However, in the passage referred to by our mapmaker, Pliny’s views become confused and even contradictory: Terrarum orbis universus in tres dividitur partes, Europam Asiam Africam. Origo ab occasu solis et Gaditano freto, qua inrumpens oceanus Atlanticus in maria interior diffunditur. Hinc intranti dextera Africa est, laeva Europa, inter has Asia; termini amnes Tanais et Nilus.98 (The whole circuit of the earth is divided into three parts, Europe, Asia and Africa. Beginning where the sun sets, at the Straits of Gades (Gibraltar), where the Atlantic Ocean bursts in and is spread out into the inland seas. On the right as you enter from the ocean is Africa, on the left Europe, between them Asia; the boundaries are the rivers Tanais (Don) and Nile.)99
In contrast to the previous tradition and to his own previous passages, Pliny here writes that there are three, and only three, parts to the globe and that they exist as separate landmasses. And so, our mapmaker has not confused his source or misinterpreted the Latin or committed any scribal error, all of which have been part of the traditional arsenal leveled at seeming medieval misunderstandings. Instead, he combined a strategic selection of the passage to illustrate with the tradition of hemispheric maps as found in John of Wallingford’s or Lambert’s, leaving the southern hemisphere purposely devoid of inhabitants. While the motives behind that choice may never be known, we can reasonably speculate on at least some of them. The classical tradition informing and cited by all the maps we have so far examined was not an uninterrupted one.100 Some of the early Church authors, Lactantius (d. c. 325) and Augustine, for example, argued against the existence of men in any of the supposed and inaccessible parts of the world. While some of the Church Fathers had admitted the possibility of Antipodeans, they almost universally held that, if they existed, they would not be human.101 Scripture was unequivocal on this point and theology affirmed it. As Alfred Hiatt has clearly demonstrated, attitudes to the Antipodeans hovered between evangelization and exegesis.102 Spreading the word of God to all men entailed access to them, and since scripture tells us the apostles had already spread the word to all of humanity, there could be no people to whom that Pliny, Natural history, Book 3, 3. My translation differs only slightly from Rackham (Pliny, Natural history, Book 3, 5). 100 Hiatt, Terra incognita, p. 55. 101 This concession to the possibility of other lands with other species soon gave rise to the tradition of the fabulous, marvelous creatures at the edges of the known world. See Hiatt, Terra incognita, pp. 38–65; and Asa Simon Mittman, Maps and monsters in medieval England (New York, 2006); and The Ashgate research companion to monsters and the monstrous (Farnham, Surrey, 2012). 102 Hiatt, Terra incognita, pp. 38–65. 98
99
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word was unavailable. Augustine, in his City of God, argued stridently that, as all men are descended from Adam and the seas are impassable, there cannot be people in other parts of the world: As to the nonsense about there being antipodae, that is to say, men living on the far side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets for us, men who have their feet facing ours when they walk – that is utterly incredible. No one pretends to have any factual information, but a hypothesis is reached by the argument that, since the earth is suspended between the celestial hemispheres and since the universe must have a similar lowest and central point, therefore the other portion of the earth which is below us cannot be without human inhabitants. One flaw in the argument is that, even if the universe could be proved by reasoning to be shaped like a round globe – or at least believed to be so – it does not follow that the other hemisphere of the earth must appear above the surface of the ocean; or if it does, there is no immediate necessity why it should be inhabited by men. First of all, our Scriptures never deceive us, since we can test the truth of what they have told us by the fulfillment of predictions; second, it is utterly absurd to say any men from this side of the world could sail across the immense tract of the ocean, reach the far side, and then people it with men sprung from the single father of all mankind.103
Our anonymous artist was likely working from this very same worldview and, quite probably, this very passage. When he read in Augustine, as nearly every monk would have, that there is no reason to suppose that there is nothing but ocean surrounding the ecumene, he was thus equipped to make a map that defied cartographic tradition. But when tasked with drawing a prefatory map for Pliny’s Natural history, he had to make another decision: which description to illustrate? And he chose the one and only passage that could coordinate with the esteemed Church Father and thereby turn back the long-standing tradition of geographic theorizing and speculation. Is this map, with its depiction of isolated, uninhabited islands in a southern hemisphere, simply one monk’s vision of the world? Was he a stalwart empiricist, unaccepting of places and peoples without proper evidence? Or did our anonymous mapmaker find a way to resolve, perhaps only for himself, the enduring contradictions between the ‘ancient philosophers’ and Church doctrine in an otherwise humble, and quite literally, unassuming map of the world?
103 St Augustine, City of God, trans. Gerald Walsh and G. Monahan (Washington, DC, 1952), pp. 504–5.
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CONCLUSION Around 1250, Matthew Paris made what scholars today call a mappa mundi, and what he had called a ‘summarily made arrangement’ of other maps of the world. Drawing upon, but at the same time contradicting, Macrobius, Matthew gave a unique focus to western Europe as a triangular form, which he then called ‘the fourth part of the world’. To arrive both at the shape of western Europe and its designation as the fourth part, Matthew turned to sources available to him from his likely study in Paris or later travels in France, when he would have had easy access to Lambert of SaintOmer’s Liber floridus, an illustrated, universal chronicle so very similar to Matthew’s Chronica majora. And he likely did so because he was seeking a way to reaffirm the centrality of Jerusalem and the potential for cartography as a spiritual aid to imagined pilgrimage. Matthew’s successors in cartography at St Albans were perhaps less concerned for the spiritual implications of geography, a theme deeply explored in Matthew’s itinerary maps,104 than they were faithful to the particular genre in which their maps participated. John of Wallingford, while significantly relying on the ideas and work of his friend Matthew, nonetheless gave an entirely different shape to the chlamys: ‘it is a semicircular space’. This was the only way the chlamys could be shaped for such a hybrid, climatic map; moreover, the referent space thereby corresponded much more closely with the ancient sources. As the maker of a hemispheric map, John also described the supposed lands in the southern hemisphere and remarked that is it not known whether they are inhabited, ‘for no one ever, from that part, crosses over to us’. The third, anonymous mapmaker from St Albans struggled also with his shaping of the parts of the world. As an illustration for Pliny’s Natural history, the artist could have chosen any of several passages that continued the ancient philosophers’ theorizing of inhabitants in other quarters of the world. Instead, he chose the one passage that could conform to early Fathers of the Church who had relied more upon scripture than philosophy. These three maps from St Albans highlight the malleability of the mappa mundi genre, even as they negotiate the demands and tensions of their sources. To the modern eye, unfamiliar with medieval images, these mappae mundi doubtless appear quaint, even charming in their ignorance and scientific naïveté. But when we contemplate these materials, so diverse in their vision of the world and from a time so remote from ours, we should not think that their makers sought only to depict the parts of their world as they knew them, but rather that they struggled in the face of the unknown, armed with faith, seeking to answer the question that still spurs our own explorations: what is our place in universe, and how do we find out?
104
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Connolly, The maps, pp. 90–109.
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I ANGLO-SAXON MAP. LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, COTTON MS TIBERIUS B V, FOL. 56V. GRANGER HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVE. BY PERMISSION OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY, © BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
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II MUNICH MAP, BAYERISCHE STAATSBIBLIOTHEK MÜNCHEN, CLM 10058, FOL. 154V. BY PERMISSION OF THE BAYERISCHE STAATSBIBLIOTHEK MÜNCHEN.
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III SAWLEY MAP, CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, MS. 66, P. 2. BY PERMISSION OF THE MASTER AND FELLOWS OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
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IV VERCELLI MAP, ARCHIVIO CAPITOLARE, VERCELLI, ITALY. IMAGE COURTESY OF LAZARUS PROJECT, IMAGE PROCESSING BY HELEN DAVIES.
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V MATTHEW PARIS MAPPA MUNDI. CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, MS 26, F. VIIV. BY PERMISSION OF THE MASTER AND FELLOWS OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
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VI PSALTER MAP. LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, ADD. MS 28681, FOL. 9R. BY PERMISSION OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY, © BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
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VII DUCHY OF CORNWALL MAP. DUCHY OF CORNWALL OFFICE, MAPS AND PLANS 1. © THE DUKE OF CORNWALL 2019.
VIII THE HEREFORD MAPPA MUNDI. THE DEAN AND CHAPTER OF HEREFORD CATHEDRAL AND THE HEREFORD MAPPA MUNDI TRUST.
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IX THE GOUGH MAP IN NATURAL LIGHT. BODLEIAN LIBRARY MS. GOUGH GEN. TOP. 16. COURTESY OF THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
X THE GOUGH MAP AFTER HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGING, SHOWING RESULTS OF BAI AND MESSINGER’S PIGMENT DIVERSITY ESTIMATION. IMAGE USED WITH PERMISSION OF DAVID MESSINGER AND DI BAI.
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THE PSALTER MAP (c. 1262)
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T
he pair of circular mappae mundi at what was once the opening of a psalter made in about 1265 and now in the British Library are of an interest and importance out of all proportion to their small size: just 3.5 inches (90mm) in diameter. The apparently programmatic arrangement of two mappae mundi of the same size and similar marginal decoration on the recto (Plate VI) and verso (Figure 8.1) of the same folio is highly unusual. Their manuscript context is unique: no other surviving mappa appears in a psalter.1 The much more famous of the two maps, that on fol. 9r, is the earliest surviving mappa mundi that has the gallery of monstrous peoples along the southern edge of Africa that also appears on the Duchy of Cornwall fragment (c. 1286, Plate VII), the Ebstorf Map (c. 1300), the Hereford Map (c. 1300, Plate VIII), the Ramsey Abbey Higden Map (c. 1350) and the Aslake Map (c. 1360).2 The map on fol. 9r has often been asserted to be a much smaller copy of a mappa mundi that decorated Henry III’s
1 London, British Library (BL), Additional MS 28681, fols 9r and 9v. Marcel Destombes, Mappemondes, A.D. 1200-1500 (Amsterdam, 1964), 47, no. 24.7, indicates that there is a mappa mundi in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF), MS latin 5371, fol. 240r, which occurs with Jerome’s Commentarius super psalmorum David, which occupies fols 232r–272v, but in fact this work, which is actually titled Origo prophetiae David Regis psalmorum numero CL. sive annotationes in librum psalmorum et eorum authores, only occupies fols 233r–236v, so the map is separated from the commentary on the Psalms by three folios, which contain verses on human mortality; an oration by Eugene, bishop of Toledo; verses on St Agatha; and the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The manuscript is available in electronic format at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ 2 The Duchy of Cornwall fragment is in London, Duchy of Cornwall Office, Maps and Plans 1; the Ramsey Abbey Higden map is BL, Royal MS 14 C IX, fols 1v–2r; and the Aslake Map is BL, Additional MS 63841 A. Good concise accounts of all of these maps are supplied by Peter Barber, ‘Medieval maps of the world’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 1–44. Previous scholarship dated the Ebstorf Map to the first half of the thirteenth century, but Jürgen Wilke, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, 2 vols (Bielefeld, 2001), makes a strong case for a date of c. 1300, summarizing his results in vol. 1, pp. 255–6; and similarly Harmut Kugler in Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte: Kommentierte neuausgabe in zwei Bänden, ed. Hartmut Kugler in collaboration with Sonja Glauch, Antje Willing and Thomas Zapf, 2 vols (Berlin, 2007), summarizing his conclusions in vol. 2, p. 69.
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8.1 LIST MAP, PSALTER MAP VERSO. LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, ADD. MS 28681, FOL. 9V. BY PERMISSION OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY, © BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
Painted Chamber at Westminster, which was destroyed by fire in 1263, and thus to be an important part of a tradition of English royal cartography.3
3 For discussion of the Painted Chamber, see Paul Binski, The painted chamber at Westminster (London, 1986); Paul Binski and Helen Howard, ‘Wall paintings in the chapter house’, Westminster Abbey chapter house: the history, art and architecture of ‘A chapter house beyond compare’, ed. Warwick Rodwell and Richard Mortimer (London, 2010), pp. 184–208; and Christopher Wilson, ‘A monument to St Edward the Confessor: Henry III’s great chamber at Westminster and its paintings’, Westminster: the art, architecture and archaeology
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In its current state, the manuscript, mostly written in Latin, opens with six folios containing six full-page illustrations of scenes from the New Testament (fols 3–8), but these were added to the manuscript towards the end of the thirteenth century. Originally, the manuscript opened with the two maps (fols 9r–9v), which are followed by a calendar (fols 10v–16v), an element often included with psalters; some prayers (fols 17r–17v); and then the psalter with the Canticles (fols 18r–184r); followed by verses praising the Virgin (fols 191r–212r), prayers in Anglo-Norman (fols 212v–217r), the Office of the Dead (fols 221v–222v) and prayers (fols 223–226).4 Both liturgical and iconographical evidence indicates that the manuscript was made in London after 1262, as Richard of Chichester was canonized that year, and his feast on 3 April is indicated in the calendar in the original hand.5 There is no evidence I am aware of indicating that the manuscript was made substantially later than 1262. The map on fol. 9r is on a blue background decorated with groups of three white dots (çintamani) inside a border.6 The border is inlaid with diagonal bands separating divided four-petaled flowers, with the space around the flowers painted ochre, and eight-petaled flowers in the corners. In the upper part of the image, Christ’s torso emerges from behind the map, and in his left hand he holds an orb, a symbol of power. The orb is inscribed with the cartographic T that designates the borders between the parts of the tripartite world on traditional T-O maps: Asia, Europe and Africa.7 He gives the sign of benediction with his right hand and is flanked by two angels swinging censers. The map encroaches on the border to the left and right. Below the map, there are two wyverns arranged symmetrically with their heads meeting at the center of the page; their tails grow into floral ornamentation. The two wyverns certainly allude to evil – this is confirmed by the surprisingly malevolent expression of the adjacent head representing the zephyr or west wind as compared with the benign expression of the subsolanus or east wind between Christ and paradise – and should probably be understood as indicating the presence of hell in the west, opposite paradise in the east.8 Thus the map seems to reflect Hugh of St Victor’s of the Royal Abbey and Palace, ed. Warwick Rodwell and Tim Tatton-Brown (Leeds, 2015) vol. 2, pp. 152–86, and the introduction and chapter nine in this Companion. 4 A detailed description of the manuscript, with extensive bibliography, is supplied by Nigel Morgan, Early gothic manuscripts, 2, 1250–1285 (London, 1988), pp. 82–5, no. 114. The manuscript is available in digital format at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay. aspx?ref=Add_MS_28681 [Accessed 8 December 2017]. 5 Nigel Morgan, Early gothic manuscripts, 1, 1190–1250 (London, 1982), pp. 83–4. 6 Jaroslav Folda, ‘The use of çintamani as ornament: a case study in the afterlife of forms’, Byzantine images and their afterlives: essays in honor of Annemarie Weyl Carr, ed. Lynn Jones (Burlington, VT, 2014), pp. 183–204. 7 See this Companion’s preface for more on the T-O. 8 Two wyverns are used to indicate hell in a manuscript of Thomasin von Zirclaere’s Der welsche Gast dated to 1256 (Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 389, fol. 86r), a digital image of which is available at http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/ cpg389/0183 [Accessed 8 December 2017]; and in Andrea Bianco’s mappa mundi of 1436
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(c. 1096–1141) theory that human history began in paradise in the east and progressed westward, ending with the Last Judgment in the west. Some tears in the parchment in the lower left part of the map have been repaired with Japanese paper. The map on fol. 9v (Figure 8.1) is a ‘list map’: a large ‘T’ divides the circle into Asia, Europe and Africa, and each part is filled, not with the outlines of coasts or other geographic features, but rather with text listing the important provinces and cities of each region.9 The map is on a reddishochre background decorated with çintamani inside a border of foliate scrolls set against a blue ground. Christ is flanked by four angels and embraces the world, as he does on the Ebstorf mappa mundi; his feet extend below the map and crush the heads of the two wyverns. The tail of the wyvern on the left grows into floral decoration, while the tail of the wyvern on the right curls into a knot and extends upwards. The use of alternating red and blue backgrounds to distinguish adjacent illustrations is common in medieval art and may be seen close at hand in the gallery of monstrous peoples on the fol. 9r map.10 This technique was not necessary to distinguish the maps on fols 9r and 9v, as they are on opposite sides of the page, but its employment confirms that a programmatic relationship is intended between the two maps, as is suggested by their similarity of size and iconographic context that includes Christ, angels and the wyverns. But what is that relationship, and why was it thought necessary to include two maps in the psalter? The striking difference between the maps, of course, is that one is graphic and the other almost purely textual. A number of medieval authors, including Gervase of Tilbury (d. c. 1220) and Roger Bacon (c. 1214–92), addressed the complementarity of maps and texts, and while it seems that (Venice, Biblioteca Marciana, MS It. Z. 76, map 9), which has been reproduced in facsimile in Andrea Bianco, Atlante nautico 1436, ed. Piero Falchetta (Venezia, 1993) and reproduced digitally in Ramon J. Pujades i Bataller, Les cartes portolanes: la representació medieval d’una mar solcada (Barcelona, 2007), on the accompanying CD, number A18. On the east/west symbolism, see chapters nine and ten in this Companion; Stephen McKenzie, ‘The westward progression of history on medieval mappaemundi: an investigation of the evidence’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 335–44 and Alessandro Scafi, Mapping paradise: a history of heaven on earth (London, 2006). 9 On list maps see Evelyn Edson, Mapping time and space: how medieval mapmakers viewed their world (London, 1997), 5–6; Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘De la glose à la contemplation: place et fonction de la carte dans les manuscrits du haut Moyen Age’, Testo e immagine nell’alto medioevo: [Settimane di studio, Spoleto], 15-21 aprile 1993 (Spoleto, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 693–771, here 724–5, reprinted in Gautier Dalché’s Géographie et culture: la représentation de l’espace du VIe au XIIe siècle (Aldershot, 1997); Leonid Chekin, Northern Eurasia in medieval cartography: inventory, texts, translation and commentary (Turnhout, 2006), 59–73; and Chet Van Duzer and Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez, ‘Tres filii Noe diviserunt orbem post diluvium: The world map in British Library Add. MS 37049’, Word & Image 26.1 (2010), 21–39. 10 Michael Camille, ‘Before the gaze: the internal senses and late medieval practices of seeing’, Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance: seeing as others saw, ed. Robert S. Nelson (New York, 2000), pp. 197–223, here p. 203.
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this dichotomy must be part of the intended relationship between the maps, these authors discussed the complementarity of maps and discursive texts, rather than lists of place names.11 Hugh of St Victor also discussed this kind of complementarity. He also wrote texts that include extensive lists of toponyms; word-and-image complementarity and visualist listing were key components of his mnemonics, pedagogy and theography, his theological cartography.12 The other notable contrast between the two images involves the wyverns: on fol. 9r the wyverns are unimpeded, while on fol. 9v Christ is crushing them beneath his feet. It is tempting to see a connection between Christ’s embracing of the world and his crushing of the wyverns on fol. 9v: both indicate a greater involvement with sublunary matters than we see on fol. 9r. This difference suggests that perhaps we are to see the map on fol. 9v as representing a later stage in Christian history than that on fol. 9r. The matter is not clear, and I do not see any differences in the details of the two maps that would support such an interpretation. The question of a programmatic relationship between the two maps is complicated somewhat by the fact that the two folios were painted by different artists. Amanda Luyster kindly pointed this out to me when we were discussing the maps, noting particularly the differences in the halos on the two folios. I would add that the difference in artists is also very clear in the ways the angels’ wings and the wyverns are depicted: in the image on the verso, the bends of the wing are more pronounced, the primary feathers near the ends of the wings are longer, and wings are colored. The hands in which place names are written on the two maps also differ: the ways the letter ‘a’ are written, to take just one example, are very dissimilar: on the recto we have the so-called ‘double-story a’ and on the verso the ‘singlestory’. Despite the fact that the maps were painted by different artists, it is entirely possible that a program of two maps was planned from the beginning; we must also allow the possibility that the map on the verso was painted later, and the program conceived only when it was painted. The image of Christ treading on the wyverns brings us to the question of the role of the two maps as illustrations of a psalter. This image was 11 Margriet Hoogvliet, Pictura et scriptura: textes, images et herméneutique des mappae mundi (XIII-XVI siècles) (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 23–4; Uwe Ruberg, ‘Mappae Mundi des Mittelaters im Zusammenwirken von Text und Bild: mit einem Beitrag zur Verbindung von Antikem und Christlichem in der Principium- und Finis-Thematik auf der Ebstorfkarte’, Text und Bild: Aspekte des Zusammenwirkens zweier Künste in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. Christel Meier and Uwe Ruberg (Wiesbaden, 1980), pp. 550–92. On complementarity and Hugh of St Victor, see this Companion’s introduction and chapters three, four, nine and ten; see also Dan Terkla, ‘Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) and AngloFrench cartography’, Imago mundi 65.2 (2013), 161–79. 12 Hugh’s Descriptio mappe mundi and De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum, id est personis locis temporibus, also known as the Chronica, exemplify his visualist pedagogy and listing. See the above references to this Companion and, for an overview Paul Rorem, Hugh of Saint Victor (Oxford, 2009). On the Descriptio and the Psalter Map, see below.
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probably inspired by Psalm 91(90).13, ‘Super aspidem et basiliscum calcabis, conculcabis leonem et draconem’ (‘Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk: and thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon’), a text that has a rich history in psalter illustration, and was often interpreted typologically as prefiguring Christ defeating Satan.13 So, one part of the marginal decoration of the maps has a connection with the psalter that follows, but the question remains as to why maps were chosen to open the psalter. There are several passages in the Psalms that speak of God’s power extending to the ends of the earth, and thus might have inspired the use of a mappa mundi as illustration, for example Psalm 64.6: ‘Terribilis in iustitia, exaudi nos Deus, salvator noster, confidentia omnium finium terrae et maris longinqui’ (‘Wonderful in justice, hear us, O God our saviour, who art the hope of all the ends of the earth, and in the sea afar off ’).14 One verse that comes to mind in connection with the visual emphasis on the monstrous races at the southern edge of Africa in the map on fol. 9r is Psalm 22(21).27(28): ‘Recordabuntur et convertentur ad Dominum omnes fines terrae et adorabunt coram eo universae cognationes gentium’ (‘All the ends of the earth shall remember, and shall be converted to the Lord: And all the kindreds of the Gentiles shall adore in his sight’). There are several other passages in the Psalms that might have prompted illustration with maps, and most likely it was these passages taken together, rather than one specific verse, that inspired the nontraditional choice of illustration. Evelyn Edson is right to suggest that the calendar that immediately follows the maps may have played a part in inspiring their inclusion. There was a frequent association between maps and calendars in medieval manuscripts: the measurement of time according to the machinery of the universe often involved an image of what was thought to be the central body of that system, the earth.15 Bettina Schöller, in her recent study of the Psalter maps, has ably demonstrated that both maps derive much of their information from the Descriptio mappe mundi, a text almost certainly composed by Hugh of Saint Victor in the 1130s.16 Given this connection between the maps and the work 13 See Ingo Herklotz, ‘Die Beratungsräume Calixtus II. im Lateranpalast und ihre Fresken. Kunst und Propaganda am Ende des Investiturstreits’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 52 (1989), 145–76, here 177, 181–2, and notes 96, 114 and 115; Kathleen M. Openshaw, ‘Weapons in the daily battle: images of the Conquest of Evil in the early medieval psalter’, Art Bulletin 75 (1993), 17–38, here 20–2; Bruno Reudenbach, ‘Die Londoner Psalterkarte und ihre Rückseite: Ökumenekarten als Psalterillustration’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 32 (1998), 164–81, here 171. In general Reudenbach’s interpretation of the maps as Psalter illustrations seems to me overwrought. 14 Naomi Reed Kline, Maps of medieval thought: the Hereford paradigm (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2001), 228, suggests Psalm 74.12, ‘Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth’. 15 Edson, Mapping time, p. 137. 16 Bettina Schöller, Wissen speichern, Wissen ordnen, Wissen übertragen: Schriftliche und bildliche Aufzeichnungen der Welt im Umfeld der Londoner Psalterkarte (Zürich, 2014), pp. 98–111 and 257–70 on the dependence of the map on fol. 9r on the Descriptio; and pp.
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of Hugh, it is very tempting to see the image of Christ above the two Psalter Maps, particularly the one above the list map, as having been inspired by another work of Hugh’s, the Libellus de formatione arche, also referred to as De arca Noe mystica, which he wrote c. 1128.17 At the end of this work Hugh describes a diagram of the cosmos consisting of a mappa mundi surrounded by the sphere of air and the sphere of ether with the signs of the zodiac, and he specifies that Christ is depicted with his head and shoulders above the cosmos and his feet protruding below ‘in such a way that he seems to contain all things with his arms spreading out on either side’, and that he is flanked by two angels.18 The iconographic tradition of God embracing the world does not seem confined to works produced under Hugh’s influence, but the association between the Psalter maps and Hugh’s Descriptio makes it very likely that in this case the imagery does come from him.19 The distinctive features of the map on fol. 9r of the psalter can best be appreciated by comparing it with another map based on Hugh’s Descriptio mappe mundi, namely the Munich Map of c. 1130 (Plate II), which is the subject of Nathalie Bouloux’s chapter in this volume.20 One feature of the Psalter Map that is immediately apparent is the cartographer’s emphasis on the centerline that runs from east at the top to west at the bottom. Christ’s head is directly above the head of the east wind, which blows straight down and is just above paradise, from whose lower (western) edge the rivers of paradise flow. The Sea of Galilee is on this same line, as is the Jerusalem 191–5 and 271–8 on the dependence of the map on fol. 9v on the Descriptio. The text of the Descriptio is edited by Patrick Gautier Dalché, La ‘Descriptio mappe mundi’ de Hugues de Saint-Victor (Paris, 1988). See the introduction and chapters three, four, nine and ten in this Companion. 17 The text of De arca Noe mystica is supplied in Patrologia Latina 176, 682–704, and has been well edited by Patrice Sicard, De arca Noe: libellus de formatione arche (Turnhout, 2001), and translated into English by Conrad Rudolph, The mystic ark: Hugh of St Victor, art and thought in the twelfth century (Cambridge and New York, 2014), pp. 379–502. For discussion see J. Ehlers, ‘Arca significat ecclesiam: ein theologisches Weltmodell aus der ersten Hälfte des 12. Jahrhunderts’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 6 (1972), 171–87. 18 Latin in Sicard, De arca Noe, pp. 160–1; English in Rudolph, The mystic ark, pp. 493 and 498. A reconstruction of Hugh’s diagram is supplied by Sicard, vol. 2, fig. 11; Lecoq, ‘La “mappemonde” du De Arca Noe mystica de Hugues de Saint-Victor (1128–1129)’, Géographie du monde au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, ed. Monique Pelletier (Paris, 1989), pp. 9–31, figs. 1 and 2; and Rudolph, The mystic ark, chapter 1, figs. 1–32. 19 See Armin Wolf, ‘Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte als Denkmal eines mittelalterlichen Welt- und Geschichsbildes’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 8 (1957), 201–15, with a summary in Armin Wolf, ‘News on the Ebstorf World Map: date, origin, authorship’, Géographie du monde, ed. Pelletier, pp. 51–68, here pp. 66–7; Adelheid Heimann, ‘Three illustrations from the Bury St Edmunds Psalter and their prototypes: notes on the iconography of some Anglo-Saxon drawings’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966), 39–59, here 48–9 and plates 10–12; and Hartmut Kugler, ‘Symbolische Weltkarten - der Kosmos im Menschen: Symbolstrukturen in der Universalkartographie bis Kolumbus’, Gutenberg und die Neue Welt, ed. Horst Wenzel (München, 1994), pp. 33–58, here pp. 48–54. On the circulation of Hugh’s works in England see Terkla, ‘Hugh’. 20 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS. Clm. 10058, fol. 154v. For discussion, see Gautier Dalché, La Descriptio, pp. 81–8 and 193–5; Barber, ‘Medieval maps’, 7–10; and Chekin, Northern Eurasia, pp. 132–4.
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‘bullseye’, the center-point of the map – neither is the case on the Munich Map, and the Psalter Map is among the early maps that emphasize the centrality of Jerusalem.21 The Mediterranean runs down the centerline from Jerusalem, and that line is further emphasized by the head of the west wind and the two wyverns facing each other below the map. This emphasis on the map’s centerline was probably intended to render Jerusalem more prominent. In addition, the features above the ‘bullseye’ marking Jerusalem are arrayed concentrically with that circle, so as to emphasize it. These features, moving from Jerusalem to the east, are the ‘torrens cedron’ (‘Cedron brook’); the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee; a range of mountains probably to be identified as Galaad or Gilead; and the western of two branches of the Euphrates.22 No other surviving mappa mundi shows this same disposition of features east of Jerusalem, and it bespeaks a particularly strong belief in Jerusalem’s centrality on the part of the cartographer; it is as if the city’s holiness has reconfigured the geography of surrounding regions so that they express their respect and subservience. Another way in which the Psalter mappa mundi differs markedly from the Munich Map and the Descriptio is in its gallery of monstrous peoples along the southern edge of Africa between the western branch of the Nile and the ocean (Figure 8.2).23 This is a fascinating innovation. No surviving text locates all of these monstrous peoples at the southern edge of Africa; in fact, many of them are usually located in India, in some cases explicitly near the Ganges River.24 Thus, it seems to have been the cartographer’s decision to locate these peoples together at the edge of the world. It is difficult to know how to interpret these images of the monstrous peoples, each 21 Ingrid Baumgärtner, ‘Die Wahrnehmung Jerusalems auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten’, Jerusalem im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter: Konflikte und Konfliktbewältigung, Vorstellungen und Vergegenwärtigungen, ed. Dieter Bauer, Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert (Frankfurt, 2001), pp. 271–334; Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ‘Jerusalem on medieval mappaemundi: a site both historical and eschatological’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 355–79, reprinted in her Studien zur Universalkartographie des Mittelalters, ed. Thomas Szabó (Göttingen, 2008), pp. 683–703; Ingrid Baumgärtner, ‘Erzählungen kartieren: Jerusalem in mittelalterlichen Kartenräumen’, Projektion - Reflexion - Ferne: Räumliche Vorstellungen und Denkfiguren im Mittelalter, ed. Sonja Glauch, Susanne Köbele and Uta Störmer-Caysa (Berlin and Boston, 2011), pp. 193–223. 22 Schöller, Wissen speichern, pp. 257–70, has a diagram of the map with each featured numbered and thus keyed to a list identifying all the features; the names on the map are also transcribed by Konrad Miller, Mappaemundi: die ältesten Weltkarten (Stuttgart, 1895–98), vol. 3, pp. 38–42. 23 Schöller, Wissen speichern, pp. 112–17, discusses the fact that the monstrous peoples on the Psalter mappa mundi do not come from the Descriptio mappe mundi. 24 Rudolf Wittkower, ‘Marvels of the East: a study in the history of monsters’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), 159–97, reprinted in his Allegory and migration of symbols (Boulder, CO, 1977), pp. 45–74; Chet Van Duzer, ‘Hic sunt dracones: the geography and cartography of monsters’, Ashgate research companion to monsters and the monstrous, ed. Asa Simon Mittman and Peter Dendle (Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2012), pp. 387–435, here pp. 402–12.
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within its frame; are we to understand that the frames represent physical confinements? If so, who restrained them? Are they confined in the far south by the Nile, the same way Gog and Magog were confined behind the mountains in the north?25 The Duchy of Cornwall fragment and the Ebstorf and Hereford maps similarly locate the monstrous peoples in frames or enclosures; on the Ebstorf map these peoples are separated from each other by mountains, which does imply confinement.26 One wishes for additional evidence that would clarify whether we are to see frames or confinements on the Psalter map. A few scholars have discussed the very close correspondence between the monstrous peoples on the Psalter Map and those in the section titled Mirabilia mundi that accompanies a French bestiary produced c. 1277.27 When the images in the Mirabilia mundi are read from left to right and top to bottom and compared with the peoples on the Psalter Map from west to east, it becomes clear that their order is almost identical. In addition, while the map alternates red and blue backgrounds for adjacent monsters, the Getty manuscript does so on successive pages. Another instance of the same ordering of the monstrous peoples, formatted very much as in
8.2 PSALTER MAP, DETAIL OF MONSTROUS PEOPLES, SOUTHERN AFRICA. LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, ADD. MS 28681, FOL. 9R. BY PERMISSION OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY, © BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
25 Andrew Runni Anderson, Alexander’s Gate, Gog and Magog, and the inclosed nations (Cambridge, MA, 1932); Andrew Gow, ‘Gog and Magog on mappaemundi and early printed world maps: orientalizing ethnography in the apocalyptic tradition’, Journal of Early Modern History 2.1 (1998), 61–88. 26 For the monstrous peoples on the Duchy fragment, see chapter nine in this Companion. 27 Los Angeles, Getty Museum, MS Ludwig XV 4, fols 117r–120r. Anton von Euw and Joachim M. Plotzek, Die Handschriften der Sammlung Ludwig (Köln, 1979–85), vol. 4, pp. 188–206, esp. p. 203, had noted that the geographical texts that accompany the images in the Getty manuscript were very similar to those that accompany the monstrous peoples on the Ebstorf Map. For further discussion, see Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Mappae mundi: pictura et scriptura. Textes, images et herméneutique des mappemondes du moyen Age long (XIIIeXVIe siècles)’, PhD dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1999, p. 188; Antje Willing, ‘Orbis apertus: zur Quellenkritik mittelalterlicher Kartographie’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 86 (2004), 283–314; and Schöller, Wissen speichern, pp. 115–16.
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the Getty manuscript, appears in another thirteenth-century French (or possibly Flemish) bestiary, now in the Cotton Vitellius D 1 manuscript.28 The Psalter Map’s small size and high level of detail suggest that it was copied from a larger model map, and the question arises as to whether the images of the monstrous peoples on the Psalter Map (or its model) came from the Mirabilia mundi, or the images in the Mirabilia from a map. Margriet Hoogvliet has suggested that the geographical notes that accompany some of the images in the Mirabilia indicate that they come from a hypothetical exemplar, while Antje Willing has argued that the geographical notes could have come from Pliny (c. 23–79), Solinus (third century), Honorius Augustodunensis (c. 1080–1157) or Hugh of St Victor’s Descriptio mappe mundi.29 This matter can be settled by examining part of the longest geographical remark in the Getty Mirabilia, on fol. 119v. The text opens with the sentence ‘Praesilli in hoc loco fuerunt gens incredibilis naturae serpentium uiris munita soli ad morsus serpentium non interibant’ (‘The Praesilli were in this place, a people of an incredible nature, immune to snake venom: they alone did not die from snakebite.’). The phrase ‘in hoc loco’, ‘in this place’, is meaningless in the Mirabilia, for it has no referent, but when written on a map, as it is on the Ebstorf Map, its location gives it meaning.30 Thus, the monstrous peoples and the geographical notes in the Mirabilia were copied from a large and detailed map. This use of a map as a source for text and images in a manuscript is not unexampled: Jacques de Vitry (c. 1165– 1240), in his Historia orientalis, says that he took his information about the monstrous peoples of India from various written sources, including Augustine (354–430), Isidore (c. 560–636), Pliny, and Solinus – and also from a mappa mundi.31 His phrasing distinguishes between the mappa mundi and the written sources, which tends to confirm that he was talking about a physical map, rather than a textual description of the world.32
28 BL, Cotton MS Vitellius D 1, fols 1–29, at 20r–21v. The bestiary, which was heavily damaged by fire in 1731 at Ashburnham House, is listed in A catalogue of the manuscripts in Cottonian Library… with an appendix containing an account of the damage sustained by the fire in 1731 (London, 1777), p. 99, and was brought to the attention of modern scholars by Ilya Dines, ‘The problem of the transitional family of bestiaries’, Reinardus 24 (2012), 29–52, here 31. 29 Hoogvliet, ‘Mappae mundi’, p. 188; Willing, ‘Orbis apertus’, 293; Hoogvliet insists anew on this point in her Pictura et scriptura, p. 201; also see Schöller, Wissen speichern, p. 184. 30 Kugler, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, vol. 2, p. 187; Willing, ‘Orbis apertus’, 300. I presented these conclusions in a talk titled ‘Monstrous peoples invade the bestiary, twice: sources, contexts, and purposes of their presence in manuscripts of the B-Is and third families’, at the meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in Boston, 25 February 2016. 31 Jacques de Vitry, Iacobi de Vitriaco, primvm Acconensis, deinde Tvscvlani episcopi ... libri dvo, quorum prior Orientalis, siue Hierosolymitanae, alter, Occidentalis historiae nomine inscribitur (Douai, 1597), p. 215. 32 On the use of the word mappa mundi to designate a text describing the world see Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Les sens de mappa (mundi): IVe-XIVe siècle’, Archivum latinitatis medii aevi 62 (2005), 187–202. See also the preface to this Companion.
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The discussion on copying from a large detailed map raises questions about the model for the Psalter Map, and whether it was the mappa mundi in Henry III’s (1207–72) Painted Chamber at Westminster. It has been repeatedly asserted that Henry III’s map was the source of the Psalter Map, but to my knowledge this assertion has never been examined in conjunction with what we know about the map at Westminster. Peter Barber first suggested that the Psalter Map was based on Henry III’s map at Westminster in 1989, identifying a ‘third stream’ of English world maps, flowing through the Psalter, Duchy of Cornwall and Aslake maps, and differentiating them from the Ebstorf/Isidore and the Hereford/Sawley/Orosius maps.33 He suggests the mural mappa mundi in the Painted Chamber at Westminster as the most likely source of this third stream. That map was lost in a fire in 1263, and the Psalter Map was produced in London after 1262, so there may have been a window of time during which the one could have served as a model for the other. Moreover, we know that the Westminster map had been copied by Matthew Paris before its destruction (see below), and it might have been copied by others.34 Theoretically, such a copy could have served as an intermediary, even if the Westminster map was destroyed before the Psalter Map was painted. Barber suggested that in terms of time, location and access, the Westminster map would seem the likeliest prototype for the Psalter Map. He and others have repeated this theory in later works.35 Daniel Birkholz accepted the suggested close similarity of the Psalter and Westminster maps as fact, and on that basis drew detailed conclusions about how the Westminster map expressed Henry III’s sacralized body and changing ideas about the nature of kingship in the thirteenth century.36 The only detailed contemporary record we have of the Westminster map is an inscription that appears in ‘Asia’ in an autograph manuscript of Matthew Paris’ world map (c. 1250) (Plate V), in his Chronica majora and on an inferior copy of that text on the world map in a later Chronica manuscript.37 In the Cambridge autograph manuscript, Matthew wrote, 33 Peter Barber, ‘Old encounters new: the Aslake world map’, Géographie du monde, ed. Pelletier, pp. 69–88, here p. 78. 34 On this and more about Matthew Paris, see chapter seven in this Companion. 35 See for example Peter Barber and Michelle P. Brown, ‘The Aslake Map’, Imago mundi 44 (1992), 22–44, here 31–32; Evelyn Edson, The world map, 1300–1492: the persistence of tradition and transformation (Baltimore, 2007), p. 15; Peter Barber and Tom Harper, Magnificent maps: power, propaganda and art (London, 2010), p. 78; and Terkla, ‘Hugh’, 165 and 171. 36 Daniel Birkholz, The king’s two maps: cartography and culture in thirteenth-century England (New York and London, 2004), pp. 3–43. 37 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 26, p. 284 and BL, Cotton MS Nero D V pt. I, fol. iv, respectively. There is a detailed description of the Cambridge manuscript in Suzanne Lewis, The art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica majora (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 443–6; for discussion of Matthew Paris’ two world maps see Miller, Mappaemundi, vol. 3, pp. 70–3; von den Brincken, Fines terrae: die Enden der Erde und der vierte Kontinent auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten (Hannover, 1992), pp. 107–9 and plate 34; Daniel K. Connolly, The maps of Matthew Paris: medieval journeys through space, time and liturgy (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2009), pp. 152–71 and color plate 2; and Chekin, Northern Eurasia, pp. 195–7
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Summatim facta est dispositio mappa mundi magistri Robert de Melekelia et mappamundi de Waltham. Mappamundi regis quod est in camera sua apud Westmonasterium figuratur in ordinali mathei de parisi. Verissimum autem figuratur in eodem ordinali quae est quasi clamis extensa. Talis est scema nostre partis habitabilis secundum philosophos, scilicet quarta pars terrae quae est trianglaris fere, corpus enim terre spericum est. (This is a summary arrangement of the world map of Magister Robert Melekely and the world map of Waltham [Abbey]. The King’s world map, which is in his chamber at Westminster, is drawn in the ordinal of Matthew Paris. Moreover, it is drawn most truly in that ordinal, which [map] is like a chlamys spread out. Such is the shape of our habitable part according to philosophers, that is to say, the fourth part of the earth, which is almost triangular. For the body of the earth is spherical.)
Matthew Paris’ ordinal is lost, so we do not have his copy of the Westminster map. Suzanne Lewis rightly indicated that Paris drew the reference to the chlamys, a short cloak used in ancient Greece, from Macrobius’ (early fifth century) Commentary on the dream of Scipio, and suggested that the map in question was based on the views of Strabo (c. 64 BCE–24 CE) and Ptolemy (second century) – for the world map of Ptolemy certainly is shaped like a chlamys, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top.38 Daniel K. Connolly has quite rightly argued that there is no evidence that Matthew Paris had access to Ptolemy’s Geography, and that the shape of the Hereford map, while not like that of a trapezoidal chlamys, is like that of thirteenth-century chasuble, the outer vestment worn by officiates during the liturgy. He goes on to note that in the later Middle Ages, the words ‘chlamys’ and ‘chasuble’ were sometimes used interchangeably, and concludes that the Westminster map probably participated in the tradition of large display maps represented by the Hereford map.39 I find this line of reasoning implausible. Since Matthew Paris does not mention ecclesiastical garments, but says that his analogy with the chlamys comes from philosophers, we should consider the relevant passage in Macrobius:40 with color illustrations 491–2. My translation of the passage draws on Connolly’s, but I have changed some phrases. 38 Lewis, The art, pp. 372 and 509 note 119. For discussion of the shape implied by Strabo’s statement (Book 2, chapter 5.6) that the outline of the inhabited world is like that of a chlamys see Klaus Zimmermann, ‘Eratosthenes’ chlamys-shaped world: a misunderstood metaphor’, The Hellenistic world: new perspectives, ed. Daniel Ogden (London, 2002), pp. 23–40. See also chapter seven in this Companion. 39 Connolly, The maps, pp. 160–7. For a discussion of the chlamys and this map, see chapter seven in this Companion. 40 Macrobius, Commentary on the dream of Scipio, trans. William Harris Stahl (New York, 1990), p. 215, Book 2, section 9.8. It should be remarked that the twelfth century had seen abundant production of manuscripts of Macrobius’ Commentarii in somnium scipionis:
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From our diagram we shall also understand Cicero’s statement that our quarter is ‘narrow at the top and broad at the sides’. As the tropical circle is greater than the arctic circle, so our zone is narrower at the top than at the sides, for the top is pressed together by the smallness of the northern circle, whereas the sides extend in either direction over the broad expanse of the tropics. Indeed, the ancients remarked that the whole of our inhabited quarter was like an outspread chlamys.
At the beginning of this passage, Macrobius explicitly refers to his diagram, that is, his map, so a look at his map will clarify what Matthew Paris had in mind. Macrobius held that the world’s lands consisted of four partes (parts) separated by water: the known inhabited land consisting of Europe, Asia and Africa; a similar landmass to the south, separated from the ecumene, the habitable part of the earth, by an equatorial ocean; and two more partes, one in the north and one in the south, on the opposite side of the world.41 The maps in manuscripts of his Commentarii in somnium Scipionis illustrate one hemisphere of the globe, and thus two of these four partes, the ecumene and the landmass to the south of it.42 Figure 8.3 illustrates a typical thirteenth-century Macrobian mappa mundi: the landmass in the upper half of the map, which contains Europe, Africa and Asia, tapers in the north and is in fact approximately triangular and thus chlamys-like, as Matthew Paris writes. If the inhabited part of the world on the Westminster mappa mundi was roughly triangular as on a Macrobian map, it becomes very difficult to think that the Psalter mappa mundi bears any close relation to the Westminster map, for the inhabited part of the earth on the Psalter Map – Asia, Europe and Africa – is circular. It is indeed surprising that the Westminster mappa mundi seems to have been of the Macrobian type, consolidating Asia, Europe and Africa into one landmass north of the equator, for we do not have any other record of a map of this type rendered on the scale of a display map.43 Moreover, the twelfth-century burst in production of manuscripts of see Irene Caiazzo, Lectures médiévales de Macrobe: les glosae colonienses super Macrobium (Paris, 2002), p. 36; Bruce S. Eastwood, ‘Manuscripts of Macrobius, Commentarii in somnium Scipionis, before 1500’, Manuscripta 38.2 (1994), 138–55; and Destombes, Mappemondes, pp. 43–5 and 88–91, who records fifteen surviving Macrobian maps from the eleventh century, forty-one from the twelfth, and sixteen from the thirteenth. 41 For more in the ecumene, see the preface to this Companion. 42 On Macrobius’ geography see William Harris Stahl, ‘Astronomy and geography in Macrobius’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 73 (1942), 232–58; on the maps in early manuscripts of Macrobius’ Commentarii, see Hiatt, ‘The map of Macrobius before 1100’, Imago mundi 59.2 (2007), 149–76. 43 The maps of Lambert of St-Omer and Guillaume de Conches similarly consolidate the three parts of the world into one landmass north of the equator. On Lambert of St-Omer see Destombes, Mappemondes, pp. 111–16; Danielle Lecoq, ‘La Mappemonde du Liber floridus ou la vision du monde de Lambert de Saint-Omer’, Imago mundi 39 (1987), 9–49; and Karen De Coene and Philippe De Maeyer, ‘One world under the sun: cosmography and cartography in the Liber floridus’, Liber floridus 1121: the world in a book, ed. Karen De
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8.3 MAPPA MUNDI, MACROBIUS’ COMMENTARII IN SOMNIUM SCIPIONIS. PARIS, BNF MS LAT. 15170, FOL. 125R. BY PERMISSION OF THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE.
Macrobius’ Commentarii was a phenomenon of the Continent rather than of England.44 Nonetheless, Matthew Paris’ statement about the Westminster map – which is the only evidence we have for its appearance – is clear, and it is not difficult to imagine a Macrobian map in the Painted Chamber precisely because, as Matthew Paris writes, it showed the world in accordance with Coene, Martine De Reu and Philippe De Maeyer (Lannoo, 2011), pp. 90–127. On Guillaume de Conches see Destombes, Mappemondes, pp. 96–109; and Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Guillaume de Conches, le modèle macrobien de la sphère et les antipodes: antécédents et influence immédiate’, Guillaume de Conches: philosophie et science au XIIe siècle, ed. Barbara Obrist and Irene Caiazzo (Firenze, 2011), pp. 219–51. For discussion of maps displayed in palaces see Danielle Lecoq, ‘Les mappemondes médiévales comme signes et représentations du pouvoir (XI-XIIIe)’, Bulletin du Comité français de cartographie 141 (1994), 20–37; Martina Stercken, ‘Repräsentieren mit Karten als mediales Modell’, Das Mittelalter 15.2 (2010), 96–113; and Mark Rosen, The Mapping of power in Renaissance Italy: painted cartographic cycles in social and intellectual context, (New York, 2015), pp. 35–7 and 43–8. 44 I find only two twelfth-century manuscripts of Macrobius’ Commentarii that have been identified as having been made in England: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Auct. F.1.9 and BL, Cotton MS Tiberius C 1.
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the opinions of the philosophers.45 This conclusion, that the Westminster mappa mundi was based on Macrobius, necessitates a radical revision of ideas about Henry III’s map at Westminster and conception of the world, and about the appearance of the Painted Chamber. There are additional reasons for doubting that the Psalter Map is a close copy of the Westminster mappa mundi. We would expect a map designed for display in a palace of the king of England, and also a copy of such a map made in England, to emphasize that country. Henry III was duke of Aquitaine, was married to Eleanor of Provence (1223–91), and invaded Poitou in 1242 in an attempt to reclaim formerly English lands there – which is to say that he had deeply vested interests in France. But he was king of England. The English Channel, and thus Britain’s island nature, is not clearly indicated on the Psalter Map; this is largely due to fading of the green pigment used to paint the Channel (Figure 8.4). But the depiction of England is much less detailed and emphatic than we would expect on a map made for English royalty. The only names on it are ‘britannia’, ‘cornubia’ (‘Cornwall’) and ‘walni’ (‘Wales’). An ochre dot represents what one supposes must be London, for it is not labeled, and very tellingly, this dot is smaller than every other ochre city symbol on the map. Medieval cartographers certainly knew how to place visual emphasis on particular regions when they wished to do so. To mention just two examples, one earlier and one later than the Psalter Map: the eleventh-century St-Sever Beatus mappa mundi gives a much greater prominence to France, and particularly to the abbey of Saint-Sever sur l’Adour in southwestern France where it was made, than the Beatus mappaemundi in manuscripts made in Spain;46 on the Evesham Map, made in England in about 1400, the size of Britain is greatly exaggerated.47 There is no such graphic emphasis on the Psalter Map. There is, however, considerable emphasis on France. This emphasis is particularly visible when one compares the size of the French territory, not only with Britain but also with the Iberian Peninsula, which seems 45 We have very little information about Henry III’s education, and no evidence for a particular interest in science or philosophy. On Henry’s tutors, see D.A. Carpenter, The minority of Henry III (London and Berkeley, 1990), pp. 241–2 and 258; for some remarks on his education see Paul Hyams, ‘What did Henry III of England think in bed and in French about kingship and anger?’, Anger’s past. Social uses of emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. B.H. Rosenwein (Ithaca, NY, 1988), pp. 92–126, esp. 108–9; on Henry’s character generally, see M. Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 1225–1360 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 82–4; on the scraps of information we have about his books, see Susan H. Cavanaugh, ‘Royal books: King John to Richard II’, The Library 6:4 (1988), 304–16, here 305. 46 The St-Sever Beatus map is in BnF, MS latin 8878, fols 45v-bis–45r-ter; for discussion of the exaggerated representation of France on the map see François de Dainville, ‘La Gallia dans la mappemonde de Saint-Sever’, Actes du 93e congrès national des Sociétés Savantes, Tours, 1968 (Paris, 1970), pp. 391–404, here p. 391. 47 The Evesham mappa mundi is in London, College of Arms, Num. Sch. 18/19. See Peter Barber, ‘The Evesham world map: a late medieval English view of God and the world’, Imago mundi 47 (1995), 13–33, here 23–4.
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8.4 PSALTER MAP, DETAIL OF EUROPE. LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, ADD. MS 28681, FOL. 9R. BY PERMISSION OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY, © BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
compressed south of the Pyrenees. The river system in France is well depicted, particularly in contrast to the Munich Map, which, as noted above, is based on the Descriptio mappe mundi. The city of Paris is named (‘parisius’) and its location on an island is clearly indicated; moreover, the ochre symbol for the city is large and unique on the map. Most of the city symbols are ochre triangles representing buildings and, by synecdoche, the city; the more important cities of ‘alexandria’, ‘roma’, ‘constantinopolis’, ‘cartago’ and ‘troia’ are represented by threefold triangles, and Jerusalem is uniquely represented by the large bullseye discussed above. The symbol for Paris has a rectangular base with a tower rising from the middle, evidently an attempt to depict rather than merely symbolize a building, like the drawings for Calais (‘Callia’) and St Denis (‘Deinsia’).48 Curiously, Britain is more emphatically represented in the list map on fol. 9v of the Psalter. The sentence that opens the list for Europe says that the region has thirty-four provinces and twenty-five principal cities, but only eight cities are listed. Only one of these, ‘Roma’, is east 48 The city symbols on the Psalter Map are discussed by Schöller, Wissen speichern, pp. 51–3. For the significance of the latter two places, see Kathy Lavezzo, Angels on the edge of the world: geography, literature, and English community, 1000–1534 (Ithaca, NY, 2006), p. 22.
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of Milan; of the remaining seven, two – ‘Burdeles’ (‘Bordeaux’) and ‘ciuitas Belgis’ (‘Beauvais’) – are in French territory, while five are in Britain: ‘civitas Londonia’ (‘London’), ‘Cantuaria’ (‘Canterbury’), ‘civitas Dublinia’ (‘Dublin’), ‘Armachus’ (‘Armagh’) and ‘civitas Sancti Andree’ (‘St Andrews’).49 The selection of cities in the list map thus places some emphasis on France, though the absence of Paris is surprising, but much more emphasis on Britain. This difference in emphasis is puzzling. It is tempting to think that the list map derives from a larger one that listed all thirty-four provinces and twenty-five cities in Europe that are promised in the opening of the section, and that a selection favoring Britain, which would be more appropriate for an English audience, was made when the map was copied at a smaller size. Altering this emphasis when the map on the recto was copied from the larger model would have entailed the more delicate operation of reconfiguring the map, and, as a result, no such change was made.
CONCLUSIONS Careful consideration of Matthew Paris’ statement about the Westminster mappa mundi has produced the surprising result that it was similar in outlines to a Macrobian world map, grouping Asia, Europe and Africa in one landmass north of the equator that tapered at the north. Since geographical details are sparse on typical Macrobian maps, we can imagine that information was added to a Macrobian framework to create a large and detailed map appropriate for display at Westminster.50 Thus, our ideas about Henry III’s maps, about how he conceived the world, and about the availability and role of Macrobian cosmography in thirteenthcentury England, require revision and re-elaboration. It seems likely that the choice of a Macrobian framework for the Westminster mappa mundi was motivated by a desire to equip Henry with an image of the world that was more scholarly, in modern terms more scientific, than others that were available. Moreover, the mappa mundi on the Psalter recto is not a copy of the Westminster mappa mundi. Its model was French: this is demonstrated by the exaggerated prominence of Paris and of France. Corroboratory evidence is provided by the French origin of one, and possibly both, of the bestiary manuscripts whose illustration programs of the monstrous 49 The text on the list map on fol. 9v of the psalter is transcribed by von den Brincken, Fines terrae, pp. 87–8; the individual place names (without the connecting text) are transcribed and identified by Schöller, Wissen speichern, pp. 271–8. 50 For discussion of the pool of information available to medieval cartographers in the compilation of a new map, see P.D.A. Harvey, ‘The Holy Land on medieval world maps’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 243–51, here pp. 246–50.
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peoples – the Mirabilia mundi – closely match the Psalter Map’s program. In addition, the influence of Hugh of St Victor on Anglo-French cartography, to which both Psalter maps testify, should be seen in connection with the French model on which the f. 9r map was based. Therefore, it was most likely a French cartographer who moved the traditional monstrous peoples, which earlier authorities had assigned to various locations throughout Asia and Africa, to a narrow band at the southern edge of the world. This bold visual statement about the peripherality of the monstrous peoples should be seen in connection with the unusual program of visual emphasis the cartographer places on Jerusalem at the center of the world. Just as the mapmaker reconfigured landforms to the east into concentric semicircles subservient to the holy city, he placed the imperfect monstrous peoples in a band at a much greater distance, as far from the sacrosanct center as possible.51
51 My thanks to Leonid Chekin, Natalia Lozovsky, Amanda Luyster, Paul Harvey, Peter Barber and Lauren Beck for their comments on and discussion of this article. My thanks do not mean to imply their agreement with my conclusions, and any remaining errors are of course my own.
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THE DUCHY OF CORNWALL MAP FRAGMENT (c. 1286)
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T
he Duchy of Cornwall Map (c. 1286, Plate VII) is misleadingly named: in its current state it is neither a map, nor does it have any cartographical relation to the southwestern English county of Cornwall. The fragment is so labeled because it belongs to the Duchy of Cornwall, which was created as the first English duchy in 1337, when Edward III (1312–77) granted the title and what was then the earldom of Cornwall to his son, Edward of Woodstock (1330–76), the Black Prince. More precisely, then, the map belongs to the duke of Cornwall. Since 1337, the title has been held by the monarch’s eldest son; the current duke is HRH The Prince of Wales – Prince Charles.1 Less than one quarter of the once monumental map survives; nonetheless, when ventriloquized, the fragment speaks volumes about the map’s likely commissioning, textual complementarity and production, the uses to which it was put and by whom. Parts of its story, however tentatively evidenced, are familiar to those interested in the maps studied in this Companion. This chapter’s new information reveals more of the map’s story and connects it closely to English royalty, to a uniquely English religious order, to Berkhamsted Castle and to what must be the most thoroughly researched mappa mundi in existence.2
1 Judith Bray, ‘Feudal law: the case for reform’, Modern studies in property law, vol. 5, ed. Martin Dixon (Oxford and Portland, OR, 2009), pp. 99–124, here p. 118. 2 A short list of Duchy Map studies should include the following: Peter Barber, ‘Medieval maps of the world’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006) pp. 19–22; Graham Haslam, ‘The Duchy of Cornwall Map fragment’, Géographie du monde au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, ed. Monique Pelletier (Paris, 1989), pp. 33–44; Nigel Morgan, ‘Hereford Cathedral: the world map’, Early gothic manuscripts, 2, 1250–1285 (London and Oxford, 1988) pp. 195–200, here pp. 197–8; Claude Nicolet and Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Les “quatre sages” de Jules César et la “mesure du monde” selon Julius Honorius: réalité antique et tradition médiévale’, Journal des savants (1986), 157–218; on the Duchy Map’s primary textual complement, the Historia scholastica, Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘London, British Library MS Royal 3 D VI’, in her Gothic
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Comparisons with the Duchy Map’s close contemporary, the Hereford Mappa Mundi (c. 1300, Plate VIII) are fruitful and perhaps inevitable. These maps are members of what was a slowly developing cartographical genre that, like the monastic lectio divina and medieval literary genres, was more reliant on predecessory authorities (auctoritates) than on innovation. For this reason, the narrow gap – fewer than forty years – between their making is nearly insignificant; they are part of a tradition with ancient antecedents and an English history reaching back at least to the early eleventh century. As we shall see, the juxtaposition reveals similarities in dimension, design and theology. More tellingly, it also reveals differences, the contemplation of which is rewarding. Comparative approaches do not have to lead to the creation of a Lachmannian stemma codicum, a genealogy pointing back to an ever-absent ‘Ur-text’, from which the artifact under investigation derives.3 (The Ur-map at the apex of the Anglo-French mappae mundi’s genealogical table is often claimed to be Agrippa’s world map; or, in a narrower timeframe, Henry III’s Westminster mappa mundi.) What we should hope to gain from juxtaposing these two maps is a set of productive questions about the Duchy of Cornwall fragment’s original appearance, placement, audience and use. As we formulate answers, new questions are likely to arise about the maps set alongside the fragment. This chapter attempts to set the foundation for that work.
HISTORY AND MATERIALITY We have only the southwest section of the Duchy Map, or most of it, because it was cut up and made into a limp binding for manorial records of Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.4 The fragment was first noted in the ‘Temporary index: catalogue of records of the Duchy of Cornwall’ for 1921, which describes ‘a cover … made from an old skin whereon is part of a representation of the world as imagined by the monks of the Middle Ages’.5 It seems that sixty-five years passed until the historical value of that manuscripts, 1285–1385, 2 vols (London and Oxford, 1986), pp. 2.14–15; for comparison with the Hereford Mappa Mundi, see Scott Westrem, The Hereford Map: a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (Turnhout, 2001), for texts and commentary on the map’s outer and inner rings and pentagonal frame, pp. 1–31; and on Asia, levels 4 and 5; Africa, levels 1–4; and the monstrous peoples and southwestern islands, pp. 961–87. 3 Tony Hunt, ‘Editing Arthuriana’, A history of Arthurian scholarship, ed. Norris J. Lacy (Cambridge, 2006) pp. 37–48, here pp. 37–40. 4 Throughout this section, I am greatly indebted to Dr Elizabeth Lomas, Archivist at the Duchy of Cornwall Office in London, for her kind assistance and enthusiasm during my multiple visits to examine the Duchy Map, for keeping me informed about news concerning it and for emailing me her photograph of the ‘Temporary index: catalogue of records of the Duchy of Cornwall’ noted here. The email arrived on 5 December 2017. 5 ‘Temporary index’, p. 200.
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binding was recognized. As Elizabeth Lomas confirms, a Mr Don Gubbins from the Public Record Office removed the binding in 1986 so that the manorial records could be conserved.6 The repairs were completed in 1988, according to a marginal note in the ‘Temporary index’. The 1986 discovery of the fragment prompted Graham Haslam, then Archivist of the Duchy of Cornwall Office, to write the first, and now often-quoted, article on the Duchy Map.7 In 1283 Edmund of Cornwall gave the manor of Hemel Hempstead in advowson to his newly founded College of Bonhommes at Ashridge, in the same county and very near his administrative center, Berkhamsted Castle.8 Bishop Oliver Sutton of Lincoln (d. 1299) dedicated Ashridge’s collegiate church in 1286, which is when the map was likely given to the college, along with a copy of Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica. It seems clear that Edmund commissioned the book, which is in the same hand as the Duchy Map. Ashridge was one of only two houses of Bonhommes, the other being Edington Priory in Wiltshire, which was modeled on Ashridge and converted to a Bonhommes house in 1358. William Wey (c. 1405–76), a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, which had a mural mappa mundi and a map of England in its library, made two pilgrimages to the Holy Land and retired to Edington, where he wrote his Itineraries. There, Pnina Arad suggests, Wey ‘established a chapel, modeled after the Holy Sepulchre’, where he ‘displayed a collection of mementos and relics’, including a mappa mundi and a map of the Holy Land centered on Jerusalem.9 The first entry in the Hemel Hempstead volume is for 1418/19 and the final one for 1520/21.10 Over half of its contents date to the reigns of Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) and Henry VIII (r. 1509–47), with much of it being ‘quo warranto proceedings’.11 Thomas Waterhouse (d. 1554), who was named the college’s last rector in 1529, signed Henry VIII’s Acknowledgement of Supremacy in 1535, surrendering the college to the crown on 6 November 1539.12 Its temporalities, The Public Record Office is now The National Archives in Kew. Graham Haslam, ‘The Duchy of Cornwall Map fragment’, Géographie du monde au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance (Paris, 1989), pp. 33–44. 8 See, for example, ‘Ashridge grant inspeximus title: a late fifteenth or early sixteenth century paper copy of the confirmation by Edmund I to the rector and brothers of Ashridge of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall’s foundation charter’, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, Reference: AH 916: ‘Granting the manor of Ashridge cum Pitstone with the Park of Ashridge in the parishes of Berkhamsted and Pitstone. The Manor of Little Gaddesden, both the part held by Geoffrey de Lucy and by Thomas Vieleston. The Manor of Hemel Hempstead (except for the advowson and the warren), Picotts Mill, Bury Mill, Two Water Mills, Fullingmills and “Welpos” Burn Mill and rights and liberties, etc.’, date: 17 April 1286. 9 Pnina Arad, ‘Pilgrimage, cartography and devotion: William Wey’s map of the Holy Land’, Viator 43.1 (2012), 301–22, here 2 and 17. 10 Haslam ‘Fragment’, pp. 33–44, here p. 35. 11 Haslam, ‘Fragment’, p. 35. ‘Quo warranto’ refers to ‘a royal writ obliging a person to show by what warrant an office or franchise is held or claimed’. See ‘quo warranto’ in the Oxford English dictionary. 12 ‘House of Bonhommes: the College of Ashridge’, A history of the County of Buckingham: volume 1, ed. William Page (London, 1905), pp. 386–90: British history online: http://www. 6 7
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which would have included the Duchy Map, were taken over that year by the Court of Augmentation, which also managed the Duchy of Cornwall’s affairs. The connections between Edmund, Edward, the Black Prince (1330–76) – who became the college’s patron and first duke of Cornwall – and the Court of Augmentation led to the book and its cartographical binding going to the Duchy’s archive, where they are cared for today.13 Judging by the date of the Historia scholastica, the dedication date of Edmund’s college and the paleographical relationship between the map and the Historia, c. 1286 seems a fitting date for the map’s creation. But when and where was it destroyed? Michelle P. Brown and Peter Barber have posed the question of ‘when’ for the Aslake Map. They convincingly argue that ‘1484 is early for the vandalisation of an English medieval world map and probably too early for it to have been considered obsolete by those who recycled it’. Working by analogy, I would rule out the Hemel Hempstead court book’s start date of 1418/19 and suggest 1539, the year in which the Court of Augmentation took over the college’s temporalities, as the year of its destruction.14 It is hard to say whether this occurred in Ashridge or London. Thinking practically and in terms of binding the records, Ashridge makes sense. Were the map destroyed in Ashridge, Henry’s commissioners would be likely suspects. Here we might do well to remember that, in 1538, ‘Henrician commissioners destroyed the [tomb] shrine [of Thomas Cantilupe]’ among other things, in Hereford Cathedral.15 Of course, they did not destroy the Hereford Map. The Duchy Map is one of three extant English mappae mundi from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to have been repurposed. The Aslake Map (c. 1360) came to light in 1985 and probably belonged to Creake Abbey in Norfolk, an Augustinian house. It became a ‘loose parchment binding and thongs for a rental of the estate records of one Walter Aslake in Ringstead, Hunstanton and Holme next the Sea in north-west Norfolk’.16 Some of the estate records were written over the map, generating a palimpsest that might have been ‘handed over to Walter Aslake for his own use’.17 He died in 1504. The Evesham Map (c. 1390), a wall map made at the Benedictine abbey of Evesham in Worcestershire, was found on the verso of the sixth of eleven membranes detailing ‘the descents of King Henry VI and Sir Ralph british-history.ac.uk/vch/bucks/vol1/pp386-390 [Accessed 4 August 2017]. 13 Haslam, ‘Fragment’, p. 36. The remaining volumes are kept at the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies facility (HALS) in Hertford. 14 Peter Barber thinks that the Duchy Map might have been an item in Henry VIII’s cartographical display at Hampton Court. Personal conversation, Oxford, 4 July 2019. 15 Robert Swanson and David Lepine, ‘The later Middle Ages, 1268–1535’, Hereford Cathedral: a history, ed. Gerald Aylmer and John Tiller (London and Rio Grande, 2000), pp. 48–86, here pp. 76. 16 Peter Barber and Michelle P. Brown, ‘The Aslake world map’, Imago mundi 44 (1992), 24–44, here 24. 17 Barber and Brown, ‘Aslake’, 24.
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Boteler K.G., Lord Sudeley’.18 The ‘pedigree’ dates to between 1447 and 1452, some sixty years after the map’s creation.19 The surviving Duchy fragment illustrates the talents of its maker (or makers), in the clarity and confidence of its fine Gothic textualis quadrata book script and in what we might call the personalities of its fauna and ‘monstrous peoples’.20 The fragment’s attributes point to an artist familiar with monumental mappa mundi design, a knowledge of source texts, a scribe or scribes from a sophisticated urban scriptorium and an ambitious patron of high standing with an eye for spectacle and desire for selfaggrandizement. The fragment measures 24.4in. in height by 20.8in. in width (620mm x 530mm). When it was complete, the map’s diameter was approximately 62.2in. (1580mm) and its circumference around 195in. (4953mm).21 This means that the map’s circular depiction of the orbis terrarum would have been some 10in. wider than the Hereford Map’s, which measures 62.5in. in height and 52.2in. width (1588mm x 1326mm). The complete Duchy Map’s diameter would have matched the height of the Hereford Map’s large calfskin. To visualize the complete Duchy Map’s size, we can think of its outer oceanic ring reaching from the base to the apex of the Hereford Map. To add another point of comparison, the Duchy and Hereford maps would have been dwarfed by the Ebstorf Map (c. 1300) at 140.55in. (3567mm).22 The Ebstorf ’s diameter would have extended a rather amazing 78.3in. (1989mm) beyond the Duchy Map’s and 88.39in. (2245mm) beyond the Hereford Map’s. Their sizes indicate that these mappae mundi were designed for public display and as visual aids for monastic and canonical education. All three would have been invaluable complements to the verbal and visual texts that informed their creation and the scores of others used by their audiences.23
18 Peter Barber, ‘The Evesham world map: a late medieval English view of God and the world’, Imago mundi (1995), 13–33, here 13, and 21 on it being a wall map. 19 Barber, ‘Evesham’, 13. 20 On labels for these peoples (or marvels) and why ‘race(s)’ is/are unsuitable, Asa Simon Mittman, ‘Are the “monstrous races” races?’ Postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 6 (2015), 36–51, here 48. 21 I must thank Mark Liffiton, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Illinois Wesleyan University, for these calculations, which are based on my measurement of the Duchy Map and the degree of curvature of its two outer rings. I use Christopher Clarkson’s measurements of the single calfskin onto which the Hereford Map is drawn, painted and lettered. They show that the skin widens, chlamys-like, by 43mm to its base. See ‘The Hereford Map: the first annual condition report’, Hereford, ed. Harvey, pp. 95–106, here p. 96. 22 These numbers are from Barber, ‘Medieval maps’, p. 23. Charlotte von Lasperg, a conventual of a convent in Ebstorf, discovered the Ebstorf Map ‘on a shelf in a wet, windowless lumber-room’ in 1830. See Armin Wolf, ‘News on the Ebstorf world map: date, origin, authorship’, Pelletier, Géographie, pp. 51–68, here p. 53. 23 On the pairing of mappae mundi with books for educational purposes, see chapters two and three in this Companion.
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9.1 DUCHY OF CORNWALL MAP, FRAMING TO ILLUSTRATE STITCHING HOLES FOR BINDING. DUCHY OF CORNWALL OFFICE, MAPS AND PLANS 1. © THE DUKE OF CORNWALL 2019. FRAMING CREATED BY THE AUTHOR AND SPENCER SAUTER OF [email protected].
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Close examination reveals how, in the sixteenth century, the fragment was made into a limp binding for the Hemel Hempstead records.24 It also reveals that a section has been cut away, leaving us with only a section of the full binding. We know this, because the fragment has a horizontal turn-in crease at the bottom that runs its entire width and aligns with the horizontal sides of the notches cut into its lower corners to facilitate folding in one of the binding’s leading edges. There is no corresponding horizontal crease near the top of the fragment, nor are the top corners notched. This seems to be what led Graham Haslam to observe that the ‘leading edge of the vellum has been freely cut’.25 The map fragment was on the cover’s verso and likely had an endpaper pasted to it, which means that what we now know as the Duchy Map fragment would not have been visible, even with the covers turned back.26 Having noticed what looked like four, near-symmetrically arrayed pairs of sewing holes on a 300 dots-per-inch image of the map fragment, I visited the Duchy of Cornwall Office again in June 2018 to confirm their presence. Dr Elizabeth Lomas and I carefully examined the reverse and saw what I now know to be fifty-two holes, arranged in four parallel sets of thirteen about one third of the way down from the fragment’s upper edge, the map’s eastern edge (Figure 9.1). These holes align with those on the spine of the volume of Hemel Hempstead manorial records (Figure 9.2).27 On the far left (north) of the map fragment is a vertical line of stitching holes (Figure 9.1 A) and to its right, running through the hyena’s neck is its mate (Figure 9.1 B). On the far right (south), the pattern repeats (Figure 9.1 C and D). Through these four sets of holes ran the stitching cord that secured the turn-ups of the book spine’s head- and tailpieces. After meeting with Dr Lomas, I spotted two more pairs of vertical stitching holes on the high-resolution image. To the right of Figure 9.1 B, a line of holes (Figure 9.1 E) runs through the Nile, colored blue; to its right and running through the Himantopede’s staff (bacula) is its mate (Figure 9.1 F). Looking to the left of Figure 9.1 C, we find a vertical row of holes running through the ‘a’ in ‘insula’, the ‘u’ in ‘unum’ and the ‘p’ in ‘Oppida’ (Figure 9.1 H). To the left of Figure 9.1 H is its mate (Figure 9.1 G), running just to the left and above ‘Flumina’ and cutting through the green Ocean River. Finally, there is a circular array of stitching holes that Dr Lomas and I noticed (Figure 9.1 I) in June 2018. It is located nearly equidistant from the stitching rows in Figure 9.1 F and 9.1 G, roughly in the center of the book’s spine. This array of twenty-one holes circles ‘Gorgades insula’, the ‘island of the Gorgons’. 24 I happily acknowledge the codicological help I received from Michelle P. Brown via email on 2 December 2018. Any mistakes in my attempt here to deploy the knowledge I acquired as a student in her 2016 London Rare Books School course, ‘The Medieval Book’, are mine. 25 Haslam, ‘Fragment’, p. 35. 26 Haslam, ‘Fragment’, p. 35. 27 This volume, DOC/MR/HH1.
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9.2 HEMEL HEMPSTEAD MANORIAL RECORDS. DUCHY OF CORNWALL OFFICE, DOC/MR/ HH1. © THE DUKE OF CORNWALL 2019.
Figure 9.2 shows the repaired Hemel Hempstead codex with its original, sixteenth-century spine and allows us to see the three types of stitching used to secure the map-fragment-as-binding and to decorate the spine. 9.1 A, B, C and D accommodated the simple head and tail stitches; 9.1 E, F, G and H are the perforations through which the long-stitch cords ran; and 9.1 I indicates the access holes used for the limp-stitch sewing that created the circular decoration at the spine’s center. The dark corrosion marks on the map that align with the notches at the bottom and run up the left and right sides were turned in to create the codex cover’s top and bottom edges, while the two faint horizontal lines just above and below the Himantopede mark the creases that allowed the map fragment to form the book’s limp binding.
DESIGN AND TOPOGRAPHY: AN OCULAR JOURNEY OVER THE FRAGMENT This section naturally looks back to Graham Haslam’s work, but relies primarily on close examination of the fragment in situ to provide a full overview of its organization, legends and images. I concentrate on the map’s layout, population, Ages of Man roundels and the large block of text in its bottom right corner. The latter two foci support a reading of the Duchy Map’s eschatological underpinnings. There is no reason to assume that the fragment was anything but an oriented T-O map: it had east at the top and features a circular representation of the ecumene, the inhabited part of the globe, encircled by the Ocean River and a set of anthropomorphized wind heads. The map presented the three landmasses commonly featured in this genre, with each being separated from the other by an aqueous Greek cross: Asia at the top, above the T’s crossbar; Europe on the left, below that crossbar; and Africa on the right, also below the crossbar. Europe and Africa would have been separated by the Mediterranean Sea, and Europe and Asia by the rivers Don
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and Nile.28 Considering that the Ages of Man roundels at the bottom of the map functioned as a memento mori, it might have centered on Jerusalem, like the Psalter (Plate VI) and Hereford maps.29 Firmly situating the Duchy Map in its genre are its conventionally idiosyncratic representations, in southwest Africa, of exotic fauna and of what we might call, with apologies to Shakespeare and a nod to Michel Foucault, its Band of Others. Because of the line along which the extant fragment was cut from the whole, it shows only a part of southwest Africa in which there are no inscriptions or vignettes denoting cities or towns. (Juxtaposing images of roughly this area on the Hereford Map and Duchy Map yields similar results.) The Duchy Map does show and name a few geographical features: the most prominent is the ‘fl Nyli’ (‘Nile River’) which flows over half the way across the fragment.30 Its legend appears at its western end, where the head of the river is encircled by what the map tells us is the source of the ‘fons nulcol’ (‘Nuchul’s source’), perhaps following Pomponius Mela, who ‘regarded the name as a corruption of the word Nile’.31 Second in prominence is a stain on the edge of the large hole at the bottom left of the fragment. This is ‘montes hesperii’ (‘Mountains of Hesperides’ or ‘western mountains’). Just above the mountain and slightly to the right/south is the nearly illegible legend for the ‘ethiopia deserta’ (‘Ethiopian desert’). Between the desert and the source of the Nile/Nuchul is the legend for ‘lac bastasui’ (‘Lake Bastasuitur’).32 Finally, moving to the top left corner, we find the region thought to be inhabited by what the Hereford Map labels as ‘barbari’: the ‘provincia mathabres’. The Natabres are sometimes associated with other ‘barbarian’ races, the Gaetuli and Garamantes, but the Duchy Map does not depict them.33 ISLANDS The text block in the lower right corner describes the results of the world survey mandated by Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE) and carried out by Nicodoxus (the east), Didymus (the west), Teodocus (the north) and
28 David Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, The history of cartography, volume one: cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago and London, 1987), pp. 286–370, here p. 296. 29 A close, digital juxtaposition of the Duchy Map and Psalter Map would be most rewarding, but is beyond the scope of this chapter. 30 I use < > to indicate interpolated letters, either as an expansion of the map’s abbreviations or because of letters’ poor legibility. In the latter case, I have at times made educated guesses, which I acknowledge. 31 Thomas Olden, ‘On the geography of Ros Ailithir’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, second series, vol. 2 (1879–88), 219–52, here 241. For the Mela passage, ‘Pomponius Mela’, De chorographia 3.84, The Latin library [Accessed 8 February 2018]. 32 I am unable to identify this lake. 33 Westrem, Hereford, pp. 346–7.
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Policlitus (the south).34 According to the inscription, the southern part has ‘insulas septemdecim’ (‘seventeen islands’). Unfortunately, the fragment contains only eight; two are missing text, and five others are probably Fortunate Islands.35 The first sits right on the fragment’s top cut line, and the one just below it has had its lower portion torn away. The other six legends are complete and legible. The island on the cut line has lost part of its legend, and the remainder is mostly illegible, but it might refer to the fish-eating Ichthyophagi (‘et … ita ut ab … no … mare pedas piscii[?] agant’). Second, and just below it, is the island with its lower section torn away. It bears an incomplete and amended inscription from Solinus’ thirdcentury Collecteana rerum memorabilium: ‘Gauleon insula ubi nullus vivit spens cuiu tra fugiu’ (‘The island of Gauloena, where no serpents live, [and] whose land they flee’). Following the Atlantic curve, we come to the third island, ‘Gorgades insula q a feminis toto corpe hispidis incoluntur’ (‘the island of the Gorgons where hirsute women dwell’). Fourth is ‘insula mbona’ (‘Membriona Island’), ‘the westernmost of the Canary Islands’; ‘for western geographers it was the occidental limit of the world and marked zero degrees longitude’.36 The fifth is labeled ‘fortunata insula’ (‘Fortunate Island’), of which there were either five (Pliny) or six (Solinus, Martianus Capella). The Fortunates were often confused with the Canaries and associated in the classical period with the Islands of Bliss. In David Watson’s glorious translation of a Horatian epode, they are ‘where the untilled Earth yearly renders Fruit, and the unpruned Vines flourish, where the Olive-Trees are loaded with Fruit, and the ripe Fig adorneth its own branch’.37 Leaving this ancient paradise, we come to island six, ‘insula hesperidu soro’, where Hesperus’ daughters, the Hesperides, ‘with the aid of a watchful dragon’, kept watch over a tree bearing golden apples.38 The final two westerly islands on the fragment are less easy to identify and might illustrate the conflation of ‘Fortunate’ and ‘Canary’. Islands seven and eight are labelled, respectively, ‘Grata insula’ and ‘cenorion’. ‘Grata’ is likely a form of gratus (‘pleasing’ or ‘agreeable’) and so probably names a Fortunate Island. ‘[C]enorion’ is probably Canaria, another Fortunate Island. It is 34 The Hereford Map features this event via inscriptions in its pentagonal frame, but omits Didymus. See Westrem, Hereford, pp. 2–3; and, on the reason for omitting Didymus, see Gautier Dalché and Nicolet, ‘[Q]uatre sages’. 35 The islands are not in the same order as those on the Hereford Map. See Westrem, Hereford, pp. 334–89. 36 Both quotations are from Westrem, Hereford, p. 386. 37 The book is equally floridly titled: David Watson, The odes, epodes, and carmen seculare of Horace. Translated into English prose, as near as the two languages will admit.… Revised by a gentleman well-skilled in this sort of literature at London (London, 1741), p. 450. For a detailed history of the Fortunates, Westrem, Hereford, p. 388. 38 ‘Dragon’ quotation from the Oxford English dictionary’s ‘Hesperides’ entry, which also notes that ‘Hesperus’ derives from the Greek ‘ἕσπερος’, ‘of the evening or western’.
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situated very near where ‘insula canaria plena magnis canibus’ (‘the island of huge dogs’) is located on the Hereford Map.39 FAUNA AND THE BAND OF OTHERS Returning to the northwest and the Duchy fragment’s upper left, we see what seem to be the midsections of two adjacent sets of laddered enclosures running roughly vertically. These boundaries recall the vestigial Roman centuriation lines on the Anglo-Saxon Map (Plate I), political boundaries that signify control of an area and its residents, or at least the dream of control. With two exceptions, the fauna and twelve monstrous peoples here are boxed off from each another. Each species representative on the fragment has been put in its place, literally and figuratively: contained and arrayed for examination, marveling, even ogling.40 The left/northern set contains seven representations of the usual unusual fauna found on maps of this genre, along with descriptions, some partial, of five monstrous peoples that are without drawn representatives. The right/southern set contains seven representations of this Band of Others, along with two serpents, the ‘iaculus’ and the ‘surtalis’, and two giant ants, representatives of the species ‘formice’ (from the Latin formica, ‘ant’). All told, then, the map presents and describes eleven fauna, counting the two ants and twelve Others. Some of the fauna have similar features: the ‘parandrus’, ‘pantera’, ‘catofeplas’, ‘hyena’ and ‘rinosceros’ all resemble the same friendly dog; and the two smiling, spotted serpents with pointed ears are nearly twins. Except for the northward-facing Anthropophagus, the Others all turn their backs to the north and face south. None are clothed, nor do they have genitalia; their facial expressions are generally benign. Beginning in the upper left corner and moving downward/westward, we first find the ‘parandrus’, a bear/ibex mix with cloven hooves, that camouflages ‘itself by taking on the appearance of its surroundings’.41 The parandrus looks up to what seems to be an inscription from Solinus: ‘Gens ista suma regie potestatis cani tribuit unde sibi quiddam frivolu augurantur’.42 This describes the Psambari who, like the Ptonebari and Ptoemphani, have a dog for a king and infer his commands from his movements.43 This race is neither named nor drawn on the fragment, but might have appeared just above the caption.
Westrem, Hereford, pp. 384–5. On this ‘boxing’, see chapter eight in this Companion. 41 For the parandrus, a lengthy list of bestiary denizens and illustrations, see David Badke’s The medieval bestiary: animals in the Middle Ages: http://bestiary.ca [Accessed 4 August 2017]. 42 Solinus writes of the Psambari: ‘his summam regiae potestatis cani tradunt, de cuius motibus quidnam imperitet augurantur’, in c. Ivlii Solini collecteana rerum memorobilivm, ed. Theodor Mommsen (Berlin, 1895), pp. 130–1. 43 Pliny mentions the Ptonebari and Ptoemphani, who have dog kings. Pliny, c. Plini secundi naturalis historia libri XXXVII, ed. Carolus Mayhoff (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1996), 39
40
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Just below the parandrus are the second and third animals: the ‘pantera’, the panther, and the ‘catofeplas’, a confused spelling of ‘catoblepas’, a species of buffalo, antelope or gnu. The name comes from the Greek κατωβλέπων, ‘that which hangs down’; and we see that its head looks too heavy to lift.44 Were the catoblepas able to look someone in the eye, it would instantly kill that person. The panther, says Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636), befriends all creatures but the dragon; he describes them as covered in black-and-white circles resembling eyes, with sweet breath. The female can only give birth once, since her cubs claw her womb.45 The pantera and catoblepas face each other and gaze upward/eastward like the parandrus. In between the catoblepas and pantera is a tightly boxed inscription that seems to describe the Serbotae, a race that can grow to twelve feet and that has an unwholesome look (‘Gu[?]t u bote longi ad pedes duodecim aspectii pestilenti’). Here a horizontal crease runs from the pantera to the right/ southward to the ‘Gorgades insula’ and aligns with the two holes cutting through the Ocean River. In the same area, a legend runs eastward along the Nile’s bank, just behind the catoblepas, informing us about the fourth and fifth animals: ‘fl nyli. cocodrillos 7 [et] ypotamos gignit’ (‘the River Nile gives birth to crocodiles and hippopotamuses’).46 In other words, the crocodile and hippopotamus are born in the Nile, as Isidore tells us.47 Below the containers for the pantera, catoblepas, and text box are the sixth, seventh and eighth animals: the ‘hyena’, ‘elephans’ and ‘rinoss’. The hyena and rhinoceros look much like the pantera and catoblepas, that is, like friendly canines. The names ‘elephans’ and ‘rinoseros’ label the animals’ left sides, as they face northward. The hyena’s name floats above it, and it faces southward. Above the hyena’s name, a legend describes a race that eats brined, and so hardened, locusts or shellfish, but not for more than a year (‘Hi locustas salsugine duratas edunt nec annum excedunt’). They appear in Solinus, and the legend’s final clause might be an allusion to his ‘certo tempore’ (‘a fixed time’), which implies that these people follow this diet only when necessary.48 They are the Artabatitans, whose name would have appeared to the left of the inscription’s first word, just past where the map was cut. Above the elephant appears an inscription noting that the ‘Azazei’ (Azachaei) devour elephants they have hunted and captured (‘Azazei captos p. 510. For a useful overview of this phenomenon, Alexander H. Krappe, ‘The dog king’, Scandinavian Studies 17.4 (November 1942), 148–53. 44 On the etymology and possible indentifications of ‘catoblepas’, Lewis and Short, A Latin dictionary, Perseus digital library, Tufts University < http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper> [Accessed 2 August 2017]. 45 The etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, Oliver Berghof and Muriel Hall (Cambridge, 2006), p. 251. 46 See below and Martin Hellmann, Supertextus notarum tironianarum: http://www. martinellus.de/snt2/n/incipit.htm [Accessed 3 August 2017]. 47 Etymologies, trans. Barney et al., pp. 260–1. 48 Mommsen, Collecteana, p. 147.
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atibus elefatos vorant’).49 Appearing near the western end of this faunal frieze is the smiling ‘rinoseros’. Solinus tells us that it battles with elephants by attacking their vulnerable stomachs with its sharp horns.50 Above this animal is a legend that is difficult to read but that probably names the Cynocephali, the dog-headed people, another name for the nearby Cynomolgi.51 Beginning at the bottom or southwestern end of the Band of Others, we first meet these Cynomolgi. The illustration shows a Cynomolgus holding what seems to be a right human leg in his left hand. He grasps it by the quadriceps and has the knee in his mouth. In his right hand, he holds what looks like a winnowing fan. The inscription provides no information on the dog-head’s meal, revealing only that the Cynomolgi have the jaw and large mouth of a dog (‘Cynomolgi rictus hnt caninos et ora pminulla’). Above the Cynomolgus is the second monstrous representative, an Anthropophagus with wildly spikey hair, who faces west, seemingly looking at the hyena, whom we have met. This Anthropophagus holds a human leg in each hand. Like his near neighbor, he has a right knee in his mouth. Although his caption is redundant – it tells us that ‘Andropofagi humanas edut carnes’ (‘Anthropophagi eat human flesh’) – it does confirm that the flesh is human.52 The third representative, the Himantopede, appears just above, just east, of the Anthropophagus. The ink of his forearm and baculum, or walking stick, runs across one of the rows of stitching holes discussed above. He has dark, shoulder-length hair, the baculum in his left hand, and holds his right arm behind his back. His left leg is bent backward and his right foot extended. The upright baculum is between his knees, and he glides forward, as a ‘strap-footed’ walker would do.53 The Himantopede appears to be eyeing one of the huge black ants crossing a mountain crest in front of him. The caption tells us that these ‘formice magne qui aureos suant motes’ (‘large ants cobble together mountains of gold’). The Himantopede’s legend does not correctly describe him or his group. It tells us that ‘Himantopedes flexis nisibs crurium reput poci q incedunt’ (‘Himantopedes creep fluidly more than they walk’).54 The 49 The first part of what I transcribe as ‘venatibus’, following Solinus, is missing, and suggests a different spelling. 50 On the Hereford Map’s inscription from Solinus see Westrem, Hereford, p. 132; and Mommsen, Collecteana, p. 150. 51 I make out what might be ‘flumades … cinocephalo … vi…t’. The Hereford Map puts the Cynocephali in northern Europe. See Westrem, Hereford, p. 186. 52 The Hereford Map has the Anthropophagi’s legend next to ‘the boot-shaped Caspian Sea’. Westrem, Hereford, p. 70. 53 On ‘strap feet’, John Block Friedman, The monstrous races in medieval art and thought (Syracuse, NY, 2000), p. 16. 54 On ‘eastern’, Friedman, Monstrous, p. 16. The Hereford Map has the same inscription, although it also tells us that these people ‘move along with a glide rather than a step’. Westrem, Hereford, p. 379.
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baculum-carrying figure does move fluidly, almost skippingly, but he does not creep. The legend, then, is in part correct: his dominant characteristic is a fluid gait, and his image matches that part of his legend.55 The phrase about creeping along, albeit inaccurate, is significant, for it must refer to the Arthabotite representative in the frame above the Himantopede and to the unlabeled figure to his left. That figure, framed with the parandrus, is bent nearly all the way over, creeps across the ground and has no legend. The labelled Arthabotite has long hair like the Himantopede and a receding hairline, which makes him look older than his monstrous companions. He also creeps along on all fours. The inscription above his back describes the ‘Arthabotite pni ut pecora sine vestib vagantur Arthabotites’ (‘Arthabotite who wander about unclothed on all fours [like cattle]’). Behind him and below the inscription is what looks like a faint sketch of a broken quill nib. The most complex of the Others scenes and their longest accompanying legend are contained above the Arthabotite and below another complex, albeit incomplete, scene that includes an Antipode, a Blemmya and a ‘iaculus’. The band’s fifth representative is the ‘Trocodite’ (‘the Ethiopian Troglodyte’). He resembles the Himantopode and wields a fustis, a knobbed stick or cudgel, that is the same green as the Himantopede’s baculum. The Trocodites are cave dwellers and snake eaters, but most of all successful hunters. They hold this region, and speed is their weapon: so swift are they that they hunt by running their prey to ground (‘Trocodite hac[ti?] o[ii?] agi hanc tenent pte quo trocodite velocitate pollent ut feras cursu assequantur’).56 This explains why the fragment shows a cudgelwielding Trocodite with his left leg atop a (smiling) gazelle that seems to have gone down on all fours. The two are in a hilly brown landscape or on the spine of a mountain range. The Trocodite holds one of the gazelle’s horns in his left hand, poised to beat it with the fustis in his right. A smiling ‘sutalis’, perhaps a garter snake (Thamnopsis sirtalis), watches the action from what looks like a lower elevation. The serpent might smile because deer are serpents’ antagonists, as Isidore writes.57 On the other hand, the Hereford Map, which shows a Trocodite riding a gazelle while holding a horn in his right hand, follows Solinus in noting that the Trocodites ‘serpentes edunt’ (‘eat snakes’).58 The final two peoples, numbers six and seven on the fragment, inhabit its easternmost box, on the cut line. They seem to be in conversation, and there 55 Peter Barber writes that the ‘Archaliotitte’ is ‘wrongly named on the Duchy map’. The Archaliotitte is correctly named; it is the Himatopede who is partially mis-described. Barber, ‘Medieval maps’, p. 22. 56 I am unable to make sense of the first part of the legend’s second word. Solinus refers to the ‘Ichthyophagorum nationibus’ in one of his passages on the Trocodite, but inserting the Ichthyophagi here seems implausible. Mommsen, Collecteana, p. 209. 57 Etymologies, trans. Barney et al., p. 248. 58 Westrem, Hereford, pp. 356–7.
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is a legend above them, which is all but illegible. The final word is ‘digitos’, Latin for ‘finger’, but also for ‘toe of an animal’.59 It must have the latter sense here and seems to belong to the figure on the left. He faces south, right hand raised, index finger pointing upward to indicate speech. His feet are turned backward, and so he must be an Antipode.60 To his right is a Blemmya, the headless humanoid with a ‘pectoral face’, that is, his face in his chest.61 To his immediate left a tree rises perpendicularly (to him) from the oceanic shore. Wrapped around the tree is a ‘iaculus’, a tree serpent that launches itself at its prey from its perch. This ‘iaculus’, which has ears and looks just like the ‘sutalis’ below it in the Trocodite frame, looks to the east, mouth open, and ignores the Antipode and Blemmya. This ocular journey shows that the Duchy Map would have been at least as epistemologically busy as the later Hereford analog. The fragment, less than a quarter of the full map’s area, teems with life: eleven described fauna – plus the Trocodite’s gazelle – and twelve representatives of monstrous peoples, or thirteen, counting the unlabeled Arthabotite, for a total population of twenty-five. This survey of life forms illustrates the conventional idiosyncracy of mappa mundi via juxtaposition to the Hereford Map, from which it differs in this area (and others).62 The Duchy Map includes the Artobatitae and the Serbotae, which do not appear on the Hereford Map. It also includes the Psambaris and Cynomolgi, who do not appear under those names on the Hereford Map. The latter shows the Cynomolgi (Cynocephali) and the Ambari, which is an alternate spelling of Psambaris, but it describes them as eight-toed Antipodes. The Hereford Map locates the Cynocephali in northern Europe and the Anthropophagi next to the Caspian Sea; the fragment locates both races in Africa. It includes the parandrus, the hyena and the locusts, which do not appear on the Hereford Map. This is not surprising, since their sources are equally inconsistent. Solinus plundered but did not replicate Pliny’s Historia naturalis, and Isidore made frequent use of but did not replicate Solinus’ Collectearum for his Etymologiae. These inconsistencies and representational differences undoubtedly index authorial, patronal and design preferences and might lead to questions about placement, use and audience. EXTRA-CIRCULAR ELEMENTS: ROUNDEL ESCHATOLOGY Moving outside the Duchy Map’s circumference, we see that it was built on an eschatological foundation, like the Psalter Map and Hereford Map, but also like earlier and later members of its genre, respectively, the Sawley On ‘digitos’, Lewis and Short, Latin dictionary. Haslam incorrectly identifies the Antipode as a Psylli; the latter do not have rearwardpointing feet. See his ‘Fragment’, p. 41. 61 The Hereford Map tells us that the Blemmyae have their mouths and eyes in their chests (‘Blemee: os et oculos habent in pectore’). See Westrem, Hereford, p. 382. 62 In this closing comparison, I have relied on a high-resolution digital image of the Hereford Map and Westrem’s indices and commentaries. 59
60
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Map (Plate III) and the Ebstorf Map. At the bottom of the fragment are the components of that foundation: one partial and four complete Agesof-Man roundels, set in pairs.63 Each pair constitutes a chapter in the story of a universalized, allegorical life – perhaps the most spiritually anxious chapters of life for a medieval Christian. There were multiple variants on the number of Ages, of life stages, running from three to twelve. They flowed from various sources and often were connected to theories about particular numerals. For example, the tripartite version of youth, maturity and old age owes much to Aristotle; the quadripartite schema harkens back to Pythagoras’ conception of the tetrad as universal organizing principle. Augustine’s reading of Genesis formed the basis for the six-age variation, and the seven-age division again looks to Pythagoras, more specifically, to ‘his faith in the power of the number seven, … which gives shape to the world and its parts’. The ten-stage scheme stems from interest in the decimal system.64 There were ‘a small number of pictorial “Ages of Woman” schemes’, but the Ages of Man version was the norm.65 Generally, the dialogue is between a man and a woman: she poses a question and he answers. We see this arrangement in the De Lisle Hours (1316–31), the verse text of which has striking similarities to the map fragment’s.66 Its arrangement breaks with the dialogic convention in its final roundel, where the man becomes the interrogator – albeit via a rhetorical question – and an asexual ‘Angelus’ the respondent.67 In each Duchy Map pair, the figures with whom the man speaks change. His first conversation is with a rather stern looking nun, his second and final one with Angelus. The fragment’s roundels and De Lisle Hours’ initials also follow convention in having the man ‘bear attributes as well as … speech-scrolls’, while the woman ‘holds nothing but the banderole [speech scroll] containing her portion of the dialogue’.68 His symbolic attributes illustrate each scene’s salvific significance. As the viewer/reader moves from left to right (in the direction of western reading), the male 63 The touchstone is John Anthony Burrow, The ages of man: a study in medieval writing and thought (Oxford, 1986). See also Kathryn Ann Smith, Art, identity and devotion in fourteenth-century England: three women and their books of hours (Toronto, 2003), p. 60. 64 For the variations listed here, Silvana Seidel Menchi, ‘The girl and the hourglass: periodization of women’s lives in Western preindustrial societies’, Time, space, and women’s lives in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anne Jacobson Shutte, Thomas Kuehn and Silvana Seidel Menchi (Kirksville, MO, 2001), pp. 41–74, here pp. 45–7. 65 Smith, Devotion, p. 60. 66 The Hours are New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS G.50. The book’s illuminations and curator’s notes are online: ‘Medieval & Renaissance manuscripts, book of hours, England, 1316–31’, The Morgan Library & Museum: http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/ thumbs/76993 [Accessed 6 August 2017]. The earlier foundational assessment of the De Lisle Hours is Lucy Freeman Sandler, ‘New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS G. 50’, Gothic manuscripts, pp. 2.83–84. For more on the De Lisle Hours, see chapter one in this Companion. 67 On angels’ asexuality, see Florentino Garcia Martinez, Between philology and theology: contributions to the study of ancient Jewish interpretation (Leiden, 2012), pp. 20–1. 68 Smith, Devotion, p. 60.
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figure ages and his attributes change. Like his Ages analogs, he stands as an Everyman figure and his didactic tale, like Everyman’s, as a memento mori. The extant Duchy roundels encourage a tentative reconstruction of their fully articulated narrative. We cannot say for sure what the roundel program was, because we cannot say with certainty how many there were. Nonetheless, looking to the De Lisle Hours provides a clue.69 There we find a very similar – in some lines verbatim – versified, Anglo-Norman dialogue between a female questioner and a male respondent. Over sixtythree folios, the Hours depicts eight Ages conversations in individual historiated initials: ‘Infantia’ (‘Infancy’, fol. 19r), ‘Pueritia’ (‘Childhood’, fol. 29r), ‘Adolescentia’ (‘Adolescence’, fol. 50r), ‘Virilitas’ (‘Manhood’, fol. 58v), ‘Gravitas’ (‘Reverent seriousness’, fol. 64r), ‘Senectus’ (‘Old Age’, fol. 68r), ‘Decrepitas’ (‘Decrepitude’, fol. 72r) and ‘Moriens’ (‘Dying’, fol. 81r).70 Had the Duchy fragment designer used this schema, there might have been sixteen roundels in eight pairs.71 However, since the extant four-plus roundels extend nearly half way across the bas-de-page, there would not have been enough room for sixteen. The prominent inscription just above ‘Homo mortus’ and ‘Angelus’ helps here. The text directs readers to Isidore’s Etymologies, in which he describes humanity’s six ages.72 Considering the ubiquity of Isidore’s work, especially as a source for mapmakers; his choice of six ages (perhaps from Augustine, whose work ‘he ransacked thoroughly’); the amount of space on the map; and possible articulations, twelve roundels in six pairs seems the best choice.73 The fragment’s bilingualism, like the Hours’ and Hereford Map’s, signals an awareness of fluency levels and audiences. Its texts, except for the banderoles, are in Latin. The scrolls unfurl in Anglo-Norman – not Old French – octosyllabic rhymed couplets, the conventional literary meter, especially of chivalric lays and romances. This is not surprising, given that Anglo-Norman was the spoken language of court. Its use on the fragment could indicate the presence of bilingual Bonhommes and aristocratic visitors, like their founder, Edmund of Cornwall. The Anglo-Norman banderoles also indicate English provenance and ownership, as does the 69 See Morgan Library, ‘Medieval & Renaissance’. Folio numbers here are from the curator’s notes and the online, thumbnail images of illuminations. 70 Smith, Devotion, 60–1. The ‘thresholds’ for each age varied widely. For instance, old age, Senectus, could begin anywhere between 35 and 72. See Roberta Gilchrist, Medieval life: archaeology and the life course (Woodbridge, 2012); on the number of ages and thresholds, p. 37. 71 Marcia Kupfer suggests the same number and offers fourteen as an alternative number. I had not seen her important book until after writing this chapter. See her Art and optics in the Hereford Map: an English mappa mundi, c. 1300 (New Haven and London, 2016), pp. 89–91. See also Naomi Reed Kline, Maps of medieval thought: the Hereford paradigm (Woodbridge, 2001), p. 238. 72 Etymologies, trans. Barney et al., pp. 241–43. 73 Etymologies, trans. Barney et al., p. 15. In verses on Seville’s cathedral library, Isidore wrote that ‘However pleasing may be the wisdom of books by many authors, / If Augustine is there, he himself will suffice you’. See ibid., p. 17.
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map’s use of the Tironian note for ‘et’ (‘and’). This abbreviation looks like an Arabic 7 and appears twice, once in the River Nile inscription (‘Fluvius nyl cocdrillos 7 ypotamos gignit’), and again in the incomplete, because cut off, legend naming the Agriophagi, who only eat panther and lion meat, and have a king with one eye set in his forehead: ‘[Agrio]phagi qui solas pantera 7 leonu carnes [edunt] regie aeditu cuius in fronte unus est ocls’. The legend aligns very closely to the one on the Hereford Map; both use the Tironian et and are very close to Solinus.74 The fragment’s roundels are, from left to right: (1) ‘Senectus’ (‘Old Age’), a partial roundel missing its partner; (2) ‘Vesa’ (‘Evening’) and (3) ‘Decrepita etas’ (‘Decrepitude’); (4) ‘Homo mortus’ (‘Dead Man’) and (5) ‘Angls’ (‘Angel’). As his pair’s right-side figure, Senectus stands alone, holding a book and looking earnestly to his right (the viewer’s left), probably toward a female character. Next, Vespera, on the left, questions Decrepita aetas, on the viewer’s right, who responds. Then, Homo mortus, on the left, questions Angelus, on the viewer’s right, who responds. The green-ringed Vespera roundel with its stern nun is paired with the tan Decrepita aetas roundel and its elderly bearded man leaning on the handle of his crutch. Vespera points her right index finger upward, signifying speech – and perhaps toward what was a centered Jerusalem and/or a Doom on the map’s far eastern edge. She holds a banderole in her left hand that asks of Decrepita aetas, ‘Ke signefie ta potente?’ (‘What is the meaning of your crutch?’).75 He faces her, leans on the crutch’s crosspiece, which is all that remains visible, and holds a scroll in his left hand. Through it, he informs her that, ‘La mort me haste p sa rente’ (‘Death hurries me along to the Day of Reckoning’), rhyming his ‘sa rente’ with her ‘potente’.76 The crutch signifies his physical age but also his spiritual infirmity and unreadiness, as the items he carries in his next appearance reveal. Homo mortus faces right in his green roundel and assumes an addorsed posture relative to his younger self, thereby emphasizing the episodic nature of the roundels’ narrative. He wears only what looks like a skull cap and asks, ‘Ha, Deu, ke frai averai salu?’ (‘Oh, God, [at] what cost will I have
74 Solinus provides the verb ‘edunt’ and gives ‘praediti’ instead of the fragment’s ‘aeditu’; the Hereford Map gives neither ‘praediti’ nor ‘aeditum’. Solinus writes that the Agriophagi ‘solas pantherarum et leonum carnes edunt, rege praediti, cuius in fronte oculus unus est’. Mommsen, Collecteana, p. 131. For the Hereford image and inscription, Westrem, Hereford, pl. 11 and pl. 10 B. Westrem does not mention the Tironian note, p. 386. The Bayeux Tapestry, which was probably made at Canterbury c. 1080, also uses this abbreviation. 75 Old French for ‘crutch’ is ‘potence’, which would break the rhyme with ‘rente’ on Decrepitude’s banderole. I am indebted to Christopher Callahan, Professor of French, Department of French and Italian Languages and Literatures, Illinois Wesleyan University, for his expert and enthusiastic help in transcribing and translating the roundels’ speech scrolls. Any errors of interpretation are mine. 76 The De Lisle Hours gives, ‘Mort me aste pur sa rente!’ (‘Because Death is pressing me for final payment!’). Smith, Devotion, pp. 60–1.
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salvation?’).77 He leans to the viewer’s right and carries a wheatsheaf along with what looks like a bowl or an ark filled with flames. The wheatsheaf alludes to Matthew’s ‘The Parable of the Sower’, ‘The Parable of the Weeds in the Wheat’, and to Jesus’ explicatio textuum.78 Applying the explication makes Homo mortus the allegorical farmer who sowed his seed on rocky or thorny ground and not in good soil, resulting in perishable wheat/faith. As Jesus explains to the crowd around him, Homo mortus is one of those who ‘hears the word, but the cares of the world and the delight in riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful’.79 Jesus’ explication helped animate early medieval conceptualizations of purgatory as a fiery realm and helps us see the reason for Homo mortus carrying the flames of purgation.80 After all, ‘just as the weeds [sins] are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age’.81 His final ‘age’ is closed, and he has suffered purgation, thereby expiating the venial sin(s) for which he had not done penance. Had he not done so, he would not be moving to his heavenly invitation from Angelus. The divine messenger raises its index finger like Vespera to the same communicative and symbolic ends. As the banderole reveals, Angelus says, ‘Vien ça, pr doute Deus tu as veucu’ (‘Come hither; you have lived in fear of God’), rhyming his ‘salu’ with the angelic ‘veucu’. Rather remarkably, we see in this final pair of roundels the condensation of complex socio-religious and judicial customs dating back some 1,300 years. Between his old age and death, the male character was judged unfit to enter heaven and in need of purgation, the first of two judgements that every medieval Christian soul would undergo: one at the time of death and a second at the end of time. In between – in the eschatological interlude, as it were – every human soul becomes involved in complex judicial proceedings concerning the possible mitigation of penalties, the possible commutation of sentences, subject to the influence of a variety of factors. Belief in Purgatory therefore requires the projection into the afterlife of a highly sophisticated legal and penal system.82
77 The Hours gives ‘Cheitif dolent, or es tu mort’ (‘Poor wretch, are you now dead?’) and his response: ‘Tretus morum, f[e]blis e fort!’ (‘Weak or strong, we all shall die!’). Smith, Devotion, pp. 60–1. 78 Matthew 13.1–9 and 13.23. 79 Matthew 13.23. 80 For other intimations of fiery purgation, 1 Corinthians 3.13, Hebrews 12, 1 Peter 1 and Matthew 3. The Oxford English dictionary notes that by 1190 ‘in British and continental sources’ various spellings of ‘purgatore’ denote a ‘place of temporary suffering for the souls of the dead’. Also Jacques le Goff, The birth of purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1984). For purgatory’s origins and an updating of le Goff, Isabel Moreira, Heaven’s purge: purgatory in late Antiquity (Oxford, 2010). 81 Matthew 13.40. 82 Le Goff, Birth, p. 5.
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Ubiquitous in other arts, but uniquely on an Anglo-French mappa mundi, we see the heavenly ‘judicial proceedings’ enacted on the Hereford Map’s Doom, where Anglo-Norman is the banderole language – and thus the language of heaven. There mapgazers saw where souls like Homo mortus’ go – or do not go – after expiating all sin, mortal and venial. The Duchy fragment does not illustrate Homo mortus’ progress from sinner to saved. However, its foundational Ages of Man narrative’s adjacency to the orbis terrarum – that epitome of human history – would have inspired clerical and secular viewers to contemplate and contextualize their readiness to join the afterlife in Anglo-Norman heaven. They might contemplate the memento mori message before embarking on an ocular journey over the map. Or, they might flip this sequence and ‘travel’ before contemplating their spiritual fitness. Either way, the possibility is that a viewer would have little to fear, like his or her roundel döppelganger, when ‘La mort me haste pour sa rente’ (‘Death hurries me along to the Day of Reckoning’). The miracle of salvation would trump any mundane wonder on the Duchy Map, itself a marvel with and because of its eschatological potential.83 EXTRA-CIRCULAR INSCRIPTIONS, ISIDORIAN AND AGRIMENSORIAL The fragment’s roundels are situated in a double-ruled border area directly below two carefully situated and clearly written texts in the same Gothic textualis quadrata book script that describes the winds. The bottom three lines address the reader and obliquely invoke Isidore of Seville, connecting the map and its depiction of the ecumene to his description of it in the Etymologies, ‘arguably the most influential book, after the Bible, in the learned world of the Latin West for nearly a thousand years’.84 The lines repeat the prefatory section from the thirteenth book, ‘On the Cosmos and its Parts’ (‘De mundo et partibus’): Ethimologias eorum causas cognoscat. In hic vero libello quasi mundi brevis tabella quasdam celi causas situs terraram et maris spacia annotavimus, ut in modico lector ea percurrat et compendiosa brevitate.85 83 For these reasons, I disagree with Peter Barber, who writes that ‘[e]ven the roundels on the Duchy map, with their depiction of man’s resurrection, suggest that its decorative setting may have been less bleak than the Hereford Map’s with its emphasis on death and the Last Judgement’. Barber, ‘Medieval maps’, 21. The Hereford Map’s rider and ‘Passe avant’ injunction in its lower right corner fulfill a similar purpose. On the optics at play there, see chapter ten in this Companion. 84 Etymologies, trans. Barney et al., p. 3. 85 My unusual formatting attempts to replicate the original. On the history of ‘brevis tabula’, see Marcia Kupfer, ‘Traveling the mappa mundi: readerly transport from Cassiodorus to Petrarch’, Maps and travel in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period: knowledge, imagination, and visual culture, ed. Ingrid Baumgärtner, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby and Katrin Kogman-Appel (Berlin and Boston, 2018), pp. 17–36, here p. 30.
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In this little book I note down, as on a small tablet/painting of the world, some of the causes of the heavens, the situation of lands, [and] the breadth of the seas, so that the reader can run through them quickly with inclusive brevity. [Doing so,] one may know their causes, their etymologies.86
The text seems to have been reordered when transcribed so that what appears as the first sentence on the map is the conclusion of the passage, which reads In hoc vero libello quasi in quadam brevi tabella quasdam caeli causas situsque terrarum et maris spatia adnotavimus, ut in modico lector ea percurrat, et conpendiosa brevitate etymologias eorum causasque cognoscat.87
We can only speculate about the reason(s) behind this manipulation, but it clearly emphasizes the raison d’être of the Etymologies; and, given that Latin is an inflected language, Isidore’s meaning is still clear. The adjustment also foregrounds the map’s epistemological importance. The map’s designer followed his literary contemporaries by citing a textual authority (and modern Church Father) to burnish the authority of his ‘small tablet/painting of the world’. By doing so, he also highlighted the complementarity of his map and Isidore’s Etymologies, to say nothing of the other texts he consulted – and, by extension, those that future users paired with his map. Although we cannot say that the map indicated ‘the causes of the heavens’, given its condition, we can say that it presented a word-andimage imago mundi that allowed the reader/viewer to travel vicariously in the way Cassiodorus (c. 490–585) recommended monks do at Vivarium: by pairing their books with maps, so as to create their own mental mappae mundi, whose ecumene they could then traverse at will.88 Readers of this Companion will know that the Hereford Map also names one of its auctores and his influential book. Also in its lower right corner, but a little farther upward (eastward) than on the Duchy fragment, is the inscription ‘Descripcio Orosii, De Ornesta mundi, sicut interius For a different translation of the preface, Etymologies, trans. Barney et al., p. 271. In their edition, books thirteen and fourteen appear on pp. 27–300. I am grateful to Fr Hugh Feiss, OSB, Monastery of the Ascension in Jerome, Idaho, for his wisdom and advice on this passage. Any faults in its transcription or translations are mine. 87 Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, ed. W.M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911), Liber XIII, no p. 88 ‘Cosmographiae quoque notitiam vobis percurrendam esse non immerito suademus, ut loca singula, quae in libris sanctis legitis, in quae parte mundi sint posita evidenter cognoscere debeatis’. Cassiodorus, institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum, 2 vols, trans. and intro. Wolfgang Bürsgens (Freiburg and New York, 2003), p. 248. Translation from Cassiodorus, Institutions of divine and secular learning and on the soul, trans. James W. Halporn, intro. Mark Vesey (Liverpool, 2004), p. 157. See chapter two in this Companion for a discussion of map-and-book use by monastics who traveled mentally and a discussion of this passage. See also Kupfer, ‘Traveling’. 86
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ostenditur’ (‘Orosius’s account, De Ornesta mundi, as is shown within’).89 Paulus Orosius’ Historiarum adversum paganos (History against the pagans, c. 417) was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages and was almost certainly a source for the eighth-century Albi Map, the eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon Map, the twelfth-century Sawley Map, two of Matthew Paris’ thirteenth-century maps, and, of course, the Hereford Map.90 The Hereford’s short statement on map-and-book interplay does not address the reader, as the Duchy fragment’s Isidorian passage does. However, the Hereford’s much-discussed invocation to pray for the soul of Richard Haldingham does so explicitly. This Anglo-Norman text calls on the intercession of viewers who process the map in multiple ways; that is, of ‘Tuz ki cest estoire ont / Ou oyront ou lirront ou veront’ (‘all who have this history – or who shall hear, or read, or see it’). These two lines show the designer’s anticipation of viewers who were preliterate and had the map ventriloquized for them by a cathedral custos, or who were literate and/or multilingual. The Duchy fragment also calls visual attention to Isidore via a lavishly decorated capital ‘I’ and a wittily historiated lower-case ‘n’. These letters appear in the second line of the above Etymologies quotation. Of particular interest is the second letter of ‘In’, the line’s first word. The ‘n’ comprises a human head, with a punctus on its left cheek, attached to an elongated rectangular body decorated with and shaped by geometric designs. Rather impishly, this head wears what looks like an early version of the miter, the ‘tall deeply-cleft headdress worn by a bishop’ that had ‘the shape of a pointed arch’.91 The early eleventh-century antecedent to this episcopal headgear was called the mitra clericalis, a skullcap with a band around the base like this figure wears. The mitra clericalis was worn contemporaneously with the more familiar pointed miter, which has decorative bands that form an inverted ‘T’ or tau cross.92 As on the mitra, the crossbar of the ‘T’ encircles the miter at the forehead, and its vertical bar runs up from the center of the forehead to the arch’s apex. This is what we see on the Duchy fragment’s figure and is the inverted version of the globus cruciger, the cross-bearing globe we see in ubiquitous medieval images of Christ-inMajesty/Judgement, where he (or a royal figure) holds it in the left hand.93 Westrem, Hereford, p. 7. On Orosius and these maps, see Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, pp. 300–1. 91 ‘Mitre’, Oxford English dictionary. See, for example, the Westminster Mitre (Westminster.1; c. 1160–1220) in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. This is the museum’s earliest example of Opus Anglicanum and is on display in the Medieval & Renaissance exhibit, Room 8, The William and Eileen Ruddock Gallery, case 6. Two online images at ‘Search the Collections’, ‘Miter’, V&A: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O119272/ mitre-unknown/ [Accessed 6 August 2017]. 92 Herbert Norris, Church vestments: their origin and development (New York, 1950; repub. New York, 2002), p. 99. 93 On the potent salvific significance of this inversion, see chapter ten in this Companion and Kupfer, Art. 89
90
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Surely, given that Isidore was the bishop of Seville, leading off the quotation from his Etymologies with this whimsical image was not coincidental. At the risk of over-reading, we might even see the inverted ‘T’ also alluding to the tripartite, Isidorian division of the orbis terrarum, specifically to the Etymologies’ fourteenth book, where simple T-O maps often appear.94 It is safe to assume that the Duchy Map was a much later, more elaborate version of that early cartographical concept, considering the many structural similarities it has with the Hereford Map, and therefore to see the Duchy Map in toto as the mitered figure’s referent. The fragment’s other extra-circular text comprises the seventeen lines above the Etymologies quotation and closely ties it to the Hereford Map.95 In its lengthiest inscription, the map borrows from the Cosmographia of Pseudo-Aethicus (late eighth century) to record the results of Julius Caesar’s commissioning geographers to conduct a survey of the earth:96 Orientalis plaga / anticodoxo [sic] dimensa / habet maria septem. / Insulas novem. Montes / triginta unum. Provincias / decem. Oppida sexeginta sex. / Flumina viginti duo. Gentes / quinquaginta unum. A Polliclito / meridiana pars dimensa habet / maria duo. Insulas septemdecim. / Montes sex, provincias duode / cim. Oppida sexaginta quatuor / Flumina duo. / Gentesque plurimas. A / Theodoto septemtrionalis et occidentalis pars dimensa / habet maria undecim. Insulas quadraginta. Montes vig / inti duo. Provincias viginta quatuor. Oppida centum / viginti quinque. Flumina viginti unum. Gentesque mult[a]s.97 The eastern part region,/surveyed by Nicodoxus,/has seven seas;/ nine islands; mountains,/twenty-one; provinces,/ten; cities, sixtysix;/rivers, twenty-two; peoples,/fifty-one. By Policlitus/surveyed, the southern part has/two seas; islands, seventeen;/mountains, six; provinces, twelve;/ cities, sixty-four;/rivers, two; and many peoples./Surveyed by Teodoxus, the western and northern part/ has eleven seas; islands, forty; mountains,/twenty-two; provinces, twenty-four; cities, one hundred/ twenty-five; rivers, twenty-one, and nationalities, many.98
94 On Isidore and T-O maps, Evelyn Edson, Mapping time and space: how medieval mapmakers viewed their world (London, 1997), pp. 36–50, here p. 47. See also chapter four in this Companion. 95 On this passage, see Kupfer, ‘Traveling’, pp. 30–2. 96 On Pseudo-Aethicus Ister as author, see Nicolet and Gautier-Dalche, ‘[Q]uatre sages’, 160–1. For a critical edition and translation of the Cosmographia and more on PseudoAethicus, see Michael W. Herren, The cosmography of Aethicus Ister: edition, translation, and commentary (Turnhout, 2011). 97 My transcription relies in minor ways on Gautier-Dalché’s in ‘[Q]uatre sages’, 209. The translation is my own. 98 Diagonals indicate line breaks on the Duchy Map. Haslam gives ‘southern’ for Policlitus and Theodotus, ‘Fragment’, pp. 36 and 40.
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The mandate for this description is first mentioned in Luke: ‘Factum est autem in diebus illis exiit edictum a Caesare Augusto ut describeretur universus orbis’ (‘In those days an edict from Caesar Augustus went out that all the world should be described’).99 The Hereford Map records this passage almost verbatim, just above its figure of an imperial pope handing three agrimensores, or surveyors, what looks like a papal bull.100 The Hereford Map records the names of the surveyors and the areas they surveyed in the borders of its inner pentagonal frame.101 These statements run on either side of the map’s apex and are split by ‘M’ and ‘O’, the first two letters of MORS (‘death’). The ‘R’ in the lower right corner touches the neck of the horse on which a man rides away from the world.102 The ‘S’ in the lower left comes between the image of Augustus Caesar wearing the papal triregnum and his surveyors. Death’s intrusion into human affairs here points to the folly of attending too much to terrestrial matters and works in concert with the message implied in the horseman scene, which is also conveyed by the Duchy fragment’s roundel memento mori. And so, the ‘questions’ posed to the agrimensores on the c. 1300 Hereford Map are ‘answered’ on the c. 1286 Duchy fragment. We might wonder if the Hereford designer knew the Duchy Map and sought to illustrate the impetus for the initiative on which it reports. We do know that bishops Thomas Cantilupe (1218–82) and Richard Swinfield (d. 1317) of Hereford knew Edmund of Cornwall (1249–1300), who likely commissioned the Duchy Map, as we shall see. Regardless, the ultimate significance of the fragment’s Isidorian inscription is that it works with the adjacent quotation from the Etymologies to situate itself within and at the leading edge of a lengthy theographical tradition. By doing so, the Duchy fragment confidently trumpets the eschatological authority of its inscribed and cited sources, of itself and of its commissioner.
EDMUND OF ALMAIN AND THE DUCHY OF CORNWALL MAP In 2001 Nicholas Vincent wrote that Edmund of Almain ‘style[d] himself “Edmund Earl of Cornwall, Son of Richard the King of Germany of Luke 2.1–3. The Latin verb, describere, indexes multiple representational mediums, as it can mean ‘sketch’, ‘draw’, ‘delineate’, ‘depict’, ‘describe’ or ‘represent’. All apply to these drawn, painted and lettered mappae mundi. Lewis and Short, Latin dictionary. For the Greek, see Westrem, Hereford, p. 8. 100 Nicolet and Gautier Dalché write about a similar image in a miniature of Augustus with his right hand gloved and his left holding the globus cruciger with the names of the landmasses on it. The image is encircled by the passage from Luke in a manuscript of Lambert of St Omer’s Liber floridus. ‘[Q]uatre sages’, 203–4. 101 Westrem, Hereford, pp. 3 and 11. 102 For more on this image, see chapter ten in this Companion. On the triregnum, Lord Twining, European regalia (London, 1967), pp. 113–17. 99
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Renowned Memory”, … as a reminder of the throne and the kingdom that might have been his’.103 Recognizing what might be anachronistic psychoanalysis, I quote Vincent’s observation on the son of Richard (1209– 72), earl of Cornwall, King of the Romans, and brother of King Henry III of England (1207–72), because it provides a plausible entrée into considering Edmund’s motives for commissioning the map. Edmund and his family lived in an age of royal Anglo-French spectacle. His uncle, Henry III, engaged in something of an architectural and relic competition with Louis IX of France (1214–70), later St Louis. Louis built Sainte-Chapelle (1238–48) as a glorious reliquary within his palace complex, a building that looked back to Charlemagne’s chapel in Aachen/ Aix-la-Chapelle (792–805) and was designed to house and display Louis’ Passion relics, which included the Crown of Thorns, pieces of the True Cross, and a portion of the Holy Blood. Henry’s rebuilding of Westminster Abbey, begun four years before Edmund’s birth, was a response to SainteChapelle, and his acquisition and gift of a vial of the Holy Blood to the abbey on 13 October 1247 a response to Louis’ gift of his Passion relics to Sainte-Chapelle in March 1241.104 Monumental mappae mundi were part of this royal spectacle. Henry III and his son and successor, Edward I, Edmund’s cousin, commissioned and displayed them.105 As Tancred Borenius writes, ‘considerable interest attaches to the paintings of geographical character’ in this family.106 Few, if any, missing maps of this period have garnered as much attention as what was likely a mural mappa mundi (c. 1236–63) in Henry’s Painted Chamber at Westminster, the palace he erected on the purported death site of Edward the Confessor, whom Henry especially revered. Court records from 1318/19 also name a mappa mundi room in the palace, but provide few details on its
103 Nicholas Vincent, The Holy Blood: King Henry III and the Westminster Blood relic (Cambridge, 2001), p. 150. Edmund became heir apparent, ‘of Almain’, in 1271, after his cousins, Guy and Simon de Montfort murdered his elder brother, Henry, during mass at the Chiesa di San Silvestro, Viterbo, Italy. 104 For a deeply researched and compelling explication of this rivalry, see Vincent, Holy Blood, here p. 9. Henry’s Holy Blood procession on 13 October 1247 was planned to take place on the anniversary of the translation of Edward’s remains to Westminster Abbey, where Henry was buried. He intended his rebuilt abbey to become England’s royal mausoleum. 105 The references to Henry’s Westminster map are self-perpetuating, repetitive and too numerous to catalogue here. See the matter-of-fact references in R. Allen Brown, H.M. Colvin and A.J. Taylor, The history of the king’s works, 6 vols (London, 1962), p. 1.497. For a recent use of Henry’s map as exemplar, Peter Barber, ‘The Duchy of Cornwall fragment, c. 1290?’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 19–22, here p. 22. On Edward I’s map(s), P.D.A. Harvey’s ‘Maps of the world in the medieval English royal wardrobe’, Foundations of medieval scholarship: records edited in honour of David Crook, ed. Paul Brand and Sean Cunningham (York, 2008), pp. 51–5. 106 Tancred Borenius, ‘The cycle of images in the palaces and castles of Henry III’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 6 (1943), 40–50, here 46.
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character, location or whether it and the Chamber were the same.107 Henry’s cartographical images were not confined to London. The king ordered the sheriff of Southampton to have painted ‘a certain city … above the door’ to the queen’s chamber at Winchester Palace. In his Great Hall there, Henry had Rota fortunae (Wheel of Fortune, 1235–36) and mappa mundi (1239) murals at either end.108 The Rota was in the east gable over the king’s bench and table, the mappa mundi in the west gable facing him.109 For purposes of (literal) orientation, we can envision a cathedral floor plan, with Henry’s table as the ‘altar’ with the Rota above it and in the east gable the pediment’s vertical face adorned with a mappa mundi. ‘[A]t least ten’ of the Great Wardrobe documents from the time of Edward I’s reign (1296–1306) ‘refer to a world map’.110 In fact, they name two, perhaps three maps, one of which – a ‘pannus’ or cloth map – was given to Edward. This map would have been portable, and it is easy enough to envision Edward traveling with it from residence to residence, no doubt for self-aggrandizing display like his father’s.111 Another notice of a royal map appears in a Privy Wardrobe account of 1341, during the reign of Edward III (1312–77). This map, along with clothing and household items, was given over to ‘the king’s use’ in 1338.112 As a member of this cartographical royal family – as member of Edward I’s regency council (1279) and twice regent of England (1282–84, 1286–89) – Edmund of Cornwall spent considerable time in London and Winchester, where he would have seen his uncle’s mappae mundi and, it is safe to assume, those owned by his cousin, Edward I. He might have even ventured into Westminster’s ‘mappa mundi room’. As heir to Richard’s vast holdings, Edmund was, like his father, the wealthiest lay baron in England and among the richest men in Europe. He became Edward I’s main financier, granting and loaning the king £18,000 between c. 1272 and 1297, much of which went toward his Welsh wars.113 Edmund also maintained a profound devotion to English saints, especially his namesake, Edmund of Abingdon (c. 1175–1240); St Thomas Cantilupe of Hereford (c. 1218–82), with whom he was on Edward I’s regency council and 107 Kew, The National Archives (TNA), E 101/468/20, mem. 19 dorse, and Christopher Wilson, ‘A monument to St Edward the Confessor: Henry III’s great chamber at Westminster and its paintings’, Westminster II. The art, architecture and archaeology of the Royal Palace, ed. Warwick Rodwell and Tim Tatton-Brown (Abingdon-on-Thames, 2015), pp. 152–86, here p. 178, n. 24, on the TNA document. 108 Thomas Hudson Turner, Some account of domestic architecture in England, from the Conquest to the end of the thirteenth century (Oxford and London, 1851), pp. 209–10. 109 For Henry’s Westminster map and Great Chamber program, Allen Brown et al., King’s works, p. 1.497; for the Winchester map and Great Hall program, pp. 1.127, 2.859 and 2.861. 110 Harvey, ‘Wardrobe,’ 51–2. 111 Harvey, ‘Wardrobe’, 52. 112 Harvey, ‘Wardrobe’, 53–4. 113 On Richard and Edmund’s wealth, Nicholas Vincent, ‘Edmund of Almain, second earl of Cornwall (1249–1300)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (2004): https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/8505 [Accessed 6 June 2019]; and L.M. Midgley, Ministers’ accounts of the earldom of Cornwall, 1296–1297, 2 vols (London, 1942–45), vol. 1, pp. ix–x.
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whose miracle Edmund witnessed on Pentecost in his Collegiate Chapel of St Nicholas at the castle at Wallingford; and the popular saint, Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln (c. 1170–1253), whose canonization Edmund failed to move forward, despite his appealing to Pope Honorius IV (1210–87).114 Edmund was devoted to Frideswide of Oxford (c. 680–727) and Robert of Knaresborough (1160–1218) and founded, enlarged and/or supported eighteen religious houses and ten clerical orders. He also built an oratory in honor of Cantilupe in Hambleden, Buckinghamshire, where the bishop was born and miracles attested, just over twenty miles from Edmund’s castle at Berkhamsted. Edmund was also a collector; he owned Cantilupe’s heart and hair shirt and, like St Louis and his uncle, Henry III, a specimen of the Holy Blood, which he procured in Germany.115 Edmund arranged for a portion of his Blood relic to be interred with his own heart and viscera, along with Cantilupe’s heart, at Ashridge. As Vincent writes, ‘Edmund of Cornwall had a vested interest in fostering a cult of the Holy Blood, one of the few material objects to keep alive the memory of his father’s links with the Holy Roman Empire and the throne of Charlemagne’.116 The earl is best known for rebuilding and enlarging his father’s Hailes Abbey, with its rich wall paintings. Edmund rebuilt the east end after Hailes suffered a terrible fire in 1271, the year before his father and Henry III died, adding an apse modeled on his uncle’s Westminster Abbey.117 He endowed Hailes with a portion of his Blood relic, which linked him to Charlemagne and thus four hundred years of legends, and to imperial owners of Blood relics across Europe.118 Thanks to Edmund’s enhancing Hailes’ endowment, the abbey became ‘one of the principal pilgrimage centers in the West of England, supported by a stream of papal indulgences’, and was remembered by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) and Margery Kempe (c. 1373–1439).119 Most germane to map historians is Edmund’s elaborately decorated College of Bonhommes. Records tell us that he decorated his college with ‘excellent good old paintings’, and that its cloister boasted ‘a Christological cycle of thirty images’, scenes from ‘early legendaries’, and others ‘referring to the Holy Blood’ spread over ‘forty compartments’.120 As noted above, Edmund ‘Edmund of Almain’, ODNB. Edmund and his entourage also worshipped at Wallingford Priory, from where John of Wallingford, maker of the Wallingford zonal map, went to St Albans. See chapter seven in this Companion. 115 Vincent, Holy Blood, p. 139, n.8, and Henry John Todd, The history of the College of Bonhommes at Ashridge (London, 1823), p. 10. 116 Vincent, Holy Blood, p. 151. 117 Vincent, Holy Blood, p. 137, and Allen Brown et al., King’s works, p. 1.154. 118 Vincent, Holy Blood, p. 147. For illustrative maps of Blood distribution before and after 1204, maps 1 and 2, pp. 52 and 68, respectively. 119 Vincent, Holy Blood, p. 13. 120 For these accounts of now-missing structures, see ‘Ashridge wall paintings’, ‘Parishes of Great Gaddesden and Little Gaddesden’, HALS, DE/gr/30. On the cycle, Miriam Gill, ‘The role of images in monastic education: the evidence from wall painting in late medieval 114
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almost certainly commissioned a luxurious copy of Peter Comestor’s (d. c. 1178) Historia scholastica for his College’s 1286 dedication.121 This ubiquitous work – there are some 250 extant copies – makes extensive use of Hugh of St Victor’s (c. 1096–1141) pedagogical theories from the Didascalicon, his reading guide for Victorine novices, particularly its emphasis on the acquisition of historia, the persons, places and events of the human story; and his ‘training manual for historians’, the De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum, better known as the Chronica. This foundational text explains why mappae mundi like the one Hugh used for teaching at St Victor must present their users with a visualization of historia.122 Following Hugh, Peter created ‘a “scientific” version of biblical history, incorporating cosmological, philosophical and geographical data’, along with geographical and etymological appendices.123 The Historia scholastica, therefore, was an ideal complement to the Duchy Map and to other mappae mundi. This is why it appears in library catalogs of other houses with world maps; for instance, St Albans, Durham, Hereford, Lincoln and Merton College, Oxford. On its first folio appears the dedication to the college: ‘Liber domus de Assherugge’.124 Edmund’s benefaction has been accepted on the appearance of heraldic devices in the margins of fol. 234r. Running clockwise from left are the arms of Edward I, Edmund’s cousin; Edward II (1284–1327), Edmund’s cousin once removed; Richard, King of the Romans, Edmund’s father, and of Edmund himself. The agrimensorial and Isidorian texts on the Duchy Map are a match for the Comestor’s hand, with the ‘ornament of its litterae notabiliores’ being the same on both.125 The map’s ‘amusing cartoon faces’ and chessboard pattern decorating the body of the ‘n’ are equally strong matches for those in the Comestor’s historiated initials.126 England’, Medieval monastic education, ed. George Ferozco and Carolyn Muessig (London, 2000), pp. 117–35, here p. 125. 121 To my knowledge, Haslam was the first to connect this copy of the Historia to the map; see ‘Fragment’, pp. 41–3. The Ashridge Historia is now London, British Library, MS Royal 3 D VI. On the text’s impact, Maria c. Sherwood-Smith, Studies in the reception of the Historia scholastica of Peter Comestor: the Schwarzwälder Predigten, the Weltchronik of Rudolf of Ems, the Scolastica of Jacob van Maerlant and the Historiebijbel van 1360 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 3–14. On Peter’s connection to Hugh, see Hughes Oliphant Old, The reading and preaching of the scriptures in the worship of the Christian Church: the medieval Church (Grand Rapids, MI, 1998), p. 296. Peter Comestor retired to and died at St Victor and is remembered in the abbey’s necrology; see Obituaries de la province de Sens, vol. 1, part 2 (Diocèses de Sens et de Paris), ed. Auguste Molinier and Auguste Longnon (Paris, 1902), pp. 459 and 541. On Hugh of St Victor and mappae mundi, see the introduction and chapters one, three, four, six and ten in this Companion. 122 Anne Lawrence-Mathers, ‘William of Newburgh and the Northumbrian construction of English history’, Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007), 339–57, here 356. 123 Lawrence-Mathers, ‘Northumbrian’, 356. 124 For images of selected folia, the British Library’s ‘Detailed record for Royal 3 D VI’, Catalogue of illuminated manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ results.asp [Accessed 12 August 2017]. Haslam was the first to note the similarities in hand and in some of the images. See ‘Fragment’, pp. 41–2. 125 I am grateful to Michelle P. Brown for identifying this script. 126 Haslam, ‘Fragment’, p. 42.
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We cannot say whether the beautiful Ashridge Comestor was made at the college, since we know so little about its library or whether it had a scriptorium. There is one autograph Ashridge manuscript from the late fourteenth century in the Huntington Library’s collection, and the Bodleian Library’s ‘Medieval libraries of Great Britain’ lists eleven other Ashridge books.127 A small extant corpus does not rule out the likelihood of a good library or a scriptorium, but the College of Bonhommes seems an unlikely location for the making of the book. Given Edmund’s wealth, the richness of the Ashridge Comestor and the amount of time Edmund spent in royal surroundings, Westminster, with its bookmaking talent, seems the more probable locus of making. And so it seems certain that the Ashridge Comestor was made for use at the College of Bonhommes. We cannot be as certain about the map, although the current evidence is strong: the book and map were and are ideally complementary, the same hand appears on both, and the new codicological information presented in this chapter ties the map, literally and figuratively, to the manor at Hemel Hempstead, which the college owned. Finally, the fact that a portion of the Duchy Map was used to bind the manor’s records situates it in Ashridge during the college’s sixteenth-century dissolution. And so, although not certain, it is very likely that the book and map were made in the same place and primarily were used together at the College of Bonhommes, most likely in the library. I use ‘primarily’ because there is no reason to assume that Edmund did not also display the map at Berkhamsted Castle, just three miles south of the college. As I have tried to show here, the second earl of Cornwall lived in a world of spectacle that included monumental mappae mundi that he would have seen in situ and so in their sociocultural and semiotic contexts, where they signified royal authority and power. He would have known that those maps indexed the early Roman and Carolingian empires and so tied their owners to imperial authority and spectacle, however obliquely. I see no reason why Edmund would not have commissioned such a map for display at one or more of his properties. It would have been of great pedagogical value at his college, and there is no reason to think that its secular canons would not have benefitted from having it, even if on loan, when he was not in residence at his administrative center. However, thanks to its monumental size, it would have been of even greater conceptual value in Berkhamsted’s Painted Chamber, where it would have made a striking backdrop to the seat of Edmund of Almain, son of Richard, King of the Romans, and second earl of Cornwall. There, like Henry III’s maps at Westminster and Winchester, the Duchy of Cornwall Map would have telegraphed his nephew’s status, wealth and baronial power. 127 This manuscript is Huntington Library, EL 7 H 8. H.C. Schulz, ‘The monastic library and scriptorium at Ashridge’, The Huntington Library quarterly 1.3 (April 1938), 305–11, here 307. Medieval libraries of Great Britain is at http://mlgb3.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/authortitle/ medieval_catalogues/ [Accessed 6 December 2018].
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10.1 THE HEREFORD MAPPA MUNDI. THE DEAN AND CHAPTER OF HEREFORD CATHEDRAL AND THE HEREFORD MAPPA MUNDI TRUST.
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hanks to its large format, intact survival in comparatively good condition, and, not least, permanent exhibition, the Hereford Map has become the foremost western medieval artifact depicting the known world (Plate VIII).1 Its colored and gilded drawing, crowded with hundreds of vignettes and some 1,100 inscriptions in Latin and Anglo-Norman, takes up the hide of a single calf (trimmed to 5.18ft x 4.36ft; 1570mm x 1330mm).2 Jerry Brotton’s popular History of the world in twelve maps (2012) marshals it to epitomize a genre, the mappa mundi, motivated, in his words by (Christian) ‘faith’.3 Contrasting the theologically driven mappa mundi with maps selected to illustrate scientific, economic or political concerns, Brotton updates a perspective that informed Bevan and Phillott’s 1873 monograph, the first published on the Hereford Map.4 In between, the map has amassed a vast bibliography encompassing a range of complementary approaches: investigators have mined archives for clues about its provenance, date, function, authorship and patronage; technical analyses have yielded insight into its making; studies have explored its geographic content, cartographic sources, iconographic background and ideological commitments. With Scott Westrem’s 2001 edition of the map’s legends, scholars gained an invaluable reference tool.5 A 2010 Folio Society
1 This chapter is an addendum to my Art and optics in the Hereford Map: an English mappa mundi, c. 1300 (New Haven, 2016). There I explicate the poetics of vision that governed the map’s pictorial ensemble, determining the map’s performance and meaning. 2 The measurements as given by M.B. Parkes, ‘The Hereford Map: the handwriting and copying of the text’, The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006), pp. 107–17, at p. 109. For a more detailed breakdown, Christopher Clarkson, ‘The Hereford Map: the first annual condition report’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 95–106, at p. 96. 3 Jerry Brotton, A history of the world in twelve maps (London and New York, 2012), pp. 82–113. 4 William Latham Bevan and Henry Wright Phillott, Mediæval geography. An essay in illustration of the Hereford Mappa Mundi (reprinted Amsterdam, 1969). 5 Scott D. Westrem, The Hereford Map: a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (Turnhout, 2001). I follow Westrem for the transcription and translation of all legends.
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10.2 JOHN CARTER, DRAWING OF THE HEREFORD TRIPTYCH. LONDON, BRITISH LIBRARY, ADD. MS 29942, FOL. 148R. BY PERMISSION OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY, © BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.
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facsimile aiming to reproduce the original color scheme testifies to the map’s wider public appeal. Arguably, no other medieval map has served so well on so many levels to demonstrate how cartographic representation not only transcribes geographical knowledge, but also reflects cultural values. Yet the map’s exemplary status for both the history of cartography and medieval studies should not overshadow its singular artistic priorities and exceptional programmatic impetus. In fact, Hereford’s mappa mundi belonged from the start to a composite work rare, if not unique, for the period.6 Late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources document the map in a case with folding, painted doors.7 A watercolor drawing of c. 1784 by the antiquary John Carter shows the housing with its carved foliate canopy, doors opened to reveal the map between the angel Gabriel at left and the Virgin Annunciate at right (Figure 10.2).8 The shutters went missing by 1805 at the latest.9 All that remains of the original housing is the backboard with 6 Martin Bailey, ‘The discovery of the lost mappamundi panel: Hereford’s map in a medieval altarpiece?’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 79–93, at pp. 82, 84; Thomas de Wesselow, ‘Locating the Hereford mappamundi’, Imago mundi 65.2 (2013), 95–106. 7 Martin Bailey, ‘The rediscovery of the Hereford mappamundi: early references, 1684– 1873’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 45–78, at 49–51. 8 London, British Library (BL), Additional MS 29942, fol. 148r. 9 de Wesselow, ‘Locating’, 184–5.
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crocket-leaf molding. Discarded in 1948 when the map was transferred to a new support, it turned up in the cathedral stables in 1989.10 Specialists’ independent examinations of the map in 1999 and a dendrochronological report from 2004 leave no doubt that the map and triptych housing were co-produced in parallel.11 The acquisition of the hide must have initiated the crafting of the analogously shaped backboard on which the map was at least partially drafted. The foot of the compass used to trace the concentric circles of the world and the city of Jerusalem pricked corresponding holes in the vellum and the wood.12 Convergent data settle the project’s approximate date and place of fabrication, questions with which much of the earlier literature on the map has grappled. The timber for the case came from oak trees felled between 1289 and 1311 that grew in the immediate region, in Herefordshire, Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire.13 The entry on the map of an architectural vignette for Berwick-upon-Tweed pushes production after Edward I’s (1239–1327) capture of the town in 1296.14 The provenance of the cabinetry dovetails with art historical and paleographical observations that likewise point to the map’s production in or around Hereford, with a terminus post quem of c. 1300. Nigel Morgan ascertained the sequence of artistic operations on the vellum. All the drawing and painting came first. Several artists, dividing their labor among cartographic features, figures, architectural vignettes and foliate borders, carried out the associated tasks of underdrawing, outlining in ink, coloring with wash and painting with thick, bright pigments.15 The legends were then written. Finally, a professional limner executed the display calligraphy of rubricated and gilded inscriptions, the latter in gold leaf. Malcolm Parkes found that a single scribe was responsible for all the regular legends, including the toponyms ‘herefordi’ and ‘wie’ (Wye) crammed in over erasures. The correction thus cannot be the sign of a belated adaptation to Hereford of a work made elsewhere, Lincoln, for instance; on the contrary, Parkes concluded. The adjusted entries reflect greater familiarity ‘with the geographical position of Hereford and the 10 Bailey, ‘Discovery’, p. 79. For a color image, see Dan Terkla, ‘The original placement of the Hereford Map’, Imago mundi 56.2 (2004), 131–51, Plate 2, following p. 151. 11 These technical examinations moot the skepticism I voiced in 1994 (‘Medieval world maps: embedded images, interpretive frames’, Word & image 10, 2 (1994), 262–88, at 273–5). But my larger point that the map triptych could not possibly have been an altarpiece (as advocated in Bailey, ‘Discovery’) still obtains. 12 Clarkson, ‘Condition report’, pp. 97, 105 n. 7. 13 Ian Tyers, ‘Project report 782a: tree-ring analysis of the Hereford mappa mundi panel’, Unpublished report commissioned by the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral, January 2004, pp. 6–7; de Wesselow, ‘Locating’, 200, n. 21. 14 Westrem, Hereford, pp. 288–9, no. 762; P.D.A. Harvey, Mappa mundi: the Hereford world map (Hereford and London, 2010), p. 33; Peter Barber, ‘Medieval maps of the world’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 1–44, at p. 29. 15 Nigel Morgan, ‘The Hereford Map: art historical aspects’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 119–35, esp. pp. 128–31.
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10.3 AUTHOR’S LANDMASS SCHEMA FOR THE HEREFORD MAP. CREATED BY BRADLEY IRELAND.
River Wye in relation to Worcester and Gloucester than with the relative positions of different towns in other parts of the country’ and imply the scribe’s local activity.16 Parkes discovered the same hand at work in a compilation of medical and scientific texts, one of which is datable by its calendrical content to 1298–99; the map represents a later development of the handwriting.17 Likewise, Morgan noted that the best local comparanda for the Crucifixion vignette at center and for the leaf border around the Last Judgment scene in the neck belong to the early fourteenth century.18 Designed as the centerpiece of a Marian triptych, the map hinges on a twist that upsets cartographic norms. The composition’s pivotal conceit is the pair of transposed legends, ‘AFFRICA’ (sic) and ‘EUROPA’, emblazoned in fancy gold capitals across the lower half of the world circle; Europe at north and Africa at south each bear the name of the other (Figure 10.3). Most literature on the map has dismissed the switched inscriptions as a matter of geographical confusion or inept craftsmanship, or has ignored it.19 Parkes, ‘Hereford’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 111–12. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 399. Parkes, ‘Hereford’, Harvey, Hereford, p. 109. 18 Morgan, ‘The Hereford Map: art historical aspects’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 123–6. 19 Jörg-Geerd Arentzen, Imago mundi cartographica: Studien zur bildlichkeit mittelalterlicher Welt- und Ökumenekarten unter besonderer berücksichtigung 16 17
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The presumption of error is of a piece with a scholarly agenda that to date has put a premium on the cartographic aspect, the mapping of geographic content or ‘medieval thought’, at the expense of the work’s own agenda. Remarkably, modern criticism has failed to grasp the obvious. The apparent mislabeling of the landmasses overlays on the east-oriented map the inversion of a west-oriented schema. The burnished toponyms put before our eyes an illuminated mirror-image of Christ’s line of sight at the Second Coming and Last Judgment, the very scene depicted on the neck of the hide. The last hand to touch the map completed a pre-meditated iconographic move, invented in the twelfth century and practiced in English art, that the designer redeployed in novel fashion. As we regard God’s creation, we are meant to realize that the supreme judge, looking down, returns our gaze and beholds all our deeds. The same catoptric, that is, mirroring, ploy writes the initials of Hereford’s bishop Richard Swinfield (r. 1282–1317) into the eschatological motto attached to the world’s outer ring.20 The map’s superimposed orientations, a deliberate miscue at its core, play into the commission’s overarching purpose: to expose the gaps between sensory perception and moral discernment, carnal and spiritual
deszusammenwirkens von Text und Bild, Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 53 (München, 1984), p. 98 n. 276; Bevan and Phillott, Mediæval geography, p. 23; Daniel Birkholz, ‘Biography after historicism: the Harley lyrics, the Hereford Map, and the life of Roger de Breynton’, The post-historical Middle Ages, ed. Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico (Basingstoke, 2009), p. 172; Brotton, History of the world, p. 84; Clarkson, ‘Condition report’, Harvey, Hereford, p. 115; Gerald R. Crone, The Hereford world map (London, 1949), p. 6; Evelyn Edson, Mapping time and space: how medieval mapmakers viewed their world (London, 1997), p. 140; Valerie I.J. Flint, ‘The Hereford Map: its author(s), two scenes and a border’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, series 6, 8 (1998), 19–44 at 23, quoted in Westrem, Hereford, p. 20, no. 33 and Harvey, Mappa mundi, p. 22; P.D.A. Harvey, ‘Early Modern maps in mirror image’, Orbis disciplinae: hommages en l’honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché, ed. Nathalie Bouloux, Anca Dan and Georges Tolias (Turnhout, 2017), p. 756; David Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, The history of cartography, volume one: cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, 1987), pp. 286–370 at p. 345. Bevan and Phillott allowed that transposed names might have conveyed the geographical subordination of Africa to Europe, an idea repeated by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, ‘Reading the world: the Hereford Mappa Mundi’, Parergon, new series 9.1 (1991), 117–35 at 123 and, in a variation, by Benjamin Braude, ‘The sons of Noah and the construction of ethnic and geographical identities in the medieval and early modern periods’, The William and Mary quarterly 54.1 (1997), 103–42 at 109, 111. Asa S. Mittman, Maps and monsters in medieval England (New York, 2006), p. 43 and Wesley M. Stevens, ‘The figure of the earth in Isidore’s De natura rerum’, Isis 71.2 (1980), 268–77 at 275 n. 24, each questioned the idea that the transposition resulted from an error. Although their different interpretations miss the mark, each is on the right track. Naomi Reed Kline, Maps of medieval thought: the Hereford paradigm (Woodbridge, 2001) neglects to mention the transposition. 20 The special treatment of the letters ‘R’ and ‘S’ in the word ‘MORS’ led Flint, ‘Two scenes and a border’, 41, to suggest that they encode the bishop’s initials. She did not notice, however, the mirror play involved in the formal arrangement of the letters, whereby ‘S’ appears in the pictorial composition at lower left and ‘R’ at lower right. The designer specifically chose to organize the writing of ‘MORS’ in this way, among other possible options, on which Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 19, 21.
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reading, human understanding and divine providence, man’s waywardness and God’s grace. The Marian container and the narrative surrounding the circle of lands is neither peripheral nor incidental to a first-order cartographic project. Quite the opposite. The structural, pictorial and literary framework authorized the inventive, and witty, implementation of a mappa mundi for a first-order artistic project, the ornamentation of Hereford Cathedral. Unable though I am here to re-prosecute in full the revisionist claims I make in Art and optics in the Hereford Map, a skeletal reiteration of some key arguments proves unavoidable as the basis for presenting new insights and sharpened conclusions. The following conspectus moves from the extant object and its vanished physical setting to the aesthetic and rhetorical dynamics of the artwork. Aspects to which I had not sufficiently attended before come into focus: the triptych’s materiality in light of historical intersections between the medium and place of cartographic representation; the map’s departure from cartographic antecedents as a function of the pictorial program and the triptych’s installation; the literary and iconographic affiliation of particular motifs to a cluster of works associated with Westminster or, at some remove, with artists occasionally active there. Rather than track old debates in a comprehensive historiographical accounting of the literature on the map, I outline fresh ways of seeing a visual spectacle of inexhaustible fascination.
FROM AN ANCIENT COMMISSION TO ‘CEST ESTORIE’ The Hereford Map calls itself ‘cest estorie (‘this history’) in an authorial colophon interpolated into the framing story of the map’s mythic Roman archetype.21 The orbis terrarum, representing the inhabited portion of the terrestrial sphere, is ensconced in a dense narrative and allegorical composition. The interpretive scaffold for the cartographic image wraps around the skin’s pentagonal field and fills the spaces of the lower corners and neck. Rubricated ornamental inscriptions along the straight edges relate that Julius Caesar began the measurement of the world and name the three men tasked with covering the four directions: east, south and west with the north. Repetitive declarative statements rehearse a tradition derived from an eighth-century redaction by the Pseudo-Aethicus of Julius Honorius’s fourth- or fifth-century Cosmographia Iulii Caesaris.22 Unlike the contemporary Duchy of Cornwall and Ebstorf maps, which also cite 21 The inscriptions mentioned in this and the next paragraph correspond respectively to Westrem, Hereford, pp. 2–11, nos. 15, 1–4, 14, 13, 12. 22 On the Duchy and Ebstorf maps, see Claude Nicolet and Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Les “quatre sages” de Jules Césare et la “mesure du monde” selon Julius Honorius: réalité antique et tradition médiévale’, Journal des savants 4 (1987, actually published 1986), 157–218, at 184–209.
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the redaction, the Hereford Map duplicates the account in pictorial form to identify the cartographic enterprise with Augustus, emperor at the time of Christ’s birth.23 The same surveyors, identified by inscription, recur in the vignette in the left corner, where they receive from an enthroned Augustus crowned with a papal tiara his sealed decree that they go out across the world and report to the senate on all its parts. Above the vignette is an excerpt from Luke 2.1 that casts in terms of a descriptio the Augustan census that occasioned Joseph and Mary’s travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Between the feet of Augustus and the mensores stretch four lines of Anglo-Norman, the linguistic register on the map denoting speech.24 The couplets solicit prayers on behalf of Richard of Haldingham or of Lafford: Tuz ki cest estorie ont Ou oyront ou lirront ou veront, Prient a Jhesu en deyte De Richard de Haldingham o de Lafford eyt pite, Ki lat fet e compasse Ki joie en cel li seit done. Let all who have this history – or who shall hear, or read, or see it – pray to Jesus in his divinity to have pity on Richard of Holdingham, or of Sleaford, who made it and laid it out, that joy in heaven may be granted to him.
Despite scholarly efforts, the Richard named in the colophon has not been identified with certainty.25 Currently, the leading hypothesis ties the map to the relationship between Bishop Swinfield and one Richard of Battle or de Bello (Anglo-Norman de la Bataille or de Batayl, d. 1326). This client of Swinfield’s built a profitable ecclesiastical career by collecting benefices and appointments across the dioceses of Lincoln, Hereford, Lichfield and especially Salisbury. A busy churchman, de Bello divided his attention among many bureaucratic appointments. He can only have funded the making of the map, perhaps on behalf of, or in concert with, Swinfield, vicariously ‘laying it out’ through a professional draftsman.26 Richard de Bello had a kinsman of the same name, a canon prebendary of Lafford parish on the border of Haldingham parish (diocese of Lincoln). But as this Richard of Lafford/Haldingham died in 1278, he, too, can have had no hand Diarmuid Scully, ‘Augustus, Rome, Britain and Ireland on the Hereford Mappa Mundi: imperium and salvation’, Peregrinations: journal of medieval art and architecture 4.1 (2013), 107–33; Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 33–5. See also chapter nine in this Companion. 24 Brian J. Levy, ‘Signes et communications “extraterrestres”: les inscriptions marginales de la mappemonde de Hereford (13e siècle)’, Das grosse Abenteuer der Entdeckung der Welt im Mittelalter: VI. Jahrestagung der Reineke-Gesellschaft = La grande aventure de la découverte du monde au Moyen Age. 6ème congrès annuel de la Societé Reineke (Porto in Portugal, 30.05–04.06.1995) (Greifswald, 1995), pp. 35–48, at p. 36. 25 Flint, ‘Two scenes and a border’, 25–30; summarized in more detail in Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 32–3. 26 Levy, ‘Signes et communications’, p. 39; Wogan-Browne, ‘Reading the world’, 120 n. 4. 23
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in the Hereford commission, which got underway more than two decades later. At most, the deceased canon might have owned an older mappa mundi that the younger cleric inherited and supplied to the Hereford project for a cartographic model; hence, language that plausibly honors a posthumous contribution.27 Such circumstances preclude a literal interpretation of the colophon. The more fruitful path forward is to understand how the authorial claim functions as an extension of the poiesis driving the artwork. Is not the colophon’s historicity on par with the fictive framing story of the Julian/Augustan institution of the mappa mundi? Let us allow ‘Richard of Haldingham’, the subject of a verse enunciation, to take his place among the dramatis personae in the narrative that the map advances for itself. The colophon stands proxy for Richard, marking him present at the genesis of the originary mappa mundi, just as the shift from Latin to Anglo-Norman brings the past of the ancient commission into the here and now. With his compasses, a tool not only for generating circles but also for measurement, Richard proclaims himself heir to the Roman geometers and their equal.28 Even so, the colophon cuts two ways. The opening deixis, ‘this history’, distinguishes the map, ‘all [we] have’, from the survey to which the border inscriptions and vignette allude. ‘Cest estorie’ thus refers to the made object and its all-embracing modes of public address rather than to the cartographic image per se or to its spatialization of a particular type of narrative discourse (‘history’ in the modern technical sense). Multivalent, the Latin term historia pertains equally to an oral recitation, written relation and pictorial representation of events so that, within the context of the colophon, the vernacular correlate implicates the hearing, reading and seeing whereby the work’s narration is consumed.29 The generic appellation adopted for the Hereford Map suggests a possible precedent. In 1237, Henry III ordered the keeper of works in charge of the decoration of his bed chamber at Westminster Palace to preserve a wall painting called the magna historia. Paul Binski has ingeniously hypothesized that the great narrative picture might be the mappa mundi mentioned in passing by Matthew Paris between 1240 and 1253. Caution is warranted, of course, as the St Albans chronicler noted only that he copied the map in the king’s chamber into his (lost) ordinal, his service book; whether the Westminster map was a wall painting is unverifiable.30 A second word choice, the participle compasse, buttresses the colophon’s literary overtones with artworks of royal genealogy. The rhetorical use of professional language echoes a recent visual conceit mediated in England Westrem, Hereford, p. xxii n. 22; Alfred Hiatt, The making of medieval forgeries: false documents in fifteenth-century England (Toronto, 2004), p. 62. 28 David Lawton, ‘The surveying subject and the “Whole World” of belief: three case studies’, New medieval literatures 4 (2001), 9–37, at 17. 29 Levy, ‘Signes et communications’, pp. 37–9; Wogan-Browne, ‘Reading the world’, 126. 30 Paul Binski, The painted chamber at Westminster (London, 1986), pp. 16–17, 43–4. On Henry’s map and Matthew Paris, see chapters seven and eight in this Companion. 27
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via the court. The iconography of God using a pair of compasses to bring the world into being originated in Creation frontispieces of the thirteenthcentury Bibles moralisées.31 Illuminators invented a self-referential pictorial image, executing their representations of the cosmic orb with the same gesture and instrument they attributed to God, and did so as preface to a monumental, multi-volume work dependent entirely on compass-drawn medallions.32 The Bible moralisée, made in Paris for Louis IX (1214–70) or his queen Marguerite of Provence (1221–95), and now divided between Oxford, Paris and London, came to England as a royal gift in the midthirteenth century.33 It was copied in the 1280s in London or at Westminster as a one-volume edition, also with a prefatory image of the Creator with compasses.34 The deluxe set provided direct inspiration for three miniatures that open another London work, the Holkham Bible Picture Book (c. 1327), among which appears the figure of the compass-bearing Christ-Logos astride a circular cosmos.35 In a statement about the making of a mappa mundi, the participle compasse calls attention to the draftsman’s first action upon the vellum and acknowledges the relation of imitatio that binds the human work to its divine model. The draftsman’s rotation of the compasses reproduces the gesture of encirclement whereby the ancients through their map confirmed Rome’s imperium over the orbis terrarum. Yet, even as the colophon trumpets an achievement that redounds to Richard’s prestige, ‘cest estorie’ critiques worldly ambition. Power, wealth, pleasure and fame are fleeting vanities in a temporal realm sealed with death, spelled out as ‘MORS’ at the ends of ligatures placed on diagonals between the cardinal directions. Moreover, it is not the Roman Caesar, whose legates mapped the world, but Christ, enthroned on clouds above it, who exercises dominion over all. The ephemeral earthly peace that coincided with Christ’s First Advent under Augustus will give way at the Second to everlasting peace. Notwithstanding the conversion of Rome caput mundi from pagan capital to seat of the Church Militant, Jerusalem occupies the map’s center.36 The earthly city 31 François Boespflug, ‘Le créateur au compas: Deus geometra dans l’art d’occident (IXe– XIXe siècle)’, Micrologus 19 (2011), 113–30 at 118–27; John Block Friedman, ‘The architect’s compass in creation miniatures of the later Middle Ages’, Traditio 30 (1974), 419–29. 32 John Lowden, The making of the Bibles moralisées, 2 vols (University Park, PA, 2001), 1, pp. 47–50, 87–8, 143, 202–4; John Lowden, ‘The Holkham Bible picture book and the Bible moralisée’, The medieval book: glosses from friends and colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ed. James H. Marrow, Richard A. Linenthal and Willliam Noel (’t Houten, 2010), pp. 75–83, at p. 79; Katherine H. Tachau, ‘God’s compass and vana curiositas: scientific study in the Old French Bible moralisée’, Art Bulletin 80, 1 (1998), 7–33, at 27. 33 Respectively, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 270; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS latin 11560; and London, British Library (BL), Harley MSS 1526–27. 34 BL, Additional MS 18719, fol. 1r; Lowden, Making 1, pp. 139–220. 35 BL, Additional MS 47682, fol. 2r; https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=34269 [Accessed 21 December 2017]; Lowden, ‘Holkham Bible’. 36 For the legend at Rome, see Westrem, Hereford, p. 270–1, no. 680.
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where Christ hangs on the cross adumbrates the New Jerusalem, which descends at the end of time to reveal the celestial glory of the Church Triumphant. The colophon, turning Richard’s creation to spiritual ends, thus beseeches suffrage for his salvation. Christ presides over the Last Judgment, the wounds of his Crucifixion exposed. The Virgin at his feet dramatically bares both breasts to emphasize her co-suffering (compassio in Latin, compassion in Anglo-Norman), and implores: ‘Veici, beu fiz, mon piz, de deinz de la quele chare preistes, E les mamelectes, dont leit de Virgin queistes. Eyez merci de touz si com vos memes deistes, Ke moy ont servi, kant Sauveresse me feistes.’ ‘See, dear son, my bosom, in which you took on flesh, And the breasts at which you sought the Virgin’s milk; Have mercy – as you yourself have pledged – on all those Who have served me, since you made me the way of salvation.’37
Taking Richard’s petition to a higher level, her plea for mercy amplifies the collective prayer asked of the map’s audience that ‘Jesus in his divinity … have pity’. The tension between the colophon’s earthbound interest and heavenward aspiration finds a parallel in the conflicted posture of the equestrian figure in the hunting scene in the lower right corner. The vignette symbolizes everyman’s mortal journey and inevitable departure from the world stage.38 While the elegantly outfitted horse proceeds straight ahead, the youthful rider turns and looks back at the world: will lingering attachment and desire impede his progress? ‘Passe avant’ (‘Go ahead’), ‘Forward!’ – his dog handler therefore urges.39 So, too, must the encirclement signified by compasse complete its course in the phonic resonance of passe avant.40 The words mime the ultimate submission of temporal cycles to the imperative of providential telos. The map’s pictorial conversion from a profane institution for worldly mastery into a mirror of God’s Creation honors the Virgin sauveresse, a labor meriting her compassion. Richard Swinfield is cleverly insinuated into this moral transformation of the cartographic image.41 What we see at first glance intruding into the corner scenes of the map’s genesis and everyman’s earthly journey are upside down letters S and R. Westrem, Hereford, pp. 6–7, no. 8. Flint, ‘Two scenes and a border’, 37–40 sees in the rider figure a portrait of Hereford bishop Thomas Cantilupe (d. 1282), and in the motto passe avant a reference to his hunting activities. Morgan, ‘The Hereford Map: art historical aspects’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 133–34 n12 explains why, on iconographic grounds, this reading must be rejected. For an extensive discussion of the rider motif, Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 22, 38, 45, 66, 86–95, 111–12, 170. 39 Westrem, Hereford, pp. 6–7, no. 11. 40 Lawton, ‘The surveying subject’, 18. 41 Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 116–17. 37
38
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Only when read in the deathly pronouncement on the world’s finality do the bottom pair of capitals, weightier and larger, reverse. Oriented to Christ’s perspective, R and S stand in for the bishop who hopes to be remembered at the Last Judgment.
SKIN, NAILS AND WOOD With respect to monumental media, metalwork tables and the codex, the world map was an image assimilated to its place of inscription, its spatializing function a matter of the architectural, pictorial and social hierarchies in which it participated. By contrast, its two supports, parchment and cloth, constituted the map as a sui generis artifact, rolled for storage, unrolled for use and possibly suspended for display.42 For all its ties to a tradition of producing parchment maps as independent artifacts, the Hereford commission stands apart, realized in conjunction with a multimedia pictorial ensemble. Whereas the Ebstorf Map internally emulated cloth, punning on mappa as an artistic conceit, the English project set vellum on wood to create a hybrid of the word/image nexus of illuminated books and panel painting. When the framed map went for restoration to the British Museum in 1855, the keeper of manuscripts noted that the vellum was held in place along its five straight edges by small round-headed brass nails driven through thin brass strips; the map was removed from the case and remounted using the same fixtures.43 We can now only imagine the finished surface of the backboard (6.06ft x 4.82ft; 1850mm x 1470mm ). Restorers scraped off a red scroll border with a dragon-like animal on each side that filled in the narrow gap between the neck of the hide and gable-shaped top of the wood frame, as intimated in Carter’s drawing. The leafy molding, too, was luxuriantly painted; laboratory analysis revealed traces of brilliant green pigments with metallic accents on gesso ground.44 The lost doors (estimated 5.6ft high at the zenith and 2.43ft wide; 1700mm x 740mm), attached by iron hardware that partially survives, were painted on the interior with almost life-sized figures of Gabriel and the Virgin. The open triptych would have spanned 9.7ft (2956mm), and with the foliate canopy and central finial would have reached a height of around 7.1ft (2164mm).45 The highly wrought carving and brilliant polychromy of the cabinetry, the presumably polished pictorial surfaces of the open shutters, the glint of gold and glisten of color across creamy vellum – the contrasting and complementary effects made for a visual tour de force. 42 43 44 45
See chapter one in this Companion for more on the making of mappae mundi. Bailey, ‘Rediscovery’, pp. 69–71, and 47 for an 1868 photograph showing the pinned map. Clarkson, ‘Condition report’, pp. 103–4. Bailey, ‘Discovery’, pp. 82–3.
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Thomas de Wesselow has determined that the carpentry of the backboard bears on the triptych’s hanging. The central panel comprises six vertical planks doweled together by iron pegs; two horizontal battens gird the rear. Although these beams were later cut down so that mere stumps now protrude beyond the case, at their original lengths they would have served as the means whereby the case was to be slotted into L-shaped brackets. He further advances a convincing location for the triptych in the cathedral.46 The battens can be correlated with two pairs of iron clasps formerly on the second pier from the east in the south choir aisle. The brackets, depicted in an 1821 engraving by John Coney, disappeared by 1909 when the refaced Norman pier was hidden behind organ pipes.47 These piers offer the only wall surface in the cathedral on which the height of the case would not have encountered interference from string courses or glazing. The triptych’s place in the choir aisle follows a series of architectural modifications to the cathedral that Bishop Swinfield undertook to promote the veneration of his immediate predecessor and mentor Thomas Cantilupe (r. 1275–82). In 1287, he translated Cantilupe’s remains from under a flat stone in the Lady Chapel east of the high altar to an impressive tomb and shrine in the north transept. Miracles launched a burgeoning cult. Swinfield solicited Rome to begin canonization proceedings in 1289, and by 1290–91 he had begun the enlargement of the nave aisles to which, at north, he added a monumental porch. By 1307, when the papal delegation arrived at Hereford for its investigation of Cantilupe’s sanctity, the renovation of the choir aisles was likely complete. The remodeling incorporated a series of recesses in which were installed the recumbent effigies of ten Hereford bishops who reigned from 1079 to 1219. The map’s nested propositions – all human endeavor circumscribed by death, and death, in turn, vanquished by resurrection – mesh with the funerary theme of the architectural context. Sculptural and pictorial imagery reinforce each other. The backdrop of supine bodies awaiting resurrection would have shaped the visual experience of the map, while the latter’s reflection on the metaphorical journey of life would have informed the sepulchral monuments, defining death, too, as but a transitory phase. At the same time, the triptych’s location in the south choir aisle complicates the project’s relationship to the site of pilgrimage on the north side of the church. The artwork did not function as an adjunct to the Cantilupe cult but rather in counterpoint. Whereas the shrine attracted ex-voto offerings for miracles performed by the presumptive saint (Cantilupe was canonized in 1320), the triptych celebrated the supreme wonder of the Incarnation. 46 de Wesselow, ‘Locating’, 189–98. I part company, Art and optics, pp. 10, 43–49, 170, with his insinuating the map into a route for pilgrimage traffic not yet operative at the time of the commission. 47 For the image, see John Coney, ‘Hereford Cathedral. South aisle’, William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, 6 vols, ed. John Caley et al. (London, 1817–30), vol. 6, part 3, pp. 1210–11; and de Wesselow, ‘Locating’, figs. 7 and 8, pp. 191 and 192.
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God’s rulership of the natural order supersedes, even as it permits, the supernatural interventions of the saints. The greatest miracle, Christ’s Incarnation, heals the spiritual cause of infirmity, suffering and death, which local, punctual miracles merely temporarily assuage. The 1821 engraving does not present a scale drawing, but by matching the image to actual architectural features, it is possible to estimate that the base of the triptych would have rested five to six feet from the pavement. At such a height most, if not all, of the map would have hung above eye level, although de Wesselow points out that viewers ‘could have stepped up onto the ledge beneath to have a closer view of Europe and Africa’.48 Still, the mounted triptych would have precluded the kind of detailed reading that the late twelfth-century Expositio mappe mundi performed on the Hereford Map’s closest known cartographic source.49 The ensemble entirely repurposed the type of object, the large unbound map, made for the centerpiece. The towering figures of Gabriel and the Virgin Annunciate re-proportioned the orbis terrarum, relativizing its compass. Their stature, compounded by the work’s suspension just above eye-level, optically reduced and distanced the cartographic image, turning it into a simulacrum of the world seen from on high. The multimedia project retained the programmatic dimension of monumental maps embedded in the decoration of architectural space and respected the long tradition of submitting the image of the world to the liturgical and spatial hierarchies of the church building. At the same time, it staged a visionary experience concordant with detached, elevated observation, the trope animating the appearance of detailed maps, miniaturized worlds, in the codex.50 Dissociated from the canonical functions of an altar and removed from Cantilupe’s shrine, the triptych was first and foremost an ornament for the church. The theatrical spectacle built into the mechanism of display enhanced the dazzling sight to which the open case gave way. As the map shone forth, it realized the literal meaning of cosmos – that is, ornament – from the Creator’s transcendent perspective.51 To recognize the map as ornament is thus to bring the work into proper alignment with its own message about where the physical world, embellished with nature’s beauteous flourishes, belongs in the hierarchy of being. Even as the doors opened and the world suddenly appeared in stunning glory, the exchange between Gabriel and Mary tempered the epiphany. The visual materialization of the map dramatized the contingency of the material world, revealing the existential place of creation, in thrall to the divine Judge, within a providential scheme. de Wesselow, ‘Locating’, 198–9. For the Expositio text and Roger Howden as possible author, see Patrick Gautier Dalché, Du Yorkshire a l’Inde: une ‘geographie’ urbaine et maritime de la fin du XIIe siècle (Roger de Howden?) (Genève, 2005). See also chapter three in this Companion. 50 Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 53–66. 51 An analogous meditation on the ontological status of the creation appears at the center of the Westminster Retable of the 1260s. See Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 24–25. 48 49
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Foreordained, the Annunciation sanctified the fallen world as the arena of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion. The materiality of the artwork, like that of the Ebstorf Map and its evocation of cloth, identified the fabric of creation with Christ’s body. Skin stretched and nailed to wood, the image of the crucified Christ at its center, reenacted the doctrine of universal salvation through the cross.52 The Marian case actualized the Virgin’s role in God’s plan for human redemption. Just as she voices her intercessory prerogatives in the Last Judgment scene, calling attention to the body within which God assumed flesh and her prior creation as ‘way of salvation’, so the triptych figures her as vessel and conduit, tabernacle/ark and gate/path.53
THE CARTOGRAPHIC MODEL AND ITS SUBORDINATION TO ART Might a kernel of truth, albeit ‘garbled’ or ‘confused’, lurk behind the Hereford Map’s framing story of a Roman archetype? Some scholars, following Konrad Miller and O.A.W. Dilke, have thought so.54 Dilke inferred from late antique and medieval sources that Julius Caesar initiated a geographic survey; brought to completion in the Augustan era, it became the basis of a world map drawn up by Agrippa for a monumental display in the Porticus Vipsania. A Julian-Augustan chain in the creation of world maps has been subjected to withering critique, however, and the nature of the display attributed to Agrippa thrown into doubt.55 Nor does the late third-century description of a world map by the orator Eumenius permit its reconstruction; we cannot presume a foundation in Ptolemy’s geographic work, or that it mastered isomorphic accuracy in the representation of landmasses. But we do not need to postulate the legacy of a Roman archetype degraded by later artists and scribes to appreciate that medieval world maps incorporated late antique materials. A recent approach favors a complex, constructive process, dating between the third and seventh centuries, whereby geographic data were selectively transferred from texts 52 For a discussion of allegory in the use of animal skin for manuscript production, Bruce Holsinger, ‘Of pigs and parchment: medieval studies and the coming of the animal’, PMLA 124, no. 2 (2009), 616–23, at 620–22. 53 Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 44–46, 129–33, 169–70. 54 Konrad Miller, Mappaemundi: die ältesten Weltkarten, vol. 4 (Stuttgart, 1896), pp. 52–54; O.A.W. Dilke, ‘Maps in the service of the State: Roman cartography to the end of the Augustan era’, The history of cartography, volume one, pp. 201–11, at pp. 205–9; Barber, ‘Medieval maps’, Harvey, Hereford, p. 27; Harvey, Mappa mundi, pp. 44, 48; Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 309 n. 115. 55 Nicolet and Gautier Dalché, ‘Les ‘quatre sages’; Richard J.A. Talbert, ‘Greek and Roman mapping: twenty-first century perspectives’, Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, pp. 9–27, at p. 13; Kai Brodersen, Terra cognita: Studien zur römischen Raumerfassung, 2nd edn (Hildesheim, 2003), pp. 261–87; Emily Albu, The medieval Peutinger Map: imperial Roman revival in a German empire (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 19–29.
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to ‘different cartographic figurations related in their ideological goals, their forms and their content’.56 The Hereford Map, for instance, reflects an ancestor that had made use of the third-century Antonine Itinerary.57 But whatever the late antique substrate of its cartographic sources and relatives, the Hereford Map also exemplifies a multilayered and ongoing process of compilation that included pilgrimage and trade routes of the twelfth and late thirteenth centuries.58 Twelfth-century descriptions of mappae mundi now lost shed stronger light on the models available for the Hereford commission. Hugh of St Victor lectured on a wall map the size of the Ebstorf, from which derived the miniaturized epitome, the Munich Isidore Map.59 The treatise preserving his lesson on the map attests that it had significant formal and textual correspondences to the Hereford, though its points of contact with the Ebstorf were more extensive.60 Hugh understood the divine plan for human salvation to entail a marvelous coordination of events and places in the spatial unfolding of history across the ecumene. He overlaid time and space across several writings, but most strikingly in a highly imagistic, structured meditation on Noah’s Ark, the Libellus de formatione arche.61 This text, authored by Hugh himself (c. 1128–29, revised c. 1135) and intended as an appendix to his De archa Noe, enjoyed wide dissemination.62 The intricate meditation neither presupposes nor ever gave rise to comprehensive pictorial elaboration.63 It nevertheless did comprise individual components that, rooted in traditions of pedagogical schemata and pictorial art, gained new resonance in visual culture. The Libellus introduces a mappa mundi distinct from the wall map not only in its ovoid form but also in its diagrammatic nature.64 The rectangular ark fits lengthwise inside the almond-shaped map so that Paradise is located Gautier Dalché, ‘L’héritage antique’, pp. 36–53, quote on p. 51 (my translation). Crone, World map, pp. 18–22; Gerald R. Crone, ‘New light on the Hereford Map’, Geographical Journal 131.4 (1965), 447–458, at 451, 455; Westrem, Hereford, pp. xxix–xxx. 58 Crone, ‘New light’; Harvey, Mappa mundi, pp. 79–84. 59 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10058, fol. 154v. Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Nouvelles lumières sur la Descriptio mappe mundi de Hugues de Saint-Victor’, idem, Géographie et culture: la représentation de l’espace du VIe au XII siècle (Aldershot, 1997), no. XII, pp. 18–19. For more on Hugh of St Victor, see the introduction to this Companion, chapter three, and chapter four on the Munich Map. 60 Gautier Dalché, Descriptio mappe mundi, pp. 181–92. 61 Hugonis de Sancto Victore, De archa Noe. Libellus de formatione arche, ed. Patrice Sicard, 2 vols, Corpus Christianorum continuatio mediaevalis 176–176A (Turnhout, 2001). 62 On Hugh’s cartography and the dissemination of his works and ideas, see Dan Terkla, ‘Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) and Anglo-French cartography’, Imago mundi 65.2 (2013), 161–79. 63 Conrad Rudolph, The mystic ark. Hugh of Saint Victor, art, and thought in the twelfth century (Cambridge, 2014) propounds a different view, as I explain in Art and optics, pp. 62–3. 64 Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Réalité et symbole dans la géographie de Hugues de SaintVictor’, Ugo di San Vittore. Atti del XLVII convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 10–12 ottobre 2010 (Spoleto, 2011), pp. 359–81. 56 57
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just beyond the vessel at east, while, in the first version of the Libellus, the separation of the blessed and damned at the end of time takes place at west. Only two toponyms appear inscribed on the map, Babylon and Egypt. Jerusalem is not treated as a geographical place. The city figures instead only eschatologically at the center of the ark ‘seen’ (in the mind) in elevation; the vessel’s central pillar rises to the heavenly Jerusalem at its zenith.65 Aspects of the Hereford Map bear a generalized, partial comparison to Hugh’s thought. The story of mankind’s alienation from and return to God threads down the map’s spine from Eden at east through Babylon to Jerusalem and the Crucifixion at center, and on to Rome at west. The Last Judgment scene at the top of the hide inhabits a field that recalls similar tympana in the west portals of churches. More consequential than iconographic parallels, which are vague at best, is the visualization of a contemplative trope that also shaped Hugh’s ark meditation. The triptych effects a view onto the world from a central elevated vantage point anchored at and above Jerusalem, a vignette combining a plan and God’s-eye view. But in staging this cosmic vision, the Hereford commission overhauled, even inverted, the Victorine conception. Hugh’s ark meditation is exclusively Christological: the mappa mundi encloses the ark, symbol of the church, and Christ in Majesty embraces the cosmic order. By contrast, the English ensemble sets the entire mapped world in the ark that is Mary. The object described in the Expositio mappe mundi correlates so closely with Hereford’s representation of the orbis terrarum that differences foil, on the one hand, the particular concerns of the Yorkshire author and, on the other, the modifications that Hereford’s designer/draftsman introduced with respect to his cartographic model. Roger of Howden’s focus on maritime and urban geography governed his readerly tour around the map before him. A theology of history did not interest him: he does not mention Paradise or Jerusalem. The most significant programmatic changes on the Hereford Map, vis-à-vis the Expositio, pertain to the depiction of the Holy Land and Italy.66 Point-by-point comparison between the Hereford Map and the Expositio’s text on the area from the Syria-Palestine coast to the border with Egypt at ‘Ostrachena civitas’ (Ostrakine, today el Felusiyat) and east to Beersheba indicates that the map’s designer/draftsman enlarged the space for scriptural vignettes and legends, in particular Jerusalem and the Crucifixion.67 In Italy, the prominence accorded to Rome required excluding places that interfered with that goal. When we take into account an extant manuscript map contemporary with the Expositio, we at last see how, and why, Hereford’s designer/ draftsman incorporated these revisions into his own composition. It is well known that the Sawley Map of c. 1190 shares numerous features with the 65 66 67
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De archa Noe, 2.6 and 2.7. Gautier Dalché, Yorkshire à l’Inde, pp. 63–7, 143–64. On Ostrachena civitas, see Westrem, Hereford, pp. 174–74, no. 411.
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Hereford Map.68 But the logic underpinning selective dislocations on the later map is what is most revealing. Key elements of the Hereford Map’s cartographic representation tie into an immanent geometry that organizes the pictorial composition across the entire vellum surface, including the para-cartographical scaffolding unique to the cathedral’s project (Figure 10.4). Such linkage must have involved the Hereford designer’s/draftsman’s reciprocal adaptation of a cartographic model and framing iconographic
10.4 AUTHOR’S DIAGRAM OF THE INVERSION OPERATIVE IN THE HEREFORD MAP. CREATED BY SPENCER SAUTER, SPEN@SPENMEDIA.
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66, part 1, fol. 1v. Harvey, ‘Sawley’, 33–7; Barber, ‘Medieval maps’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 10–13. On the Sawley Map, see chapter five in this Companion. 68
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themes. The most obvious difference between it and Sawley is Hereford’s placement of Jerusalem at the geometric center of the orbis terrarum; hence, vis-à-vis the map behind the Expositio, the alterations to the Syria-Palestine coast described above. This move is further coordinated with a doubling of towers on Babylon’s frontier. The compass-generated concentric circles at the foundation of the Hereford design hardly constitute its only geometric basis. The two figures of Christ, enthroned in heaven and crucified on earth, are the only elements centered on the map’s vertical axis. All other major vignettes down the map’s spine – Eden, the Tower of Babel, Rome – are off center. Likewise, the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem are implicitly centered on lines that converge at the midpoint of the earthly Jerusalem (Figure 10.4). The vertex frames the extended arms of the crucified body, while farther east the same lines mark the position of the Tower of Babel and a secondary fortress, which together delimit the land of Babylon.69 The adjusted geographic center and the pair of towers go hand in hand with the scene of the Second Coming and Last Judgment to create a strict Christological axis and a symmetrical conjunction between the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem that subsumes the land of Babylon. This alignment distinguishes the Hereford from all other known mappae mundi. The aligned bodies of Christ and the two most exegetically loaded sites, Jerusalem and Babylon, form a cone of vision, represented in accordance with medieval practice as a two-dimensional figure. The cone, its vertex in the eye and at its base the object seen, is an analytic construct that applies the geometry of the triangle to express the relationship between light and vision. The triangle, of course, was mathematically critical not only to optics, and the related science of astronomy, but also to surveying.70 The map’s framing account of its genesis in the Roman measurement of the world’s landmasses invites the underlying schema of the cone, stimulated by the rich visual symbolism of the Latin etymology for the toponym Jerusalem. According to patristic gloss, and therefore a commonplace in later exegesis, the name of the city means visio pacis (vision of peace), referring to a heavenly status, the condition of the blessed who enjoy the beatific vision. Jerusalem’s cognomen Sion means speculatio, referring to an earthly status, not the city in Judea but the spiritual meaning of the place for the embodied soul in this life.71 The medieval concept of speculation The rubricated legend, Terra Babilonie, is inscribed between the towers. I am indebted to Thomas de Wesselow for first alerting me to this internal structure. Responsibility for the significance accorded to it is mine alone. 70 Kupfer, Art and optics, p. 99. 71 St Augustine, depicted on the map, repeatedly invokes the etymology of Jerusalem and Sion in his Enarrationes in psalmos, e.g., Ps. 64.3.1–6: ‘ipsa est Jerusalem quae Sion; et hujus nominis interpretationem nosse debetis. Sicut Jerusalem interpretatur Visio pacis, ita Sion Speculatio, id est visio et contemplatio’; Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 39 (Wien, 2011), ed. Clemens Weidmann, p. 825. ‘Jerusalem is the same as Sion. And of this name 69
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derived from and punned on the words specula (an elevated observation point) and speculum (mirror).72 The contemplative practice of speculation engaged and integrated the metaphoric connotations of both words, keeping watch in the here and now for Christ’s return and beholding God’s divinity indirectly through his traces in creation.73 Evidence that I regrettably overlooked while writing my book shores up the advancement of the latent cone as a hermeneutic tool. The schema corresponds to a root pattern in astronomical diagrams representing the observer’s gaze at the heavens from a vantage point on earth; the lines stand for visual rays. This pattern, varied to suit specific ends, was well known from multiple sources. It appears in geometric demonstrations used by Calcidius in his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus to explain, and therefore correct, our misperception of planetary movements, which only seem irregular.74 Reconciling disparities in the necessarily regular motion of celestial bodies, known as ‘saving the appearances’, was integral to the legacy of the Greek geocentric system.75 The Calcidian figure of the epicycle, the figure of Saturn’s positions in William of Conches’ mid twelfth-century Dragmaticon philosophiae and in versions accompanying Johannes de Sacrobosco’s c. 1230 Tractatus de sphaera, there applied also to solar eclipses as in a 1276 copy, offer the best formal parallels for the Hereford schema.76 Sacrobosco ended his treatise with an astronomical argument for why the solar eclipse at the time of the Crucifixion, which occurred during a full moon, could only be a miraculous event. Citing Dionysius the Areopagite, he exclaims, ‘Either the God of nature suffers or the machine of the world
the interpretation you should know. As Jerusalem is interpreted vision of peace, so Sion, speculation, that is, vision and contemplation.’ 72 Specula, as the diminutive of spes, can mean ‘glimmer of hope’. Augustine plays on the two senses of specula, a vantage point from afar or on high and an emotion or state of mind, in En. in Ps. 50.22.4–9, ‘Quae est Sion? Civitas sancta ... super montem constituta. Sion in speculatione quia aliquid spectat quod sperat. Interpretatur enim Sion speculatio, et Jerusalem visio pacis. Agnoscitis ergo vos in Sion et in Jerusalem, si certi expectatis spem futuram, et si pacem habetis cum Deo.’, Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 50, ed. Clemens Weidmann (Wien, 2011), p. 615. ‘What is Sion? A holy city ... constituted on a mountain. Sion in speculation because it has a prospect of what it hopes for. For Sion is interpreted [as meaning] speculation and Jerusalem, vision of peace. You thus perceive yourself in Sion and in Jerusalem if, resolved [certain], you look out for [await] the hope that will be and if you have peace with God.’ 73 Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 8–9, 55–6, 75–7, 83, 157–8. 74 Barbara Obrist, La cosmologie médiévale. Textes et images, vol. 1 Les fondements antiques (Firenze, 2004), pp. 121–34. 75 A. Mark Smith, ‘Saving the appearances of the appearances: the foundations of classical geometrical optics’, Archive for history of exact sciences 24, 2 (1981), 73–99, at 78–86. 76 Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.3.3, fol. 35r. Kathrin Müller, Visuelle Weltaneignung: astronomische und kosmologische Diagramme in Handschriften des Mittelalters (Göttingen, 2008), pp. 86–9, 163–7, 205–11, 243–7, and especially figs 35, 48, 74, 76, and color fig. 14. Also De sphaera, c. 1425: New York, Morgan Library, MS M. 722, fol. 17r: http://ica.themorgan.org/manuscript/page/6/128487 [Accessed 20 December 2017].
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is dissolved’.77 God’s direct and momentous intervention in the divinely established celestial order not only proves his governance of creation, but also confirms the fact of the Incarnation itself. The theological relevance of the eclipse invites locating at Jerusalem the vertex of a schema associated with the observation of the heavens. The root construct common to astronomical figures and the map’s immanent design is the cone of vision itself. Euclidian–Ptolemaic optics had conceived the visual cone in terms of extramission: the eye’s pneumatic effluence reaches out to things. The Arab thinker known to the Latins as Alhazen (Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, d. 1040) propounded the contrary – radiant light streams from visible objects into the eye. During the 1260s, the English Franciscan Roger Bacon (d. 1292) absorbed Alhazen’s optical treatise, newly available in translation, and used it to devise a new science, perspectiva. Bacon’s synthesis, whereby he accommodated an older extramissionist tradition within a predominantly intromissionist paradigm, proved compelling. In the following decade, John Pecham, future archbishop of Canterbury (r. 1279–92), compiled the fundamentals into a short, introductory digest for students. Building on Bacon’s own grasp of the allegorical and theological possibilities of perspectiva, Peter of Limoges (d. 1306) translated the scientific system into a resource for preachers, The moral treatise on the eye (Tractatus moralis de oculo), composed c. 1275–89. By c. 1300 perspectivist theory permeated the wider cultural domains of pastoral instruction, literature and the visual arts. No less than Peter’s Treatise, the Hereford Map exemplifies a creative adaption of perspectivist ideas to familiar moral and spiritual themes.78 Bacon’s perspectivist theory of light had cosmological ramifications, tightening the interaction between celestial and terrestrial spheres. On the macrocosmic scale, the ‘first article’ of his geography – ‘Every point on earth is the apex of a pyramid which transmits the power of the heavens’ – is the microcosmic homologue of the optical principle of the radiant cone.79 The map’s compositional strategy applies the doctrine uniquely to 77 ‘Propter hoc legitur Dionysius Ariopagita in eadem passione dixisse: Aut deus nature patitur, aut machina mundi dissolvetur’. Tractatus de sphaera 4, The sphere of Sacrobosco and its commentators, ed. Lynn Thorndike (Chicago, 1949), pp. 116–17. 78 The bibliography on this topic is vast. For a start, A. Mark Smith, ‘What is the history of medieval optics really about?’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 148, 2 (2004), 180–94 and idem, From sight to light: the passage from ancient to modern optics (Chicago, 2015), pp. 228–98; Katherine H. Tachau, ‘Seeing as action and passion in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’, The mind’s eye: art and theological argument in the Middle Ages ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Anne-Marie Bouché (Princeton, 2006), pp. 336–59. For Bacon’s Perspectiva, I have relied on David Lindberg, Roger Bacon and the origins of perspectiva in the Middle Ages: a critical edition and English translation of Bacon’s ‘Perspectiva’ with introduction and notes (Oxford, 1996); and for Peter of Limoges, Tractatus moralis de oculo, the annotated translation, The moral treatise of the eye, ed. Richard G. Newhauser (Toronto, 2012). 79 ‘Primo vero articulus hic est, quod quilibet punctus terrae est conus unius pyramidis virtuosae coeli’. Roger Bacon, ‘Geographia’, The opus majus of Roger Bacon, ed. and intro.
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Jerusalem: it is a symbolic means to advance the holy city’s exceptionalism on the historical plane and, at the same time, to make the place a spiritual figure in the contemplative ascent. There, where Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection took place, the map locates ‘the apex of a pyramid’ that channels the power of heaven on earth, and communication between God and the human soul. Roman surveyors had taken the full measure of the orbis terrarum at the time of Christ’s Incarnation. Yet, even as their story of worldly endeavor surrounds the map, the redemptive events of sacred history at Jerusalem, figure of Sion, redirect speculatio to salvation. The axial ray, which in perspectivist theory ensures perceptual certification, is the shared pathway for intromitted divine light and the soul’s own extramitted yearning for heaven. Babylon enters the visual field, an allegory for the moral confusion of the temporal world. To the extent that the soul allows its attention to wander off course, distracted by the pursuit of earthly things, its capacity to watch and behold and hence its certainty of heavenly things, diminishes.80 Hereford’s Jerusalem- and Babylon-related adjustments to a received cartographic model, such as the map behind the Expositio or the Sawley Map, rationalize pictorial space within the orbis terrarum, enhancing the work’s visual legibility from a distance. The resulting design situates Jerusalem’s center equidistant between the legends ‘Terra Babilonie’ and ‘Roma caput mundi’. The location of Crete, vis-à-vis Delos, center of the Sawley Map, has shifted west and south so that Daedalus’s labyrinth and the triple knotted loops of the Exodus trail align.81 The revised arrangement facilitates comparison and contrast whereby spectators invent (in the Latin sense of find) and contrive meaning. The work’s capacity to generate creative play constitutes its rhetorical agency.82 The voluptuous siren flaunting her mirror, far from a snippet of fanciful lore haphazardly inserted, is a leading motif. Perched on the rectangular panel bearing the label for the Mediterranean Sea, she sits in the middle of the Middle Sea, creating a counter-center to the map’s geometric midpoint at Jerusalem. The bare-breasted seductress is the antitype of the pleading Virgin of the Last Judgment scene, and her carnal mirror the antithesis of the speculative mirror symbolized by Sion. She directs her line of sight to the handsome, boyish rider in the map’s lower right corner, and he, turning around – as if hearing her song – meets her gaze. The pair forms a narrative unit that references and reconfigures the interplay between the medieval Narcissus allegory and pictorial Wheels of Life. The latter, most famously in John Henry Bridges, 2 vols (Oxford, 1897), vol. 2, pp. 286–376, here p. 288. 80 Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 97–113 fleshes out this highly compressed résumé. There I also consider the spectator’s insinuation into the logic of the map’s optical argument and how perspectivist allegory bears on the triptych’s installation in a funerary context. 81 Kupfer, Art and optics, p. 83. 82 Mary Carruthers, The experience of beauty in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2013), pp. 16–44, 53–61, 138, 154, 168–9.
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the De Lisle Psalter (c. 1310), but also in monumental form in the churches of Leominster and Kempley nearby Hereford, feature mirror-gazing boys and equestrian youths who leave the mirror behind for life itself.83 Fortunately for the rider, his squire presses him forward and his horse keeps to the straight path. Might he yet break free of worldly snares and pass over to heaven? Although the pictorial tension remains unresolved, the map offers an exemplum of his fate should he fail to do so, Lot’s wife. Nude like the siren and hiding her sex in a manner that iconographically recalls postlapsarian figures of Eve, she mirrors the rider’s gesture to look back at Sodom, engulfed with Gomorrah in the Dead Sea. Patterns of analogy and opposition extend to the framing narrative of the map’s Roman credentials. The double ascription to Julius Caesar, via its rubricated inscription, and to Augustus, via a pictorial reiteration of the surveyors’ commission, does not make the Hereford Map a garbled medieval witness to an enterprise begun under the one and completed under the other. Rather, Julius Caesar stands negatively for Rome in its pagan phase, whereas Augustus in a papal tiara stands positively for Rome’s Christian rebirth. To be sure, the map follows Orosius in its esteem for Augustus and in acknowledging Rome’s place in a providential scheme; the inscription in the lower right corner references the author’s great History against the pagans (Plate VIII).84 Still, the map owes its allegiance to Saint Augustine, whose portrait appears at Hippo, for the City of God is not of this world. Jerusalem-as-Sion, watchtower of speculation, the formal and moral antithesis of the Tower of Babel, exercises spiritual claims that take precedence over Rome’s temporal claims. The artistic move that most forthrightly appropriated a cartographic model for an agenda specific to the Hereford project concerns the switched legends ‘AFFRICA’ and ‘EUROPA’. But medieval visual culture, saturated with images in which the figure of Christ governs the deployment of iconographic elements, had conventionalized the interpretation of pictorial compositions, like heraldic devices, with respect to the ‘proper’ right and left of the visual field. Thus, God’s perspective, embodied in the Majesty at the top of the map, determined the location of the gilded inscriptions that stretch from top to bottom across the landmasses in the lower half of the orbis, the names beginning at east and converging at west. The pendant arrangement fulfilled design criteria and ensured that the inscription ‘EUROPA’, seen upside down by the viewer, is seen right side up by Christ enthroned. With the names of the ecumene’s parts emerges the internal tripartite order, otherwise obscured by the amorphous appearance of geographic 83 Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 76, 86–95, 99, 111, 170. On the De Lisle Psalter, see chapter nine in this Companion. 84 Scully, ‘Augustus, Rome, Britain and Ireland’, 107–33. ‘Descripcio Orosii, De ornesta mundi, sicut interius ostenditur’. ‘Orosius’s account, De ornesta mundi, as is shown within’. Westrem, Hereford, p. 7, no. 10.
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landforms. The golden overlay encodes, as if in the form of a simple T-O diagram, the standpoint of Christ at the Second Coming, who arrives in the east and looks out at the world spread below.85 In other words, such a diagram would be oriented to Christ’s westward gaze, with west at top and the disposition of the cardinal directions following suit (Figures 10.3 and 10.4). Hereford’s inscription of ‘EUROPA’ and ‘AFFRICA’ places north and south accordingly – in the bottom half of the circle. Because God’s westoriented perspective is flipped over onto the cartographic plane, our fallen orientation to the world is topsy-turvy. Referring the names ‘AFFRICA’ and ‘EUROPA’ to the right and left of the divine Judge, respectively, and, recalibrating directionality accordingly, viewers would have concluded that south at his right and north at his left invert the orientation of the mappa mundi. The map conjoins mirror images of the world, from Christ’s standpoint within the work/outside the cosmos and from our opposite standpoint in the flesh. Representation of the same phenomena from opposing sides recalls the pictorial tradition of the constellations. As imagined from a vantage point outside the celestial globe, the fixed stars form patterns in reverse to those seen from earth.86 When the T-O schema first entered into pictorial images c. 1100, artists occasionally oriented it to the figure of Christ in Majesty, thereby transforming the schema into a sign of his vision at the end of time.87 The catoptric twist of the T-O brings contrary perspectives simultaneously into play. Two miniatures in the Trinity Apocalypse of c. 1255–60 place an east-oriented reverse T-O at the feet of the enthroned Christ: Asia at the top, Europe and Africa switched left to right.88 This solution, adopted on the Hereford Map, privileges the trajectory of our gaze towards the cardinal direction whence Christ returns, while also insinuating the reciprocal gaze of the Majesty, who, from his heavenly station, looks back at us/down at the world to his west. A work of English embroidery dating from the early fourteenth century, the John of Thanet Panel, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, offers a highly compressed version of the Advent program that also motivated the Hereford commission.89 After all, the Marian triptych portrays the world at the Incarnation and Second Coming.90 The needlework panel comes from a cope belonging to one John of Thanet (d. 1319), possibly a treasurer of Matt. 24.27. Stevens, ‘Figure of the earth’, 274–7. 87 Kupfer, Art and optics, 141–53. 88 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R 16.2, fols 4r and 7v: online: https://mss-cat.trin.cam. ac.uk/viewpage.php?index=1199&history=1&index=1199&history=1#main_details [Accessed 23 August 2019]. 89 London, Victoria and Albert Museum, T.337–1921. 90 Michael A. Michael, ‘Vere hortus noster deliciarum est Anglia: John of Thanet, the Madonna Master and a fragment of English medieval embroidery’, British Archaeological Association transactions 35, Medieval art, architecture and archaeology at Canterbury (2013), 276–95, at 284–5; Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 44–6, 118–19. 85
86
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Canterbury Cathedral. The drawing style and the treatment of architectural elements put it in the orbit of Westminster court artists and of the Madonna Master, who worked at Westminster Abbey and Canterbury.91 A miniature scene of the Annunciation in the panel’s top register frames the V-shaped field reserved for the hood. Below, a monumental figure of the enthroned Christ stares intently at the viewer, his blessing hand raised. His other hand rests on a globus cruciger featuring a labeled T-O. The west-oriented schema with Europe at the ‘proper’ right (our left) and Africa at the ‘proper’ left (our right) presents an image per speculum of Christ’s vision of the world. The mirror image of the God’s-eye view shining back at us proves that he has us in his sight. In amalgamating a complex mappa mundi with a mirror image of the ecumene’s essentialized tripartite order, the Hereford Map sets up a disjunction unique to the cartographic archive. The contradiction between the underlying geographic realia and the position of the names ‘AFFRICA’ and ‘EUROPA’ instrumentalizes misdirection to make a point about how Christians should read God’s ‘books’ of creation and scripture. The obvious falsehood – Europe is not ‘AFFRICA’ and Africa is not ‘EUROPA’ – warns against surface appearances reflected in the carnal mirror, which the siren holds out toward the viewer. Capturing the mapped world in parvo, her mirror purveys a false image.92 Just as spiritual vision at Sion, speculatio, is cast in perspectivist terms, so too is God’s vision. The entire circle of lands fits under a visual pyramid that emanates from the divine mind at the top of the map. The vertex there in the mind of God makes the earthly realm – man’s deeds, and the thoughts and affections of the heart – the thing seen. At the same time, in a reversal of corporeal vision proper to creatures, extramission is the operative paradigm – for do not all power and grace issue from God as rays from the sun? The pair of cones, one the inversion of the other, is condensed in the map’s double cartographic orientation. From the apex at the map’s center, the human soul narrowly channels spiritual vision towards the visio pacis, as yet far off. The divine Judge, however, encompasses all of creation in his sight, in one synoptic glance. Our readerly scanning of the map’s surface engages us in a process of partial apprehension homologous 91 He is so-called after an eponymous miniature in the De Lisle Psalter, BL, MS Arundel 83, fols 131v–132r, see Michael, ‘Vere hortus’, 286–91. 92 The admonition against reading literally, with the materiality of the letter standing for the gamut of metaphysically linked negatives (for example, flesh and the law), establishes the overarching discursive framework in which to situate the map’s anti-Judaism. Debra Strickland, ‘Edward I, Exodus and England on the Hereford world map’, Speculum 93.2 (2018), 420–69 powerfully explicates the many iconographic and geographic features that rationalize the 1290 expulsion of the kingdom’s Jews, against whom Hereford bishops Cantilupe and Swinfield had vociferously agitated. The work pitches its lesson in hermeneutics to Christians whose carnal attachments ‘Judaized’ them. To be falsely invested in this world is to be aligned with Babylon rather than Jerusalem, according to Augustine (En. in Ps 64.2.1–32, CCSL 39: 832–24; De civitate dei 17.16, CCSL 48: 581).
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with our time-bound existence. By contrast, the figure of Christ above sees ‘in the simplicity of a continual present, which embraces all the vistas of the future and the past, and he considers all this in the act of knowing as though all things were going on at once’.93 Divine prescience has to do, not with praevidentia, a seeing ahead in time, or foresight, but rather with the spatial modality of oversight, the view of all things from on high, ex alta providentiae specula. The optical principles at stake in the work’s design articulate a medieval understanding of the mappa mundi that should nuance our modern definition of its genre. Scholars have tended to overemphasize history as the governing framework through which mappae mundi visually chronicle the progress of salvation from east to west.94 This emphasis neglects what cartographic form actually does. To be sure, the Hereford Map’s portrait of the earthly realm brings together disparate wonders, along with events concluded long ago and places where societies flourish still. But by virtue of fixing things in place, maps rhetorically secure an iconic picture of what is. The cartographic plane eliminates the differential layering of past, present and future, bringing all creatures and occurrences into simultaneous visibility. The synchronous array of discrete elements hypostasizes the continual or eternal present that Boethius maintains is available to the mind of God. The Boethian theology of divine providence identified with the image of the specula, translated by the Hereford Map into a perspectivist demonstration, should inform our approach to the genre as much as, if not more than, theologies of history. The Hereford triptych identifies the Virgin, tabernacle for the incarnated Son and heaven’s door for humanity, with God’s wisdom, and therefore with the speculum sine macula of scripture.95 Mary as mirror operates on the reflective model of the famous palindrome Eva/Ave. The blemish that Eva had introduced Gabriel’s Ave reversed. Pictorial images of the Annunciation became a locus for reversing script so that the Virgin’s reply to Gabriel was directed to God.96 The interchanged legends ‘AFFRICA’ and ‘EUROPA’ constitute the conceptual lynchpin of the project’s multimedia parts. The catoptric twist mediated between the Virgin’s foreordained role in salvation history and the Majesty’s vision of the orbis terrarum at his feet. As EVA/AVE expresses in a nutshell, the Marian mirror reverses and corrects the false reading of surface appearances. From the specula of divine Boethius, The Consolation of philosophy, trans. David R. Slavitt (Cambridge, MA, 2008), pp. 170–1. 94 Alessandro Scafi, ‘Defining mappaemundi’, Harvey, Hereford, pp. 345–54, here pp. 346–9. 95 Wis. 7.26. 96 Well-known examples include the mid fourteenth-century fresco in the church of Santissima Annunziata, Florence; the Ghent altarpiece; and the small panel painting by Jan van Eyck in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. See Kupfer, Art and optics, pp. 129–33. 93
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providence, which is to say gazing into the eternal speculum of his divine wisdom, God appointed Mary as his vessel for healing the fallen world. The unspotted Marian mirror corrects sinners’ wrong way of being in the world, restoring proper judgment. Thus, the Annunciation scene of the wings, while simulating the perspective from on high according to the trope of the cosmic vision, at the same time becomes a mirror, converting a false reading – Europe is not Africa, nor Africa, Europe – into a true one, the discernment per speculum of God’s vision at the Last Judgment.
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HELEN DAVIES AND GREGORY HEYWORTH
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raditionally, maps have served behind the lines as records of geographic discovery, the afterword to events. Today, with the advent of imaging technologies that can return damaged or overwritten manuscripts to legibility, maps are themselves the undiscovered country at the bourne of innovation. Not only are they newly discoverable, but as digital objects maps have discovered a new, broad and disciplinarily diverse audience, not only among scholars but among the general public who can now benefit from a wealth of multimedia annotations. The challenges of digital mapping in its early adolescence, then, are those of an historical resource in search of a method of visualization and a mode of dissemination and interoperation. Central to the first aim is textual science, a new discipline that combines the traditional skills of the philologist and textual scholar, paleography and codicology, with imaging, material and data science. When imaged spectrally, handwritten maps, both those that are damaged and those that have undergone the otherwise invisible process of additive editing and collaborative composition, divulge their hidden secrets, changes of mind, increments in geographical knowledge and material sophistication. Since the Archimedes Palimpsest Project went online in 2008 and the more recent success of the Henricus Martellus Map recovery, imaging technologies and algorithms for processing image data statistically have increased the number of maps available for study, especially from the medieval and early modern periods, many for the first time.1
1 For an example, see chapter six on the Vercelli Map in this Companion. Also, ‘The Digital Archimedes Palimpsest’, at The Archimedes Palimpsest project: http:// archimedespalimpsest.org/digital/> [Accessed 10 December 2017]; and ‘Recovering lost details of a 15th-century world map’, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University: http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/about/news/recovering-lost-details-15thcentury-world-map [Accessed 10 December 2017].
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The technologies of recovery and dissemination are two sides of the same coin. Objects, however legible, are still invisible until they are fully accessible. And by fully accessible, we mean not only presented in a digital online format that enables close inspection of text, iconography and materials (inks, pigments, substrates), but in a format that allows for multiple modes of visualization, metadata annotation, tagging and hyperlinks, as well as for granular searches of content. The area in which the most innovation is occurring is in the digital architecture of modern cartography, thanks to the online digital tools and map collections that enable a variety of the functions described above.
CURRENT DIGITAL MAPPING PROJECTS The so-called spatial turn in the humanities and the increasing use of GIS in historical research have sparked a dramatic increase in academic projects that employ digital mapping techniques.2 The majority of these map-based, digital humanities projects do not concern themselves with historical maps per se, but use born-digital maps as tools to visualize place-based textual information. THE PELAGIOS PROJECT One example of this type is Pelagios, a project that curates objects on a spatial organizing platform, tying texts and artifacts to places throughout the ancient world.3 As the landing page describes it, Pelagios ‘us[es] open data methods to link and explore historical places’. The website focuses on linking data by creating a network among various objects and binding them to a system of spatial organization. One particularly notable feature of Pelagios is its mapping of place-names across the ancient world. Because of discrete geo-political interests, or cultural predilection, place-names have often suffered the confusion of natural revisions that change over time. By correlating artifact data to historical toponyms, Pelagios stands to transform our understanding of material culture in Antiquity. The platform, however, still requires further development. The map interface, for example, does not function as smoothly as it could.
2 For discussion of the spatial turn see Diarmid A. Finnegan, ‘The spatial turn: geographical approaches in the history of science’, Journal of the history of biology 41.2 (2008), 369–88; Armin von Ungern-Sternberg, ‘Dots, lines, areas and words: mapping literature and narration (with some remarks on Kate Chopin’s The Awakening)’, Cartography and art, ed. William Cartwright, Georg Gartner and Antje Lehn (Berlin, 2009), pp. 229–52; Jean-Marc Besse, ‘Approches spatiales dans l’histoire des sciences et des arts’, L’espace géographique 3 (2010), 211–24; and Beat Kümin and Cornelie Usborne, ‘At home and in the workplace: a historical introduction to the “spatial turn”’, History and theory 52 (2013), 305–18. 3 Pelagios commons: http://commons.pelagios.org/
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Pelagios contains within it a program known as Recogito that creates a space for cartographic transcription. This resource allows the user to upload images of a map as either a private document shared with a team of researchers or as a public option. A user can then make individual annotations or notes directly on the digital image, and these annotations can draw upon the linked data held within Pelagios. Recogito has enormous potential for working with digital map facsimiles, but also works as a transcription tool for any manuscript. The design focus on cartographic material means that the transcription does not rely on any understanding of manuscripts as linear objects, making it particularly valuable for nonlinear texts such as palimpsests and commentaries. THE DIGITAL HEREFORD MAP While born-digital mapping projects seem to be in the ascendant, several more traditional approaches are being used to interrogate medieval maps themselves, opening new avenues for investigation. One example is the digital representation of the Hereford Mappa Mundi. In 2013, Factum Arte produced a high-resolution three-dimensional (3-D) scan of the map that serves as the basis for a new digital surrogate.4 Returning three years later to image the map again, the Factum Arte team focused on the map’s colors and supports, with the goal of establishing a definitive connection between the map and its mounting boards.5 It is this digital facsimile that Hereford Cathedral’s Mappa Mundi site incorporates as the ‘enhanced colors’ view of the map. The platform provides viewers with not only high quality images of the map as it appears to the naked eye, but also the color-enhanced version, and one that shows only the texture of the vellum.6 The digital Hereford Map helps users explore the content in interesting and innovative ways. The map’s digital interface contains a list of interest points on the right-hand side of the screen broken down by topic: ‘Myths and Legends’, ‘Bible Stories’, ‘Beasts of the World’, ‘Strange Peoples of the World’, and ‘Towns and Cities’.7 When one clicks on an option, the menu moves to the center of the screen and several options under that category appear to the right of the original menu. The original map image still appears to the left of the menu, but the map appears to move the user across its surface to the selected location. As the user’s eye travels among these individual points of interest, the interface creates a sense of motion, thereby enhancing
4 Mappa mundi: Hereford Cathedral: http://www.themappamundi.co.uk/about-the-trust. php 5 ‘Mapping the Hereford Mappa Mundi’, Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation: http://www.factumfoundation.org/pag/202/Mapping-the-Hereford-MappaMundi [Accessed 10 December 2017]. 6 The cathedral display includes a 3-D printed version of the vellum scan that looks oddly topographic. 7 Mappa mundi: Hereford Cathedral. http://www.themappamundi.co.uk/explore.php
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the user’s sense of the space depicted on the map.8 The interface provides viewers with contextual information for map images and effectively shows the map’s richness of detail. As users zoom in on important locations, images and texts, the interface displays further information and contexts. For example, if a user selects the ‘Pillars of Hercules’, an explanation of the myth appears at the side of the screen, along with a close-up image of the specific location in its larger cartographic context. Furthermore, the user can see the Pillars of Hercules in ‘Original’, ‘Color Enhanced’, or as part of the 3-D colorless manuscript-surface scan captured by Factum Arte. Taking all of these features into consideration, the digital display breaks down the print paradigm by combining multiple view types in a single interface, while the inclusion of motion compellingly conveys a virtual pilgrim’s sense of travel through space as manifested on this particular world view. While Mappa Mundi successfully collapses traditional paradigms and demonstrates the potential of new digital platforms, the interface is not without drawbacks. Users are limited to choosing one of the preselected locations, in effect limiting and predetermining their experiences. Casual users receive a rich and interactive experience, but scholars attempting to analyze other portions of the map in closer detail are likely to be stymied by the guided and limited exploration options. In addition, there is no option for comparing the Hereford Mappa Mundi with other maps, and so it is removed from its historical and cartographic contexts. THE DIGITAL ATLAS OF ROMAN AND MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATIONS The Digital atlas of Roman and medieval civilizations compiles geographic information for a variety of different data sets covering fifteen hundred years, from the time of the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages.9 The truly remarkable feat of this project is not its time span, but the depth of data it presents from that period. Data sets cover topics such as Roman roads – essential for understanding movement throughout the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages and even today – but also more finely grained areas like Anglo-Saxon settlements and shipwrecks from the years 1 to 1500. These can all be layered on a map of western Europe. The site offers five different base map types: three kinds of GIS maps, a Google road map and Ancient World Mapping Center [AWMC] Map tiles.10 In addition, traditional line drawings indicating movement throughout Europe can be combined with these data points.
8 For the medieval analog version of this ocular journey, see chapter two in this Companion. 9 The digital atlas of Roman and medieval civilizations: https://darmc.harvard.edu/ 10 These geographically and historically accurate maps are produced by the AWMC to depict the ancient world digitally. See ‘Map tiles’ at Ancient World Mapping Center: http:// awmc.unc.edu/wordpress/tiles/ [Accessed 3 December 2018].
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This open data dramatically expands the potential of the information available for download, which includes, for instance, Roman and medieval climate data, Roman and medieval coins and the all-important Roman road network. Instead of just viewing the data, it is possible to interact with it and pursue myriad scholarly lines of inquiry. Herein lies the site’s richness. What distinguishes this resource from print is that it allows users to take full advantage of the digital medium, not merely by providing downloadable data sets, but by allowing them to make non-linear connections between multiple kinds of information. Even though the Digital atlas’ attractive visualization capabilities are beginning to show their age – the project was begun in 2007 – its open-data policy turns what might have been another interesting digital tool into a rich resource with expansive scholarly capabilities. DIGITAL MAPPA 1.0 Digital Mappa 1.0, ‘Digital Humanities workspaces, editions, scholarship, collaboration & publications for the rest of us’, and the associated Virtual Mappa project is an attempt to respond to earlier oversights by providing new ways of accessing medieval maps and creating a foundation for big-data studies.11 Digital Mappa, formerly Digital Mappaemundi, was launched by Martin Foys as a tool for producing open-source, linked data on understudied image-based documents, such as the eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon Cotton Map.12 Digital Mappa evolved gradually into an image annotation platform designed to incorporate all medieval maps, and is now online, with Digital Mappa (DM) version 2.0 slated for a 2019 release.13 This platform contains tools to annotate and interact with medieval maps, and works alongside Virtual Mappa to aggregate cartographic images. Virtual Mappa, a collaborative project located at the University of WisconsinMadison, seeks to place medieval mappae mundi held at several institutions into one digital repository to facilitate their comparative study.14 In addition to fully annotated versions of maps such as the Cotton and Hereford maps, Virtual Mappa also hosts a number of digital editions including ‘Old English and Anglo-Latin belltokens’, and ‘Four Anglo-Latin Carolingian Helen Davies is now editing the Vercelli Map for Digital Mappa. London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B V, fol. 58v. On the Digital mappamundi project, see Martin Foys and Shannon Bradshaw, ‘Developing digital mappaemundi: an agile mode for annotating medieval maps’, Digital medievalist 7 (2011); also http://doi. org/10.16995/dm.38 [Accessed 10 December 2017]. 13 https://digitalmappa.org/ [Accessed 10 December 2017]. The project also utilizes an active Facebook page which provides previews of Digital Mappa 2.0 features: https://www. facebook.com/dig.mappa.5 [Accessed 6 December 2018]. 14 Virtual mappa: digital editions of early medieval maps of the world, ed. Martin Foys et al.: http://sims.digitalmappa.org/workspace/#965fe731; Kimberly Kowal, ‘Good news for fans of medieval maps!’, Maps and views blog, British Library, 14 March 2014: http://britishlibrary. typepad.co.uk/magnificentmaps/2014/03/good-news-for-fans-of-medieval-maps.html [Accessed 10 December 2017]. 11
12
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mini-editions’.15 Digital Mappa and Virtual Mappa have thereby taken the important steps toward creating a scholarly medium for the digital collection and annotation of medieval maps.16
RECOVERY TECHNIQUES: SPECTRAL IMAGING These projects all deal with maps in the digital realm – but how do these digital maps end up in that realm? Imaging technologies applied to cultural heritage items help break down the divide between the physical and digital worlds, translating objects from one to the other. Today, the cutting edge of digital mapping techniques is the translation of analog mappae mundi to the digital realm. The creation of a digital mappa mundi surpasses the digitization projects that arose in the first wave of digital humanities work. Spectral imaging technologies turn the process of media transfer into one of scientific investigation. The objective is to create a digital replica of the analog object, a ‘digital surrogate’ that not only makes the object easily accessible to scholars, but also enhances their ability to read, understand and appreciate its material history. Spectral imaging enables us to create these digital surrogates, which do not conform to the common conception of digital facsimiles. A digital surrogate does provide high quality images of a physical map; however, it goes beyond this by revealing information about the analog object that is not visible. For example, a medieval map’s digital surrogate not only provides high quality images of the map as currently visible, but also recovers text and images that were previously invisible, illegible or erased. In other words, the digital surrogate provides information that one cannot derive visually from the original, physical document. Additionally, spectral imaging can function as spectroscopy to provide further information about the material makeup of the manuscript itself. To date, at least four medieval European maps have undergone spectral imaging, and each process has its own technology and purpose. The Gough Map in Oxford’s Bodleian Library has undergone hyperspectral imaging, the Albi Map was spectrally imaged, The Lazarus Project recently imaged a previously unstudied medieval map at the SLUB in Dresden, and a digital surrogate of the Vercelli Map has been produced using 15 ‘Cotton World Map (BL Cotton Tiberius B.v, f. 56v)’ and ‘Hereford map (Hereford Cathedral)’, Virtual Mappa: http://sims.digitalmappa.org/workspace/#965fe731 [Accessed 6 December 2018]; Old English and Anglo-Latin belltokens, ed. Martin Foys: http:// sims.digitalmappa.org/workspace/#6kgzvltt [Accessed 6 December 2018]; Four AngloCarolingian mini-editions from Cotton Vespasian MS D. xv, ed. Martin Foys: http://sims. digitalmappa.org/workspace/#i2lptr1n [Accessed 6 December 2018]. 16 The Mappae database at the Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg also contains images of a substantial number of medieval maps, with metadata: http://mappae.cs.fau.de/mappae/ application/main_E.html [Accessed 10 December 2017].
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multispectral imaging.17 These cognate technologies are often confused, and their differences are subtle but acute. Multispectral imaging employs a small number of wavelengths using light-emitting diodes (LEDs), while hyperspectral imaging uses white light to image an object with all wavelengths. The former is optimized to bring out illegible text, the latter both reveals text and behaves like a spectrometer to identify materials chemically and so distinguish among types of inks and pigments. THE VERCELLI MAP Since the canon of existing medieval maps is small, what we know about them derives, quite naturally, from those that are in better condition than others. Many of those in poor condition, despite their significance to the history of cartography, have languished in desuetude. Today, the impairments to legibility these objects have suffered are often digitally remediable, unlike the reports of damage that, in ignorance, overestimate and discourage serious attempts to study them. A class of neglected maps, then, presents itself to the intrepid scholar, equipped with the right tools and sufficient tenacity, as an opportunity to fill in the gaps in the historical record. Whether the inks and pigments of a map are etiolated by water or fading, charred or rendered illegible by chemical reagents, multispectral imaging is the most broadly effective means of remediating such ruining. The damage done to the thirteenth-century Vercelli Map, as Asa Simon Mittman describes in this volume, made it a prime candidate for multispectral recovery and digital surrogacy.18 Already damaged when it was discovered in 1908, the map has since further deteriorated. Once-legible inscriptions have faded dramatically, while a conservation attempt after World War II seems to have rendered a large swath of Europe and North Africa a blur. One early twentieth-century photograph of the map by the Egyptian prince, Youssouf Kamal, shows the document in its pre-damaged condition. (The glass plate negatives of those photographs have been lost.) The surviving black and white images of the Vercelli Map can all be traced back to Kamal’s image.19 While Leo Bagrow’s History of cartography reproduces the 17 Multispectral imaging of the Vercelli Map was carried out in 2013–14 by the Lazarus Project, specifically by Gregory Heyworth, Ken Boydston, Roger Easton, Mike Phelps and students from the Sally Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi. The Lazarus Project previously imaged the renowned Anglo-Saxon Vercelli Book which is in Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS CXVII. Emmannuelle Vagnon presented on the spectral imaging of the Albi Map ‘New research on the Albi Map (8th century): Manuscript and Context’ at the International Conference on Cartographic History in Amsterdam, 2019. Kevin Wittmann is lead scholar on this project. The map was imaged at the Saxon State Library and University in Dresden by the Lazarus Project in July 2019. 18 See chapter six in this Companion, which constitutes the first in-depth study of the map based on Lazarus Project imaging. 19 As Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken explains, ‘Leo Bagrow in his History of cartography in 1952 published a small black and white reproduction and mentioned a larger one to be more useful. As he lost the plates of his book during the Second World War as
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map at the height of a page, it does not approach the standard of a highresolution digital surrogate; and P.D.A. Harvey’s important The Hereford Map: medieval world maps and their context reproduces the black and white image, but at just a few inches high.20 As with most print reproductions, neither Bagrow’s nor Harvey’s allows us to appreciate, let alone study, the Vercelli Map’s textual and pictorial details. In 2014, the Lazarus Project, a non-profit initiative created to recover cultural heritage objects using spectral imaging, produced high-resolution multispectral images of the entire map. Pioneered originally for the Archimedes Palimpsest Project, the system the Lazarus Project used to capture the images exemplifies the technological state of the-art.21 Early multispectral imaging illuminated objects with broadband white light and filtered out all but a few wavelengths in the ultraviolet (UV), visible and infrared (IR) spectrums to create multispectral bands – a practice that is not only harmful to the object but suboptimal in efficacy. Rather than heat-producing, broadband light, the Lazarus system employs reflective banks of LEDs in fourteen bands and transmissive (i.e., from beneath the object) in six bands. These bands deploy in sequence, and are captured by a fifty-megapixel monochrome camera with an apochromatic quartz lens and a dual filter wheel that separates fluorescent from reflected light.22 The imaging was performed using two custom sets of LED lights made by Equipoise Imaging that emit light only at twelve wavelengths, ranging from UV to the IR. In an earlier iteration of the current system, the Lazarus Project imaged the Vercelli Map in reflectance (light from above), and in transmissive (light from below), in twenty-six different bands. Each band reveals different aspects of the manuscripts. While the long infrared wavelengths penetrate deepest into the substrate, revealing ink and pigment that has been overwritten, at the other end of the spectrum, he was to reconstruct it, the models of his copies were only in general identified. It might be that yet he remembered as the large copy the only one, which we have today, that in the publication of Youssouf Kamal’. See Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ‘Monumental legends on medieval manuscript maps; notes on designed capital letters on maps of large size (demonstrated from the problem of dating the Vercelli Map, thirteenth century)’, Imago mundi 42 (1990), 9–25 [Accessed 14 January 2017], doi:10.2307/1151042, http://www.jstor. org/stable/1151042, 11. See also Leo Bagrow, Die geschichte der Kartographie (Berlin, 1951), p. 323 and 376; and Leo Bagrow and R.A. Skelton, Meister der Kartographie (Berlin, 1963), pl. XXV, p. 351. For Kamal’s image, see Monumenta cartographica Africae et Aegypti, III, ed. Youssouf Kamal (Cairo, 1935), pl. 997. 20 Bagrow and Skelton, Meister der Kartographie, pl. XXV; and The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London, 2006). 21 R.L. Easton, W.A.C. Barry and K.T. Knox, ‘Ten years of lessons from imaging of the Archimedes palimpsest’, Commentationes humanarum litterarum 129 (2011), 5–34. 22 An apochromatic lens has no red, green or blue filters in the lens, creating a monochrome image. Each megapixel only measures light rather than color which causes less distortion of the light. The color is provided by carefully controlling the external light source rather than through the camera itself. Fluorescence is the phenomenon by which energized light wavelengths provoke the release of light in a longer wavelength from the object itself or cause an object to glow.
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the ultraviolet and blue bands provoke a fluorescence that enhances faded text. Measuring 32.2in. x 28.3in. (818mm x 719mm), the Vercelli Map was photographed at high resolution in twenty overlapping tiles, which, at twenty-six bands per tile, resulted in a data set of 520 images.23 An ongoing objective of the Lazarus Project is the production of highresolution multispectral images of the Vercelli Map, as the basis for a digital surrogate that reveals currently illegible and invisible details of the map. So far, a stitched color facsimile of the map has been produced, as well as an enhanced version using fluorescent bands. Helen Davies has produced, in the summer of 2019, the first complete facsimile utilizing statistically processed images. She is currently editing this facsimile for publication in Digital Mappa (mentioned above). These preliminary images, used by Asa Simon Mittman in this Companion, provide the most revealing representation of the map in fifty years, and the first high-resolution digital images.24 Helen Davies is working to process these images tile by tile, using custom algorithms to obtain the best results possible. The shift to the digital realm for the high-resolution, multispectral, Lazarus Project images represents an opportunity for increased interactivity. The viewer will no longer need to struggle with the monolithic confines of print, but can toggle among multiple processed versions, zoom into images and interact with minute details visible at various wavelengths. In addition to these scholarly benefits, newly processed multispectral images substantially recover severely damaged areas of the Vercelli Map – and help to reverse some of the fading due to humidity. After processing, whole countries emerge. Like most of western Europe, Spain was eradicated in the damage done to the lower part of the map (Figure 11.1). After processing, a reader can easily identify Spain in the lower left-hand corner (Figure 11.2). Significantly, sixteen individual cities are newly visible, among which are ‘Osbia’, ‘Sebie’ and ‘Galides’ (Cadiz). The recovery of these cities is particularly important in light of the debate on the map’s provenance. It fits firmly within a European mapping genre, but contains cities not found on contemporary maps such as the Hereford (Plate VIII) and the Ebstorf. The detailed representation of Spanish and Italian cities on the map has encouraged theories about the map being created in one of those countries. Carlo Errera, who found the map in the Vercelli archive, believed the Spanish and Italian material on the map to be significant, while Anna Maria Brizio thought the style of painting resembled
23 If one pulls the camera further away from an object to obtain a photograph with an entire large document in the frame, the resolution of the image decreases. To avoid this loss of quality, we shoot several smaller images, known as tiles, which can then be later stitched together. 24 For an image of the map: ‘The Vercelli book project’, at The Lazarus Project http:// www.lazarusprojectimaging.com/previous-projects/vercelli-book-project/ [Accessed 10 December 2017].
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11.1 VERCELLI MAP, DETAIL OF SPAIN, PRE-IMAGING. ARCHIVIO CAPITOLARE DI VERCELLI ROTOLI FIGURATI, 6 [MAPPAMONDO]. IMAGE BY THE LAZARUS PROJECT, MEGAVISION. RIT, EMEL. COURTESY OF ARCHIVIO CAPITOLARE DI VERCELLI. PHOTOGRAPH BY LAZARUS PROJECT. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.
11.2 VERCELLI MAP, DETAIL OF SPAIN, POST-IMAGING BY HELEN DAVIES. ARCHIVIO CAPITOLARE DI VERCELLI ROTOLI FIGURATI, 6 [MAPPAMONDO]. IMAGE BY THE LAZARUS PROJECT/ MEGAVISION. RIT, EMEL. COURTESY OF ARCHIVIO CAPITOLARE DI VERCELLI. PHOTOGRAPH BY LAZARUS PROJECT. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.
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Spanish miniatures.25 Today, the majority of scholars understand the map to have an English or possibly a French provenance, but the portrayal of Spain on the map will help the investigation of this claim.26
NEW[ER] DIRECTIONS HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGING AND THE GOUGH MAP As discussed above, hyperspectral imaging differs from multispectral imaging in its ability to facilitate research into the material of the analog object itself. Rochester Cultural Heritage Imaging, Visualization and Education (R-CHIVE), a new heritage imaging collaboration between the Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Rochester, has developed a technique to determine the order in which overlapping inks and pigments were placed on a map.27 David Howell, Head of Heritage Science at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, recently imaged the fifteenthcentury Gough Map of Great Britain (Plate IX) using hyperspectral imaging technology – a process that employs seven hundred rather than twenty-six bandwidths.28 David Messinger, at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and his graduate student, Di Bai, were able to harness the fine spectral resolution of the image to establish patterns of different inks of common color (Plate X), the various red pigments used during the creation and alteration of the map over approximately one hundred years.29 Each color represents one of five different classes within the red pigment. The viewer can clearly see the long line of Hadrian’s Wall composed of more than one red ink class. Many of the towns appear as a different class indicated by the blue coloring. Designating ink and pigment together in this manner can help establish the sequence and chronology of the inks, a feature that could have groundbreaking consequences for maps such as the Vercelli, which raises lingering questions about the dates of its place names. Employing hyperspectral imaging to decipher the sequence in which inks and pigments were applied will enable scholars to determine if all the toponyms were 25 Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ‘Monumental legends’, 11. Carlo Errera, ‘Un mappamondo medioevale ritrovato a Vercelli’, Rivista geografica italiana (Firenze, 1911), p. 107; idem, ‘Un mappamondo sconosciuto nell’Archivio Capitolare di Vercelli’, Atti accademia di scienze Torino 46 (1910/11), 8–11. 26 On the map’s provenance, see chapter six in this Companion. 27 The R-CHIVE website can be found at https://r-chive.com/. 28 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gough Gen. Top. 16. It has often been assigned a date of c. 1360, but T.M. Smallwood argues for c. 1400 in ‘The date of the Gough Map’, Imago mundi 62.1 (2010), 3–29. Catherine Delano-Smith et al. support the later date in ‘New light on the medieval Gough Map of Britain’, Imago mundi 69.1 (2017), 1–36. 29 Di Bai, David W. Messinger and David Howell, ‘Hyperspectral analysis of cultural heritage artefacts: pigment material diversity in the Gough Map of Britain’, Optical engineering 56.8 (2017), 081805 [Accessed 5 December 2018].
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written during the map’s original production or if, as Capello and others have claimed, later additions were made upon the map’s return to Italy. Whereas spectral imaging’s significance lies in the ability to distinguish among color classes, this new technique developed by Messinger and his group, which has the working name of ‘material (or pigment) diversity estimation’, distinguishes diversity within a single visual color of ink or one spectral class. Material diversity estimation provides scholars the ability to distinguish faded or invisible texts from the substrate, or an undertext in the case of a palimpsest. This technique exploits the spectroscopic ability specific to hyperspectral imaging to examine an object by looking at variations within one pigment type. On the Gough Map, the object is the variation within the red ink used to denominate town and other important locations.30 The question Messinger and Bai ask is whether changes within one class of pigments, in one color on the map, could be used to detect change over time, given that the Gough Map, like many medieval maps, was an evolving document.31 Messinger’s team successfully detected change in the map’s red pigment: they discovered five classes of red in the pigment category, many of which could not be differentiated by the naked eye. These classes correspond to a progression through geographic regions, a variation between the ink used on town names and elsewhere on the map, and a notable difference around Hadrian’s Wall. They have recently applied this technique to the Selden Map of China as well.32 Determining ink variation, invisible without the aid of hyperspectral imaging and processing techniques, becomes another arrow in the codicologist’s quiver. In combination with more traditional manuscript approaches, scholars can begin to uncover more of a map’s artistic history and investigate use patterns, as differences within pigment classes are explored. DEEP MAPPING In addition to new digital techniques, digital humanities and multimedia studies have provided a new way to conceptualize mapping. Deep mapping is a new form of spatial exploration that includes cultural and literary information in a cartographic setting. In one of the most important books on the practice, David Bodenhamer, John Corrigan and Trevor M. Harris define the deep map as ‘a finely detailed, multimedia depiction of a place and the people, animals, and objects that exist within it and are thus inseparable 30 Nick Millea and David Howell, ‘Revealing the past: how science is unlocking cartographic secrets’, Dissemination of cartographic knowledge: 6th International symposium of the ICA Commission on the history of cartography, 2016, ed. Mirela Altić, Imre Josef Demhardt and Soetkin Vervust (Cham, Switzerland, 2018), here pp. 338–44. 31 E. Solopova, ‘The making and re-making of the Gough Map of Britain: manuscript evidence and historical context’, Imago mundi 64.2 (2012), 155–68. 32 D. Bai, D.W. Messinger and D. Howell, ‘A hyperspectral image spectral unmixing and classification approach to pigment mapping in in the Gough and Selden maps’, Journal of the American Institute of Conservation 58 (2019), 69–89.
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from the contours and rhythms of everyday life’.33 While the concept of deep mapping frequently carries new media connotations, William Least HeatMoon coined the term some twenty-eight years ago in PrairyErth (A deep map).34 In this genre-defining work, Heat-Moon sets out to collapse the linear narrative of history by exploring Chase County, Kansas, independent of chronology, by dividing the region into arbitrary segments of land. As he moves through Chase County, Heat-Moon explores its mental landscape by tying historical, cultural and folkloric information to the geo-locations in which it occurred. The conception of deep mapping has progressed since this incarnation. In many ways, it has become a field unto itself. The last few years have witnessed two new essay collections and an entire journal issue dedicated to the concept.35 The emerging disciplinary conversation is fraught with controversy about the nature of deep mapping, and the shift from understanding deep maps as narrative tools to reinterpreting them as multimedia platforms has provoked questions about how these concepts should be used in literary studies. Nonetheless, deep mapping offers a new model for conceiving digital displays of medieval maps that are more sophisticated and interactive than static website images. Medieval maps are very rich documents, and one challenge involved in their multispectral imaging is determining how to display all of the information revealed.36 A base layer of a digital deep mapping project would contain just the geographical features of the medieval map to allow easy comparison across different types of cartographical representations of those features. A second layer would contain just the manmade features embedded in these maps, allowing scholars to understand which locations were considered important on a specific map, along with where and how they are most densely represented. For example, a careful examination of the Vercelli Map reveals a clear orientalizing of its urban markers: the representation of urban cities changes as the eye travels east. 33 David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan and Trevor M. Harris, Deep maps and spatial narratives (Bloomington, IN, 2015), p. 3. 34 William Least Heat-Moon, PrairyErth: a deep map (New York, 1991). For a further history of ‘deep mapping’ including William Least Heat-Moon’s role, see David Bodenhamer, ‘Making the invisible visible: place, spatial stories and deep maps’, Literary mapping in the digital age, ed. David Cooper, Christopher Donaldson and Patricia Murrieta-Flores (Abingdon, 2016), p. 212. For an earlier assessment, see O. Alan Weltzien, ‘A topographic map of words: parables of cartography in William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth’, Great Plains quarterly 1565 (Spring 1999), 107–22. See also ‘Heat-Moon on notion of deep map’, YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqgyvy_oPQI [Accessed 10 December 2017]. 35 Literary mapping in the digital age, ed. Cooper, Donaldson and Murrieta-Flores; Todd Presner, David Shepard and Yoh Kawano, HyperCities: thick mapping in the digital humanities (Cambridge, MA, 2014). 36 Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Mappae mundi and medieval encyclopaedias: image versus text’, Pre-modern encyclopaedic texts: proceedings of the second COMERS Congress, Groningen, 1–4 July 1996, ed. Peter Binkley (Leiden, 1997), pp. 63–74.
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A third layer could contain all pictorial representations showing cultural material, a fourth all of the biblical representations and a fifth the textual material, providing transcriptions and translations. A commentary noting sources would be external to this central display but easily accessible and could be read in conjunction with the display. There are many possibilities for the history of cartography’s future, and deep mapping provides a potentially rich avenue of exploration for digital mapping. Such digital interactive displays help break down the rich, albeit static, format of such detailed works as Piero Falchetta’s Fra Mauro’s world map: with a commentary and translations of the inscriptions or Scott Westrem’s The Hereford Map: a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary.37 The print format of these seminal works allows for in-depth, side-by-side pairing of their legends’ transcriptions and translations with commentary on those legends and the maps’ images. However, their information is bound to the codex format encapsulating it. That information, however abundant, cannot be reconfigured in any ways other than that in which it is presented. The codex, by definition, prevents the interactivity possible in a deep, digital mapping platform. As we have seen, these platforms go beyond the amenities of print to encourage nonlinear connections. Codicology and paleography form the traditional foundation of scholarly work on maps; however, the forensic examination of these artifacts with spectral imaging and other digital techniques extends scholars’ vision beyond what is visible and offers new insights into the history of cartography.
37 Piero Falchetta, Fra Mauro’s world map: with a commentary and translations of the inscriptions (Turnhout, 2006). Scott D. Westrem, The Hereford Map: a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (Turnhout, 2001).
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The contents of this annotated bibliography represent a selection of key works published over the past thirty years and which are of direct relevance to this volume’s subject matter. The all-encompassing ‘History of Cartography’ project, especially Harley and Woodward’s volume one with its section on mappae mundi, has very much been the entrée to the subject, and as a consequence, has been widely quoted by this Companion’s contributors. The intention of this bibliography has been to deliver an international multilingual collection of references published since Harley and Woodward, ranging from the general to more tightly focused material looking at specific aspects and concentrating on individual maps, in addition to introducing scientific advances which are encouraging new research approach methodologies to the understanding of mappae mundi. Albu, Emily The medieval Peutinger map: imperial Roman revival in a German empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). ISBN 9781107059429. A recontextualizing study of a world map with a contested genealogy that argues against it as a distant copy of a Roman map and for it as the product of the secular Carolingian tradition, Hohenstaufen propaganda deployed in the conflict between empire and papacy. Alington, Gabriel The Hereford mappa mundi: a medieval view of the world (Leominster, Herefordshire: Fowler Wright Books, 1996). ISBN 0852443552. General introductory pamphlet focusing on the Hereford Map. Arnaud, Pascal ‘Images et représentations dans la cartographie du bas moyen âge’. In Spazi, tempi, misure e percorsi nell’Europa del bassomedievo: atti del XXXII Convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 8-11 ottobre 1995, edited by Centro
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italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo (Spoleto : Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1996), pp. 129–60. ISBN 8879883992. A study of imagery on late medieval maps, including Vercelli, the Duchy of Cornwall and Hereford maps, with particular emphasis on geographical features. Arnaud, Pascal ‘Plurima orbis imago: lectures conventionelles des cartes au moyen âge’, Médiévales 18 (1990), 33–51. Examines the theory behind T-O maps. Arrowsmith, Sarah Mappa mundi: Hereford’s curious map (Logaston, Herefordshire: Logaston Press, 2015). ISBN 9781906663919. A visitor’s perspective on the Hereford Map seen through medieval and modern eyes, written by a member of Hereford Cathedral staff. Bailey, Martin ‘The Mappa mundi triptych: the full story of the Hereford Cathedral panels’, Apollo: the International Magazine of the Arts 137, 376 (1993), 374–8. The first piece on the Hereford Map’s backboard and panels, rediscovered by Bailey and Ray Kingsley-Taylor, chapter clerk at Hereford, in 1989. Barber, Peter ‘Visual encyclopaedias: the Hereford map and other mappae mundi’, The Map Collector 48 (1989), 2–8. Article written at the time the Hereford Map was on display at the British Library, placing the map in context with other mappae mundi. Barber, Peter and Brown, Michelle P. ‘The Aslake World map’, Imago mundi 44 (1992), 24–44. The definitive work on the then recently-discovered fourteenth-century Aslake Map. Bartlett, Rob ‘Heartland and border: the mental and physical geography of medieval Europe’. In Power and identity in the Middle Ages: essays in memory of Rees Davies, edited by Huw Price and John Watts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 23–36. ISBN 9780199285464. The essay is not predominantly on mappae mundi, but it does contain the thoughts of a historian on the utility of these objects. Baumgärtner, Ingrid ‘Biblische, mythische und fremde Frauen. Zur Konstruktion von Weiblichkeit in Text und Bild mittelalterlicher Weltkarten’. In Erkundung und Beschreibung der Welt. Zur Poetik der reise- und Länderberichte. Vorträge eines interdisziplinären Symposiums vom 19. bis 24. Juni 2000 an der
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Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, edited by X. von Ertzdorff and G. Giesemann (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), pp. 31–86. ISBN 9042010045. The representation of women in three different roles on mappae mundi: biblical characters, legendary figures or ‘other’ creatures. So how did male European observers project these images in a cartographic context? Baumgärtner, Ingrid ‘Erzählungen kartieren: Jerusalem in mittelalterlichen Kartenräumen’. In Projektion – Reflexion – Ferne: Räumliche Vorstellungen und Denkfiguren im Mittelalter, edited by Sonja Glauch, Susanne Köbele and Uta Störmer-Caysa (Berlin/Boston: Walter De Gruyter, 2011), pp. 193–223. ISBN 9783110221459. Jerusalem’s place and function on mappae mundi is interpreted as the navel of the world / Christ’s body, when contemplated by those studying such maps. Baumgärtner, Ingrid Europa im Weltbild des Mittelalters: kartographische Konzepte, edited by Ingrid Baumgärtner and Hartmut Kugler (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008). Orbis mediaevalis: Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters 10. Contents (selected): ‘Europa in der Kartographie des Mittelalters: Repräsentations – Grenzen – Paradigmen’ by Ingrid Baumgärtner, pp. 9–28; ‘Graphische gestalt und signifikanz: Europa in den Weltkarten des Beatus von Liébana und des Ranulf Higden’ by Ingrid Baumgärtner, pp. 81–132; ‘Europa um 1320 auf zwei Weltkarten süditalienischer Provenienz. Die Karte zur ‘Chronologia magna’ des Paulinus Minorita (BnF Lat. 4939) und die Douce-Karte (Bodleian Douce 319)’ by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, pp. 157–70. ISBN 9783050044651. Conference proceedings including a general introductory chapter on the whole event plus papers on the representation of Europe in the Liber Floridus, in the Middle Ages in general and on selected mappae mundi. Baumgärtner, Ingrid ‘Die Wahrnehmung Jerusalems auf Mittelalterlichen Weltkarten’. In Jerusalem im Hoch-und Spätmittelalter: Konflikte und Konfliktbewältigung. Vorstellung und Vergegenwärtigungen, edited by Dieter Bauer, Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert (Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus, 2001), pp. 271–334. ISBN 359336851X. An examination of the positioning and embodiment of Jerusalem on mappae mundi. Was the Holy City located in the correct place geographically or spiritually, and who would have been responsible for the final decision? Baumgärtner, Ingrid ‘Weltbild und Empirie. Die Erweiterung des kartographischen Weltbilds durch die Asienreisen des späten Mittelalters’, Journal of Medieval History 23.3 (1997), 227–53. How medieval travel reports influenced the cartographic image of Asia.
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Birkholz, Daniel ‘Biography after historicism: the Harley Lyrics, the Hereford Map, and the life of Roger de Breynton’. In The Post-historical Middle Ages, edited by Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 161–89. ISBN 9780230607873. An examination of the primacy of Paris on the Hereford Map, and the possible connection with Hugh of St Victor. Birkholz, Daniel The King’s two maps: cartography and culture in thirteenth-century England (New York/London: Routledge, 2004). Studies in medieval history and culture. ISBN 0415967910. Monograph focusing on King Henry III’s Westminster map, the work of Matthew Paris and the role and relationship of maps and cartography at the English court. Bœspflug, François ‘Le Créateur au compas: Deus geometra dans l’art d’Occident (IXe-XIXe siècle)’. In Micrologus. La misura = Measuring, edited by Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Firenze: Sismel, 2011). Micrologus library 19, 113-30. ISBN 9788884504456. A broad look at the conceit of God with a measuring compass, extending either side of this Companion’s historical scope. Borges, Thiago ‘O tempo e os mapas: formas, percepções e representações do tempo nos mappaemundi medievais = The time and the maps: forms, perceptions and representations of time in medieval mappaemundi’, De Medio Aevo 4.2 (2015), 65–94. http://capire.es/eikonimago/index.php/demedioaevo/article/ view/164/265 [Accessed 9 April 2019]. An analysis of how mappae mundi help us understand the perception of representation of time and space in the medieval West via realism and symbolism. Bouloux, Nathalie ‘La carte comme substitut au voyage’, Cartes & géomatique: revue du Comité Français de Cartographie 234 (2017), 49–55. How maps were employed as guides for virtual travel, initially within monasteries and then in secular circles. Bouloux, Nathalie Orbis disciplinae. Hommages en l’honneur de Patrick Gautier Dalché, edited by Nathalie Bouloux, Anca Dan and Georges Tolias (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017). Contents (selected): ‘Alter mundus: cosmos réel ou cosmos symbolique chez Hugues de Saint-Victor’ by Dominique Poirel, pp. 63–81; ‘Heilsgeographie versus “realistische Darstellung der Welt” auf den Mappae Mundi des Mittelalters?’ by Felicitas Schmieder, pp. 125–38; ‘Materiali di reimpiego: il Caucaso-Tauro nell’iconografia dei mappamondi medievali’ by Francesco
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Prontera, pp. 319–44; ‘Early Modern maps in mirror image’ by Paul D.A. Harvey, pp. 755–62. ISBN 9782503567051. Oft-cited Festschrift in honor of Patrick Gautier Dalché, with contributions from key authors working on maps and topics highlighted in this Companion. Bouloux, Nathalie ‘Les usages de la géographie à la cour des Plantagenêts dans la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle’, Médiévales 24 (1993), 131–48. An examination of the creation, role and exploitation of geography at the English court, particularly as related to legitimizing and exalting royal power. Brincken, Anna-Dorothee von den ‘Die bewohnte Welt in neuen Sichtweisen zu Anfang des 13. Jahrhunderts bei Gervasius von Tilbury und Jakob von Vitry’. In Geistesleben im 13. Jahrhundert, edited by Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2000). Miscellanea mediaevalia 27, pp. 604–24. ISBN 3110166089. The known world at the start of the thirteenth century interpreted through the eyes of Gervase of Tilbury and Jacques de Vitry. Brincken, Anna-Dorothee von den Fines terrae: die Enden der Erde und der vierte Kontinent auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1992). Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 36. ISBN 3775254366. Volume including brief synopses of most of the maps highlighted in this Companion, as well as listings of medieval maps and accompanying bibliographic references. Additional emphasis placed on what, cartographically, lies beyond the known world. Brincken, Anna-Dorothee von den ‘Das geographische Weltbild um 1300’. In Das geographische Weltbild um 1300: Politik im Spannungsfeld von Wissen, Mythos und Fiktion, edited by Peter Moraw (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1989). Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 6, pp. 9–32. ISBN 3428066138. Article looking at how the world was perceived spatially in and and around 1300. Brincken, Anna-Dorothee von den Kartographische Quellen. Welt-, See- und Regionalkarten (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988). Typologie des sources du moyen age occidental 51. ISBN 2503360009. An examination of cartographic source material for medieval maps, including a fifteen-page section devoted to definitions and characteristics of mappae mundi. Brincken, Anna-Dorothee von den ‘Monumental legends on medieval manuscript maps: notes on designed capital letters on maps of large size (demonstrated from the problem of dating the Vercelli Map, thirteenth century)’, Imago mundi 42 (1990), 9–25.
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A key early contribution on the Vercelli Map, approached from a widely-researched study of medieval mapping techniques and customs. Brincken, Anna-Dorothee von den ‘Quod non vicietur pictura: Die Sorge um das rechte Bild in der Kartographie’, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Schriften 33.1 (1988), 587–99. Looking at cartographical struggles to find the ‘just’ image. ‘Recht’ in this context means right, but not in the strict sense of correct, but more of adequate. Brincken, Anna-Dorothee von den ‘Der vierte Erdteil in der Kartographie des Hochmittelalters’. In Reisen in reale und mythische Ferne, edited by Peter Wunderli (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1993). Studia humaniora Droste 22, pp. 16–34. ISBN 3770008278. An examination of the ‘Fourth continent’ on mappae mundi. Brott, LauraLee ‘The geography of devotion in the British Library map psalter’, Cartographica: the international journal for geographic information and geovisualization 53.3 (2018), 211–24. The article investigates how two thirteenth-century T-O maps in the British Library Map Psalter interact with their textual setting. The maps occupy a unique place within the history of medieval cartography because they are the only mappae mundi extant within a Book of Psalms. The maps allude to the content of the psalms and complement images in the historiated initials, cultivating exegesis, prayer and contemplation. Brotton, Jerry A history of the world in twelve maps (London: Allen Lane, 2012). ISBN 9781846140990. General overview, with the Hereford mappa mundi being one of the twelve maps studied and placed into its cartographic context. Carruthers, Mary ‘The concept of ductus, or journeying through a work of art’. In Rhetoric beyond words: delight and persuasion in the arts of the Middle Ages, edited by Mary Carruthers (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Cambridge studies in medieval literature 78, pp. 190–213. ISBN 9780521515306. A key to the rhetorical function of mappae mundi. This chapter provides a framework to draw out the necessary research strands to deliver an understanding of the cartographic image’s relationships with complementary verbal texts. Chekin, Leonid S. ‘Mappae mundi and Scandinavia’, Scandinavian Studies 65.4 (1993), 487–520.
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A study examining the arrival of Scandinavia as a geographical entity, and the relationship between mappae mundi and geographical reality – both the Psalter and Hereford maps feature prominently. Chekin, Leonid S. Northern Eurasia in medieval cartography: inventory, text, translation, and commentary (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006). Terrarum orbis 4. ISBN 2503514723. In depth cartobibliography, with most of the maps from this Companion included in Chapter X, and those of Matthew Paris occupying a chapter of their own. Connolly, Daniel K. The maps of Matthew Paris: medieval journeys through space, time and liturgy (Woodbridge, Suffolk/Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2009). ISBN 9781843834786. A volume setting the scene for the Matthew Paris chapter in this Companion, looking at his maps and how they provide insight into thirteenth-century cartographic practices and the medieval monastic manipulation of time and space. Crossley, Catherine M. ‘Medieval mappaemundi’. In The World in a mirror: World maps from the Middle Ages to the present day, edited by Jan Parmentier and Wulf Bodenstein (Antwerpen: BAI, 2015), pp. 10–19. ISBN 9789085866930. A brief introductory chapter on mappae mundi to accompany a major Antwerp maps exhibition. De Coene, Karen ‘Continuïteit of innovatie? Een onbestaand dilemma in het Liber Floridus van Lambertus van Sint-Omaars (1121) = Continuity or innovation? A nonexistent dilemma in the Liber Floridus of Lambert of Saint-Omer (1121)’, Caert-thresoor: tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van de kartografie 34.2 (2015), 67–78. Described as ‘the pearl of Belgium’s heritage’, and positioning it within the corpus of medieval mappae mundi. De Coene, Karen and De Maeyer, Philippe ‘De originaliteit van een compilator: wereldkaarten in het Liber Floridus van Lambertus van Sint-Omaars’, Handelingen der maatschappij voor geschiedenis en oudheidkunde te Gent 65.1-2 (2011/12), 43–77. Commentary on the mappae mundi in Lambert of St Omer’s Liber Floridus. Delano-Smith, Catherine English maps: a history, by Catherine Delano-Smith and Roger J.P. Kain (London: British Library, 1999). British Library studies in map history 2. ISBN 0712346090. A definitive historical overview of maps made in England, including the mappae mundi featured in this Companion.
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Deus, Paulo Roberto Soares ‘Usos, autoria e processo de confecção do mapa-múndi de Hereford, século XIII’, Fênix: revista de história e estudos culturais 3.1 (2006), 1–19. Analysis of the Hereford Map, looking at how it was used, its likely authorship, and how it was made. Eastwood, Bruce ‘Manuscripts of Macrobius, Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis, before 1500’, Manuscripta 38 (1994), 138–55. A brief introduction followed by a comprehensive listing of all known Macrobius manuscripts. Edson, Evelyn ‘Mapping the Middle Ages: the imaginary and the real universe of the mappaemundi’. In Monsters, marvels and miracles. Imaginary journeys and landscapes in the Middle Ages, edited by Leif Søndergaard and Rasmus Thorning Hansen (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2005), pp. 11–25. ISBN 8778388953. ‘Real’ versus ‘imaginary’ – the mappa mundi as a product of the mind rather than a result of geographic surveying techniques – an insight into the mentality of the time. Edson, Evelyn Mapping time and space: how medieval mapmakers viewed their world (London: British Library, 1997). British Library studies in map history 1. ISBN 0712345353. An analysis of mappae mundi featured in this Companion amongst others and their roles in computus texts. Maps are explored as multi-dimensional, with the recognition that post-medieval maps tended to be conceived with a narrower intellectual focus. Edson, Evelyn Medieval views of the cosmos: picturing the universe in the Christian and Islamic Middle Ages, by Evelyn Edson and Emilie Savage-Smith (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2004). ISBN 1851241841. Der mittelalterliche Kosmos: Karten der christlichen und islamischen Welt, by Evelyn Edson, Emilie Savage-Smith and Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2005). ISBN 3896782711. English and German-language editions of an introduction to the worldview shared by medieval Islamic and Christian societies, emphasizing the similarities in the portrayal of a harmonious cosmos under God’s control. Additional input from Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken in the German edition. Edson, Evelyn ‘The medieval world view: contemplating the mappamundi’, History Compass 8.6 (2010), 503–17.
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Shows how scholars are searching for insights into medieval concepts of time and space, as well as clues to the ways in which knowledge of ancient geography was transmitted to the medieval intellectual world. Edson, Evelyn The world map, 1300–1492: the persistence of tradition and transformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). ISBN 9780801885891. Linking cartography to the age of discovery, and the move towards spatial accuracy, incorporating a recognition of the medieval mappa mundi’s geographical limitations. Edson, Evelyn ‘World maps and Easter tables: medieval maps in context’, Imago mundi 48 (1996), 25–42. A study of three maps found within calendar manuscripts, and how their form relates to the context of the volumes into which they have been placed: the Vatican manuscript, the Cotton manuscript and the St John’s College (Oxford) manuscript. Elster, Marianne ‘In Treue und Hingabe’: 800 Jahre Kloster Ebstorf, edited by Marianne Elster and Horst Hoffmann (Uelzen: Kloster Ebstorf, 1997). Schriften zu Uelzener Heimatkunde 13. Contents (selected): ‘Die Schrift auf der Ebstorf Weltkarte’ by Hans Martin Schaller, pp. 80–95; ‘Schöpfungsbild und Herrschaftszeichen: die Ebstorfer Weltkarte’ by Armin Wolf, pp. 97–108. A pair of articles on the Ebstorf Map included in a volume to celebrate 800 years of the Benedictine Ebstorf nunnery: one discussing the map’s text content, the other exploring the map’s imagery and the background to its inception. Englisch, Brigitte Ordo orbis terrae: die Weltsicht in den Mappaemundi des Frühen und Hohen Mittelalters (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002). Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters 3. ISBN 3050036354. Study focusing on the premise of the creation by God in the form of a world map, which itself must have been subject to specific criteria of order, a formula dictating how space was treated in the Middle Ages. Englisch, Brigitte ‘Die Umsetzung topographischer Strukturen in den “Mappae Mundi” des Mittelalters’. In Natur im Mittelalter: Konzeptionen – Erfahrungen – Wirkungen; Akten des 9. Symposiums des Mediävistenverbandes, Marburg. 14.- 17. März 2001, edited by Peter Dilg (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003), pp. 204–26. ISBN 3050037784. The rôle of topographic structures in mappae mundi.
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Flint, Valerie I.J. ‘The Hereford map: its author(s), two scenes and a border’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6.8 (1998), 19–44. Discussion of the Hereford Map’s origins and an argument about the ‘passe avant’ rider in its lower right corner. Did it begin life in Lincoln only to be completed in Hereford? Which Richard of Lafford was responsible for which parts of the map? Fox, Michael Mappae mundi: representing the world and its inhabitants in texts, maps, and images in medieval and early modern Europe, exhibition and catalog by Michael Fox and Stephen R. Reimer ([Edmonton, Alberta]: Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta, [2008]). ISBN 9781551951874. A volume produced to accompany a 2008 exhibition of medieval manuscripts in Edmonton, Alberta. The contents include a brief entry for the Hereford Map. Foys, Martin and Bradshaw, Shannon ‘Developing Digital Mappaemundi: an agile mode for annotating medieval maps’, Digital Medievalist: The Journal of the Digital Medievalist Community 7 (2011). http://doi.org/10.16995/dm.38 [Accessed 9 April 2019]. Digital Mappaemundi is a resource to create open source tools for editing and annotation, and for locating image and textual data. For development purposes, selected data were identified as medieval mappae mundi and transcriptions of their geographical source texts. Foys, Martin K. ‘An unfinished mappa mundi from late-eleventh-century Worcester’, AngloSaxon England 35 (2006), 271–84. This article discusses the incomplete mappa mundi found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 265, identifying it as a nearly exact and earlier analog of two twelfth-century English maps of the world from the Ramsey area (the St John’s College, Oxford, and the British Library Cotton MS maps). The close connections between these three maps point to a unique, late Anglo-Saxon tradition of mappae mundi thus far unrecognized. Foys, Martin K. Virtual mappa: digital editions of early medieval maps of the world, by Martin K. Foys et al. (Philadelphia: Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies; London: British Library, 2018). http://sims.digitalmappa.org/ workspace/#965fe731 [Accessed 9 April 2019]. A set of networked digital editions of eleven (and counting) medieval maps, published as open access scholarship. This resource is designed to be an ongoing and collaborative effort, with scholars continuing to add and edit more maps. Each map’s digital facsimile contains annotated transcriptions and translations for every place name, and is paired with a short introductory text and bibliography.
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Foys, Martin K. ‘The virtual reality of the Anglo-Saxon mappamundi’, Literature Compass 1 (2004), 14 p. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.17414113.2004.00016.x/full [Accessed 9 April 2019]. This article studies the formal and textual elements of the Anglo-Saxon or Cotton Map in relation to Christian theographic traditions of medieval mappae mundi, classical representations of early Britain, the formation of Anglo-Saxon identity, and the geopolitical context of eleventh-century England. French, R.K. ‘Putting animals on the map. The natural history of the Hereford mappa mundi’, Archives of Natural History 21 (1994), 289–308. A study of animals depicted on the Hereford Map and their ancient analogs. Friedman, John Block ‘Cultural conflicts in medieval world maps.’ In Implicit understandings: observing, reporting, and reflecting on the encounters between European and other peoples in the Early Modern era, edited by Stuart B. Schwartz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 64–95. ISBN 0521452406. Mappae mundi are seen as a bridge between manuscript painting and literary texts – as transmitters and reflectors of cultural conflicts when Europeans are placed alongside ‘other’ peoples, thus charting their makers’ minds and values. Friedman, John Block Trade, travel, and exploration in the Middle Ages: an encyclopedia, edited by John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg (New York/London: Garland, 2000). Garland reference library of the Humanities 1899. Contents (selected): ‘Ebstorf World map’ by Armin Wolf, pp. 160–2; ‘Mappamundi’ by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, pp. 363–7. ISBN 0815320035. Encyclopedic entries on the Ebstorf Map, and mappae mundi in general in a volume devoted to medieval geographical activities. Gatani, Tindaro Periploi, Mappae Mundi und Seekarten: Masterkatalog der Ausstellung = Peripli, mappamondi e carte da navigare: catalogo pilota della mostra, edited by Tindaro Gatani (Palermo: Arti Grafiche Palermitane, 2015). ISBN 9788897559238. Exhibition catalog covering maps from the ancient world to the seventeenth century. Gaudio, Michael ‘Matthew Paris and the cartography of the margins’, Gesta 39.1 (2000), 50–7. Gaudio argues that Paris used text to replace cartographic techniques, thus, his itineraries become increasingly less graphic and more textual the more tightly he focuses on the Holy Land.
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Gautier Dalché, Patrick ‘Agrimensure et inventaire du monde: la fortune de “mappa (mundi)” au moyen âge’. In Les Vocabulaires techniques des arpenteurs romains: actes du colloque international, Besançon, 19-21 septembre 2002, edited by Danièle Conso et al. (Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2006), pp. 163–71. ISBN 2848671203. How medieval mappae mundi were constructed – employing an ideological base (as with today’s maps), yet using very different methodologies to convey the information. Gautier Dalché, Patrick ‘Décrire le monde et situer les lieux au XIIe siècle: l’Expositio mappa mundi et la généalogie de la mappemonde de Hereford’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Age 113.1 (2001), 343–409. A methodology for studying the design and structure of mappae mundi and their derivatives, to ascertain the intellectual input into their creation, as well as a blueprint for how to analyse and interpret the texts found on mappae mundi. How this method can be adapted for the Hereford Map. Gautier Dalché, Patrick La ‘Descriptio mappe mundi’ de Hugues de Saint-Victor: texte inédit avec description et commentaire (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1988). ISBN 2851210890. An analysis of Hugh of St Victor’s importance to medieval cartography and a full transcription of his Descriptio mappe mundi, followed by a commentary. Gautier Dalché, Patrick Géographie et culture: la représentation de l’espace du VIe au XIIe siècle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997). Variorum collected studies CS592. ISBN 0860786552. A compilation of twelve of Gautier Dalché’s articles, a number of which appear individually in this Bibliography. Gautier Dalché, Patrick ‘De la glose à la contemplation. Place et fonction de la carte dans les manuscrits du haut Moyen Age’. In Testo e imagine nell’alto Medioevo: 15-21 aprile 1993, Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 1994). Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo 41, pp. 693–771. ISBN 8879880403. Generally covering a period earlier than the focus of this Companion, this in-depth paper aims to contextualize the purpose of the map within the manuscript. Gautier Dalché, Patrick ‘Guillaume de Conches, le modèle macrobien de la sphere et les antipodes: antécédents et influence immédiate’. In Guillaume de Conches: philosophie et science au XIIe siècle, edited by Barbara Obrist and Irene Caiazzo (Firenze: Sismel, 2011), pp. 219–51. ISBN 9788884504135.
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An examination of Macrobian theories of the antipodes and terrestrial sphere, and an assessment of Guillaume’s contribution. Gautier Dalché, Patrick ‘Mappae mundi antérieures au XIIIe siècle dans les manuscrits latins de la Bibliothèque nationale de France’, Scriptorium 52 (1998), 102–62. An introduction followed by a catalog of 101 thirteenth-century Latin manuscripts containing mappae mundi held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Gautier Dalché, Patrick ‘“Réalité” et “symbole” dans la géographie de Hugues de Saint-Victor’. In Ugo di San Vittore: atti del XLVII convegno storico internazionale, Todi, 10-12 ottobre 2010 (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 2011). Atti dei convegni del Centro italiano di studi sul Basso Medioevo-Accademia Tudertina e del Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale. Nuova serie 24, pp. 359-81. ISBN 9788879883467. Do mappae mundi show the world as ‘reality’ in terms of terrestrial space, or are they purely symbolic in function? Gautier Dalché argues that Hugh of St Victor would support the former interpretation. Gautier Dalché, Patrick ‘Le renouvellement de la perception et de la représentation de l’espace au XIIe siècle’. In Renovación intelectual del Occidente Europeo (siglo XII): XXIV Semana de estudios Medievales, Estella, 14 a 18 de Julio de 1997, ed. García de Cortázar and José Ángel. Semana de Estudios Medievales (Pamplona: Departamento de Educación y Cultura, 1998), pp. 169–217. ISBN 842351708X. How the ideas behind the perception and representation of space were renewed in the twelfth century. Gautier Dalché, Patrick ‘Les sens de mappa (mundi): IVe-XIVe siècle’, Bulletin du Cange: Archivum latinitatis medii aevi 62 (2004), 187–202. A chronological listing of landmarks in the development of mappae mundi up to the fifteenth century. Gautier Dalché, Patrick Du Yorkshire a l’Inde: une ‘géographie’ urbaine et maritime de la fin du XIIe siècle (Roger de Howden?) (Genève: Librairie Droz, 2005). Hautes études médiévales et modernes 89. ISBN 9782600010368. Three texts are examined: the Expositio mappe mundi, Liber nautarum and De viis maris, and an edition of each of them forms the second half of the volume. Gautier Dalché aims to prove that Roger of Howden was the author of the three texts, and fully explores the close relationship between the Expositio and the Hereford Map.
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Glauser, Jürg Text-Bild-Karte. Kartographien der Vormoderne, edited by Jürg Glauser and Christian Kiening (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2007). Rombach Wissenschaft: Reihe Litterae 105. Contents (selected): ‘Monstra und mappae mundi: die monströsen Völker des Erdrands auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten’ by Marina Münkler, pp. 149–73; ‘Himmelsrichtungen und Erdregionen auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten’ by Hartmut Kugler, pp. 175–99; ‘… quasi sub unius pagine vision coadunavit. Zur Lesbarkeit der Ebstorfer Weltkarte’ by Cornelia Herberichs, pp. 201–17. ISBN 9783793093466. Three articles comprising the ‘Margins – Directions – Readings’ section looking at monstrous peoples (with a heavy focus on the Hereford Map); a selection of mappae mundi region-by-region (including Munich, Psalter and Hereford); and the means to interpret the Ebstorf Map’s text. Glenn, John ‘Notes on the mappa mundi in Hereford Cathedral’. In England in the thirteenth century: proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton symposium, edited by W. Mark Ormrod (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1986), pp. 60–3. ISBN 085115445X. Very brief account, looking at the Hereford Map’s possible Lincolnshire origins as well as considering Moir’s earlier Hereford-published guide to the map. Hahn-Woernle, Birgit Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte (Ebstorf: Kloster Ebstorf, [1989]). ISBN 3922608574. Volume placing the Ebstorf Map in its historical context, along with a pull-out, reduced-size facsimile and tracing paper overlays of toponyms. Hameleers, Marc ‘De Aslake- en de Duchy of Cornwall-wereldkaarten. Twee recent teruggevonden fragmenten van middeleeuwse wereldkaarten’, Caert-thresoor: tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van de kartografie 4 (1987), 54–60. An article on recently discovered medieval map fragments; a rare example of an article on the Duchy Map paired with the Aslake Map. Hamer, John ‘Worlds apart: Norman mappaemundi in England and Sicily’, The Portolan 31 (1994), 5–17. Comparison of two Norman kingdoms and their production of world maps, reflecting very different world views. Harley, John Brian Cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, edited by J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1987). The History of Cartography 1. Contents (selected): ‘Medieval maps: an introduction’ by Paul D.A. Harvey, pp. 283–5; ‘Medieval mappaemundi’ by David Woodward, pp. 286–370. ISBN 0226316335.
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The touchstone for much of the research carried out in preparation for this Companion. Although over thirty years old, Harley and Woodward’s contribution remains the acknowledged starting point for work on placing medieval mappae mundi into their cartographic context. Harley, John Brian The new nature of maps: essays in the history of cartography, edited by Paul Laxton; introduction by J.H. Andrews; bibliography by Matthew H. Edney (Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). ISBN 0801865662. A collection of seven of Harley’s essays, prefaced by a provocative introduction assessing his work and its multidisciplinary nature. Also contains a chronological bibliography of some 180 of Harley’s works, followed by a bibliography of all the works cited by Harley. Harvey, Paul D.A. The Hereford World map: introduction (London: The Folio Society, 2010). ISBN 0904642135. A Folio Society-published volume produced to accompany its spectacular color facsimile of the Hereford Map. Harvey, Paul D.A. The Hereford World Map: medieval world maps and their context (London: British Library, 2006). Contents (selected): ‘Medieval maps of the world’ by Peter Barber, pp. 1–44; ‘The rediscovery of the Hereford mappamundi: early references, 1684–1873’ by Martin Bailey, pp. 45–78; ‘The discovery of the lost mappamundi panel: Hereford’s map in a medieval altarpiece?’ by Martin Bailey, pp. 79–93; ‘The Hereford map: the first annual condition report’ by Christopher Clarkson, pp. 95–106; ‘The Hereford map: the handwriting and copying of the text’ by M.B. Parkes, pp. 107–17; ‘The Hereford map: art-historical aspects’ by Nigel Morgan, pp. 119–35; ‘Vision of the World: Romanesque art of northern Italy and the Hereford mappamundi’ by Jeanne Fox-Friedman, pp. 137–51; ‘Animals in context: beasts on the Hereford map and medieval natural history’ by Margriet Hoogvliet, pp. 153–65; ‘Alexander interpreted on the Hereford mappamundi’ by Naomi Reed Kline, pp. 167–83; ‘The Hereford mappamundi: visibile parlare’ by Massimo Rossi, pp. 185–9; ‘Lessons from legends on the Hereford mappamundi’ by Scott D. Westrem, pp. 191–207; ‘The underlying projection of mappaemundi’ by R.W. Bremner, pp. 209–21; ‘Maps in words: the descriptive logic of medieval geography, from the eighth to the twelfth century’ by Patrick Gautier Dalché, pp. 223–42; ‘The Holy Land on medieval world maps’ by P.D.A. Harvey, pp. 243–51; ‘Mappaemundi: image, artefact, social practice’ by Marcia Kupfer, pp. 253–67; ‘The multilayered journey: from manuscript initial letters to encyclopaedic mappaemundi through the Benedictine semiotic tradition’ by Patrizia Licini, pp. 269–92; ‘The shape of the Earth in the Middle Ages and medieval mappaemundi’ by Rudolf Simek, pp. 293–303; ‘Biblical, mythical, and foreign women in the texts and pictures on
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medieval World maps’ by Ingrid Baumgärtner, pp. 305–34; ‘The westward progression of history on medieval mappaemundi: an investigation on the evidence’ by Stephen McKenzie, pp. 335–44; ‘Defining mappaemundi’ by Alessandro Scafi, pp. 345–54; ‘Jerusalem on medieval mappaemundi: a site both historical and eschatological’ by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, pp. 355–79; ‘Travelling on the mappamundi: the world of John Mandeville’ by Evelyn Edson, pp. 389–403. ISBN 0712347607. A major multi-authored study of the Hereford Map and mappae mundi in general, including a chapter by Peter Barber that was in part the impetus for this Companion. Primarily the results of the impressive conference and display of mappae mundi at Hereford Cathedral in 1999. A landmark collection that opened new doors for those interested in these maps. Harvey, Paul D.A. ‘El mapamundi de Hereford = The mappa mundi of Hereford’, Mètode revista de difusió de la investigació de la Universitat de València 53 (2007), 68–75. Evidence from the Hereford Map suggests its authorship to be very closely associated with Richard of Haldingham, such as the realistic representation of Lincoln. Harvey, Paul D.A. Mappa mundi: the Hereford World map (London: Hereford Cathedral/British Library, 1996). ISBN 0712304401. Harvey, Paul D.A. Mappa mundi: the Hereford World map. 2nd edn (Hereford: Hereford Cathedral, 2002). ISBN 0904642135. Harvey, Paul D.A. Mappa mundi: the Hereford World map. 3rd edn (Hereford: Hereford Cathedral, 2010). Three editions of Paul Harvey’s copiously illustrated study of the Hereford Map, published by the Cathedral itself. He looks at the map and its history, compares it with similar maps, and contemplates its sources. Harvey, Paul D.A. ‘Maps of the world in the medieval English royal wardrobe’. In Foundations of medieval scholarship: records edited in honour of David Crook, edited by Paul A. Brand and Sean Cunningham (York: Borthwick Publications, 2008). Borthwick texts and studies 36, pp. 51–5. ISBN 9781904497240. Evidence for two, perhaps three world maps, and an explanation of their importance to the king. Harvey takes such maps out of churches and into royal domestic properties. Harvey, Paul D.A. Medieval maps (London: British Library, 1991). ISBN 0712302328.
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Looking at medieval maps in general, but with one chapter dedicated to pre-1400 world maps. Generously illustrated. Harvey, Paul D.A. ‘The Sawley map and other world maps in twelfth-century England’, Imago mundi 49 (1997), 33–42. A rare example of research on the Sawley Map, placing the map in its context in medieval England. Hiatt, Alfred ‘The map of Macrobius before 1100’, Imago mundi 59.2 (2007), 149–76. An examination into the primary purpose of Macrobius maps, and an acknowledgement that it may not be possible to trace lines of descent from the original fifth-century map. Hoogvliet, Margriet ‘Mappae mundi and medieval encyclopaedias: image versus text’. In Pre-modern encyclopaedic texts: proceedings of the second COMERS congress, Groningen, 1–4 July 1996, edited by Peter Binkley (Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill, 1997). Brill’s studies in intellectual history 79, 63–74. ISBN 9004108300. An attempt to link mappae mundi with the contents of medieval encyclopedias, demonstrating cross-fertilization of ideas. Hoogvliet, Margriet ‘Mappae mundi and the medieval hermeneutics of cartographical space’. In Regions and landscapes: reality and imagination in late medieval and early modern Europe, edited by Peter Ainsworth and Tom Scott (Oxford/Bern/ New York: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 25–46. ISBN 390675326 / 0820450634. A demonstration of how maps and texts could function as objects for spiritual contemplation with particular emphasis on the Hereford and Ebstorf maps. Hoogvliet, Margriet ‘The mystery of the makers: did nuns make the Ebstorf map?’ Mercator’s World 1.6 (1996), 16–21. Introductory examination into who might have made the Ebstorf Map. Hoogvliet, Margriet Pictura et scriptura: textes, images et herméneutique des mappae mundi (XIIIe-XVIe siècle) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). Terrarum orbis 7. ISBN 9782503520650. A volume exploring the cartographic transition from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, noting the mappae mundi’s continued ‘multimedia’ visual and textual impact. Hucker, Bernd Ulrich ‘Zur Datierung der Ebstorfer Weltkarte’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 44.2 (1988), 510–38.
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A careful examination and review of theories on the accurate dating of the Ebstorf Map. Jackson, Stuart ‘The world map in Hereford Cathedral’, International Map Collectors Society Journal 36 (1989), 11–17, 19. Article triggered by the proposed sale of the Hereford Map and the background to the decision-making process. Jancey, Elizabeth Meryl Mappa mundi: the map of the world in Hereford Cathedral: a brief guide (Hereford: Friends of Hereford Cathedral, 1987 and 1995). ISBN 0904642062. Cited in Jackson’s article above. One of the most popular introductory guides to the map, written by the cathedral archivist. Jancey breaks the Hereford Map into sections and looks at each one in turn. Klemp, Egon ‘Ebstorfer Karte’. In Lexikon zur Geschichte der Kartographie: von den Anfängen bis zum ersten Weltkrieg, edited by Ingrid Kretschmer et al. (Wien: F. Deuticke, 1986). Kartographie und ihre Randgebiete C/1-2, 183-5. ISBN 3700545622. A brief entry on the Ebstorf Map in an encyclopedia on the history of cartography. Kliege, Herma Weltbild und Darstellungspraxis hochmittelalterlicher Weltkarten (Münster: Nodus, 1991). ISBN 389323215X. Volume with an emphasis on mappae mundi in general, although there are chapters dedicated to Hugh of St Victor, the Duchy of Cornwall Map and the Psalter Map. Kline, Naomi Reed Maps of medieval thought: the Hereford paradigm (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2001). ISBN 0851156029. How might the Hereford Map have been perceived and remembered, and how might personal meaning have been gleaned from an encounter with it? A volume written from an art history viewpoint. Kruppa, Nathalie Kloster und Bildung im Mittelalter, edited by Nathalie Kruppa and Jürgen Wilke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2006). Veröffentlichungen des MaxPlanck-Instituts für Geschichte 218. Studien zur Germania sacra 28. Contents (selected): ‘Neue Formen der Bildung und neue Bildformen im Vorfeld der Ebstorfer Weltkarte in Sachsen’ by Harald Wolter-von dem Knesebeck, pp. 231–61; ‘Paradies und vera icon: Kriterien für die Bildkomposition der Ebstorfer Weltkarte’ by Christine Ungruh, pp. 301–29; ‘Der doppelte Paradiestext auf der Ebstorfer Weltkarte’ by Rainer Walter, pp. 331–43; ‘Spuren der orientalischen Christienheit auf Karten des 12. bis 14. Jahrhunderts’ by
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Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, pp. 403–24; ‘Kriterien zur Datierung der Ebstorfer Weltkarte: zur Konzeption des Gervasius von Tilbury’ by Armin Wolf, pp. 425–69; ‘Neues zu Ebstorfer Hanschriftenfragmenten’ by Jürgen Wilke, pp. 471–96; ‘Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte ohne Gervasius von Tilbury’ by Hartmut Kugler, pp. 497–512; ‘Starkenberch urbs: Österreich und die Datierung der Ebstorfer Weltkarte’ by Folker Reichert, pp. 513–21; ‘Mappa dicitur forma. Inde mappa mundi est forma mundi: Konzept und Systematik der Ebstorfer Weltkarte’ by Brigitte Englisch, pp. 523–45; ‘Vor und nach dem Buch: Mediale Aspekte der Ebstorfer Weltkarte’ by Martin Warnke, pp. 547–56. ISBN 3525358717. A volume of twenty-four contributions, a number of them on the Ebstorf Map, in an overview of medieval monasteries and art. The map is placed in its historical and immediate geographical context. Kugler, Hartmut ‘Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte: ein europäisches Weltbild im deutschen Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 116 (1987), 1–29. An explanation of how the Ebstorf Map presents the ideal medieval ecumene, but takes account of how geographical knowledge and pure invention ended up together on the same image. Kugler, Hartmut Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte: kommentierte neuausgabe in zwei Bänden, edited by Hartmut Kugler in collaboration with Sonja Glauch, Antje Willing and Thomas Zapf (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007). ISBN 9783050041179. Similar in design to Westrem’s volume on the Hereford Map, Kugler has produced a two-volume monograph on Ebstorf. All Latin texts are translated and legends identified, whilst the commentary deals with the design, content and sources of the map, as well as its likely purpose. Kugler, Hartmut ‘Hochmittelalterliche Weltkarten als Geschichtsbilder’. In Hochmittelalterliches Geschichtsbewuβtsein im Spiegel nichthistoroiographischer Quellen, edited by Hans-Werner Goetz (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998), pp. 179–98. ISBN 3050031883. Kugler considers the pictorial histories delivered by medieval mappae mundi. Kugler, Hartmut ‘Die Seele im Konzept von Mikrokosmos und Makrokosmos. Zum Christuskopf auf der Ebstorfer Weltkarte’. In Anima und sêle. Darstellung und Systematisierungen von Seele im Mittelalter, edited by Katharina Philipowski and Anne Prior (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2006), pp. 59–79. ISBN 9783503079698. The head of Christ on the Ebstorf Map, and how it can help interpret the soul in the concept of microcosm and macrocosm.
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Kugler, Hartmut ‘Symbolische Weltkarten – der Kosmos im Menschen: Symbolstrukturen in der Universalkartographie bis Kolumbus’. In Gutenberg und die Neue Welt, edited by Horst Wenzel (München: Wilhelm Fink, 1994), pp. 33–58. ISBN 3770529979. Symbols and symbolism on mappae mundi. Kugler, Hartmut Ein Weltbild vor Columbus: die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, Interdisziplinäres Colloquium 1988, edited by Hartmut Kugler et al. (Weinheim: VCH Acta Humaniora, 1991). Contents (selected): ‘Das wiederentdeckte Monument – Erforschung der Ebstorfer Weltkarte, Entstehungsgeschichte und Gestalt ihrer Nachbildungen’ by Eckard Michael, pp. 9–22; ‘Kloster Ebstorf und die Weltkarte’ by Klaus Jaitner, pp. 41–53; ‘Ikonologie der Ebstorfer Weltkarte und politische Situation des Jahres 1239’ by Armin Wolf, pp. 54–116; ‘Zur Position der Ebstorfer Weltkarte in der Geschichte der Geowissenschaften’ by Uta Lindgren, pp. 123–8; ‘Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte im Verhältnis zur spanischen und angelsächsischen Weltkartentradition’ by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, pp. 129–45; ‘Skandinavische Mappae Mundi in der europäischen Tradition’ by Rudolf Simek, pp. 167–84; ‘Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte und Fortuna Rotis-Vorstellungen’ by Birgit Hahn-Woernle, pp. 185–99; ‘Jerusalem – das Zentrum der Ebstorf-Karte’ by Kerstin HengevossDürkop, pp. 205–22; ‘Über die Zeichnungen auf der Ebstorfkarte und die niedersächsische Buchmalerei’ by Renate Kroos, pp. 223–44; ‘Datierung und Gebrauch der Ebstorfer Weltkarte und ihre Beziehungen zu den Nachbarklöstern Lüne und Wienhausen’ by Horst Appuhn, pp. 245–59; ‘Scheibe, Rad, Zifferblatt: Grenzübergänge zwischen Weltkarten und Weltbildern’ by Karl Clausberg, pp. 260–313; ‘Die Tierwelt der Ebstorfer Weltkarte im Kontext mittelalterlicher Enzyklopädik’ by Uwe Ruberg, pp. 319–46; ‘Abschreibfehler: Zur Quellenproblematik der Ebstorfer Weltkarte’ by Hartmut Kugler, pp. 347–66; ‘Zur paläographischen Datierung der Ebstorfer Weltkarte’ by Sabine Effertz, pp. 383–6. ISBN 3527176705. Selected proceedings from a 1988 conference on the Ebstorf Map. Kupfer, Marcia Art and optics in the Hereford Map: an English mappa mundi, c. 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2016). ISBN 9780300220339. The Hereford Map is read as an iconographic Marian component of a much larger (now lost) panel painting. The whole is studied as a work of art and source of pleasure, and Kupfer produces a compelling explanation of the seemingly mislabeled landmasses of Europe and Africa. Her chapter in this Companion extends arguments made in the book. Kupfer, Marcia ‘The Jerusalem effect: rethinking the centre in medieval World maps.’ In Visual constructs of Jerusalem, edited by Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai
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and Hanna Vorholt (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Cultural encounters in late antiquity and the Middle Ages 18, pp. 353–65. ISBN 9782503551043. Jerusalem is represented in maps along an axis connecting past, present and future and was perhaps used as a visual and material aid to commemoration and worship from afar. Kupfer, Marcia ‘The lost mappamundi at Chalivoy-Milon’, Speculum: a journal of medieval studies 66.3 (1991), 540–71. The similarities in content between Chalivoy-Milon’s lost map, and the mappae mundi of Ebstorf and Hereford are explored, as well as the positioning of the map within the church, and how this would have affected those observing it. Kupfer, Marcia ‘Medieval world maps: embedded images, interpretive frames’, Word and image 10.3 (1994), 262–88. How do mappae mundi reflect the society in which they were produced? This study concentrates on free-standing mappae mundi, i.e., those not found in books, arguing that the observers were able to project themselves spatially and temporally onto the map. Kupfer, Marcia ‘The Noachide dispersion in English mappae mundi c. 960–c. 1130’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 4.1 (2013), 81–106. http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu/vol4_1/KupferPeregrinations41.pdf [Accessed 9 April 2019]. Three early English mappae mundi (Thorney, Peterborough and Ramsey) demonstrate how the use of surrounding tables and diagrams encourages an approach to the generation of thought and meaning, transferring Britain from the periphery to medieval geographical primacy. Kupfer, Marcia ‘Traveling the mappa mundi: readerly transport from Cassiodorus to Petrarch’. In Maps and travel in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period: knowledge, imagination, and visual culture, edited by Ingrid Baumgärtner, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, Katrin Kogman-Appel (Berlin/Boston: Walter De Gruyter, 2018). Das Mittelalter Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung 9, pp. 17–36. ISBN 9783110588774. Authors from Cassiodorus to Petrarch associate maps with travel as a mental activity. This essay explores the history of the concept and how it is manifested on three world maps of c. 1300. Lecoq, Danielle ‘Géographie et cartographie: la représentation du monde en milieu monastique au XIIe siècle. Ou du bon usage des mappemondes’. In Monachisme et technologie dans la société médiévale de Xe au XIIIe siècle: actes du Colloque scientifique international, Cluny, 4-6 septembre 1991, edited by Charles
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Hetzlen and René de Vos (Cluny: Ecole nationale supérieure d’arts et métiers, 1994), pp. 213–65. Article taken from a volume of conference proceedings examining the representation of the world in twelfth-century monastic communities. Lecoq, Danielle ‘L’image d’Alexandre à travers les mappemondes médievales (XIIe-XIIIe)’, Geografia antiqua: rivista di geografia storica del mondo antico e di storia della geografia 2 (1993), 63–103. A description of the places and numerous exploits on mappae mundi related to Alexander, king of Macedonia, who played an important role in western culture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Lecoq, Danielle ‘L’image de la terre à travers les mappemondes des XIIe et XIIIe siècles’. In Terres médiévales: acte du colloque d’Orléans des 27 et 28 avril 1990, edited by Bernard Ribémont (Paris: Klincksieck, 1993), pp. 203–36. ISBN 2252028831. The author describes the situation of the earth in the cosmos, as seen by William of Conches and other medieval scholars, sets out theories about the earth’s physical structure and describes the main characteristics of mappae mundi. Lecoq, Danielle ‘La mappemonde d’Henri de Mayence, ou l’image du monde au XIIe siècle’. In Iconographie médiévale: image, texte, contexte, edited by Gaston DuchetSuchaux (Paris: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1990), pp. 155–207. ISBN 2222043441. Detailed study of Henry of Mainz’s mappa mundi, the Sawley Map, held at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Lecoq, Danielle ‘La mappemonde du Liber Floridus ou la vision de Lambert de Saint-Omer’, Imago mundi 39 (1987), 9–49. Lambert’s map is a synthesis, a global look into space and time. With history arriving at the end of time, Lambert proposed an eschatological vision of the world in which Roman and Frankish princes were seen to be playing a significant rôle. Lecoq, Danielle ‘Les mappemondes médiévales comme signes et représentations du pouvoir (XIe-XIIIe)’, Bulletin du Comité français de cartographie 141 (1994), 20–37. A desire for order and unity is presented by the creators of mappae mundi. They anticipate the coming of a time when all of humanity will be gathered under the leadership of a single emperor. Lecoq, Danielle ‘Les marges de la terre habitée: géographie et histoire naturelle des confines sur les mappemondes des XIIe et XIIIe siècles’. In L’iconographie: études sur
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les rapports entre texts et images dans l’Occident medieval, edited by Gaston Duchet-Suchaux (Paris: le Léopard d’Or, 2001). Cahiers du Léopard d’Or 10, pp. 99–186. ISBN 286377168X. A study of the content of the geographical margins of mappae mundi, with particular emphasis on the animals and monsters populating these preconceived zones of danger. Lecoq, Danielle ‘Place et fonction du desert dans la representation du Monde au moyen age’, Revue des sciences humaines: revue d’histoire de la philosophie et d’histoire générale de la civilisation 258 (2000), 15–112. A study in the presence of deserts on mappae mundi – how were they utilized to help convey the map’s message? Levy, Brian J. ‘Signes et communications “extraterrestres”. Les inscriptions marginales de la mappemonde de Hereford (13e siècle)’. In Das grosse Abenteuer der Entdeckung der Welt im Mittelalter = La grande aventure de la découverte du monde au moyen age, edited by Danielle Buschinger and Wolfgang Spiewok (Griefswald: Reineke, 1995), pp. 35–48. ISBN 3894920610. A study of the marginalia on the Hereford Map – examining the text and images placed beyond the sphere of the Earth. Lewis, Suzanne The art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica majora (Berkeley, CA/London: University of California Press, 1987). ISBN 0520049810. A standard work on Matthew’s Chronica, with one of its seven chapters devoted to his cartographic output. His maps are seen as directly linked to his contributions as both historian and artist, and Lewis sets Matthew’s mapmaking in the context of his career. Each map is examined in turn. Licini, Patrizia ‘A full image of cultural space: the Sawley mappa mundi as a global memory hypertext’. In Grenze und Grenzüberschreitung im Mittelalter, edited by Ulrich Knefelkamp and Kristian Bosselmann-Cyran (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007), pp. 470–89. ISBN 9783050043302. Another of the rare Sawley articles, placing the map in its historical context amongst other mappae mundi, and also attempting to identify its creator with a close look at John of Salisbury’s involvement. Lilley, Keith Mapping medieval geographies: geographical encounters in the Latin West and beyond, 300–1600, edited by Keith D. Lilley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Contents (selected): ‘Reflections in the Ebstorf Map: cartography, theology and dilectio speculationis’ by Marcia Kupfer, pp. 100–26; ‘Hereford maps, Hereford lives: biography and cartography in an English cathedral city’ by Daniel Birkholz, pp. 225–49; ‘Gardens of Eden and
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ladders to Heaven: holy mountain geographies in Byzantium’ by Veronica Della Dora, pp. 271–99. ISBN 9781107036918. Contributions on mappae mundi and their cultural contexts in a volume with a substantially wider remit. An exploration into the formation of geographical knowledge, ideas and traditions in medieval Europe. Lindgren, Uta ‘Hereford-Karte’. In Lexikon des Mittelalters 4: Erzkanzler bis Hiddensee, edited by Robert-Henri Bautier (München/Zürich: Artemis-Verlag, 1989), p. 2152. ISBN 3760889042. Short entry on the Hereford Map in an encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. Longère, Jean L’abbaye parisienne de Saint-Victor au moyen age: communications, edited by Jean Longère (Paris/Turnhout: Brepols, 1991). Bibliotheca Victorina 1. Contents (selected): ‘La “Descriptio mappe mundi” de Hugues de SaintVictor: retractatio et additamenta’ by Patrick Gautier Dalché, pp. 143–79; ‘Hughes de Saint-Victor: cartographe du savoir’ by Luce Giard, pp. 253–69. ISBN 250350048X. A series of articles related to the abbey of St Victor published following a 1988 Paris colloquium on medieval humanism, including Gautier Dalché’s work on Hugh’s Descriptio, as above. Mittman, Asa Simon Maps and monsters in medieval England (New York/London: Routledge, 2006). Studies in medieval history and culture. ISBN 9780415976138. Focus on the marvellous mythical beasts and monstrous peoples featured on maps seen in medieval England. Moecker, Mike ‘The maps of Macrobius’, MapForum 4 (2004), 26–30. Very general introductory overview. Moffitt, John F. ‘Medieval mappaemundi and Ptolemy’s Chorographia’, Gesta 32.1 (1993), 59–68. An attempt to look back to the forebears of mappae mundi in the form of nonextant classical maps and those supporting texts that do survive. Morgan, Nigel John Early Gothic manuscripts, 1250–1285, vol. 2. In Survey of manuscripts illuminated in the British Isles 4, edited by J.J.G. Alexander (London: Harvey Miller, 1988), pp. 195–200. ISBN 0905203534. Key multi-volume series cited by many of the contributors to this Companion. Individual maps are described in turn with details of their provenance (where known) and accompanied by an extensive listing of relevant associated literature.
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Münkler, Marina ‘Experiencing strangeness: monstrous peoples on the edge of the Earth as depicted on medieval mappae mundi’, Medieval History Journal 5.2 (2002), 195–222. An article examining the strange beings depicted on the margins of mappae mundi, drawing on insights from sociological theory to establish their presence as symbols of strangeness beyond the realms of humanity. Pelletier, Monique Couleurs de la terre: des mappemondes médiévales aux images satellitales, edited by Monique Pelletier (Paris: Seuil/Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1998). ISBN 2717720480 / 2020354292. Catalog of the 1998 map exhibition held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Pelletier, Monique Géographie du monde au moyen âge et à la Renaissance, edited by Monique Pelletier (Paris: Éditions du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1989). Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques: mémoires de la section de géographie 15. Contents (selected): ‘Medieval World maps’ by David Woodward, pp. 7–8; ‘La “mappemonde” du De arca Noe mystica de Hugues de Saint-Victor (1128-1129)’ by Danielle Lecoq, pp. 9–31; ‘The Duchy of Cornwall Map fragment’ by Graham Haslam, pp. 33–44; ‘A new dating of the Ebstorf Mappamundi’ by Rolf Lindemann, pp. 45–50; ‘News on the Ebstorf World map: date, origin, authorship’ by Armin Wolf, pp. 51–68; ‘Old encounters new: the Aslake World map’ by Peter M. Barber, pp. 69–88. ISBN 2735501809. The first third of this compilation consists of articles on a selection of mappae mundi, a number of which are highlighted in this Companion. Haslam’s is the first and only stand-alone piece to be found on the Duchy Map fragment. Lecoq’s contains one of the first attempts to draw Hugh’s Ark image, and Barber’s introduced the Aslake Map to the world. Pischke, G. ‘The Ebstorf Map: tradition and contents of a medieval picture of the world’, History of Geo- and Space Sciences 5.2 (2014), 155–61. Brief and inconclusive introductory article on the Ebstorf Map. Ramsay, Nigel ‘Richard of Haldingham’. In Dictionary of national biography: missing persons, edited by Christine Stephanie Nicholls and G.H.L. Le May (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 552-3. ISBN 0198652119. Brief biography of Richard, who features in an invocation on the Hereford Map; still thought by some to have had a hand in its making. Reudenbach, Bruno ‘Die Londoner Psalterkarte und ihre Rückseite. Ökumenekarten als Psalterillustration’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 32 (1998), 164–81.
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The Psalter Map’s imagery is strikingly consistent with medieval psalter commentaries, and the text is intended to make it possible for the people in need of salvation to follow Christ and attain eternal life, as outlined by the combination of map and text. Rudolph, Conrad The mystic ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, art, and thought in the twelfth century (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). ISBN 9781107037052. A controversial study and reconstruction of Hugh’s Mystic Ark – elaborately illustrated in full color. Scafi, Alessandro Mapping Paradise: a history of heaven on earth (London: British Library, 2006). ISBN 0712348778. An examination of the concept and depiction of paradise on maps, showing it as the location in the east where human history began and away from which it has moved, literally and symbolically. It is the ‘event/place’ and so eminently suitable for inclusion on mappae mundi. Scafi, Alessandro ‘Le premier homme comme microcosme et préfiguration du Christ: la Mappemonde d’Ebstorf et le nom d’Adam’. In Micrologus. Adam, le premier homme, edited by Agostino Paravinci Bagliani (Tavarnuzze, Impruenta: Sismel, 2012). Micrologus library 45, pp. 183–97. ISBN 9788884504456. On the Ebstorf Map, the head of Christ is to the east, his feet are to the west, while his hands embrace the Earth to the north and south. He is the new Adam come to save humanity. Scafi, Alessandro ‘À la recherché du Paradis perdu: les mappemondes du XIIIe siècle’. In Ruptures: de la discontinuité dans la vie artistique, edited by Jean Galard (Paris: École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts; Musée du Louvre, 2002), pp. 17–57. ISBN 2840561166. An earlier investigation into the rôle and place of paradise on thirteenth-century mappae mundi. Schöller, Bettina ‘Transfer of knowledge: mappae mundi between texts and images’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 4.1 (2013), 42–55. http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu/vol4_1/SchollerPeregrinations41.pdf [Accessed 9 April 2019]. How medieval geographical knowledge moved from text to map using the example of the Lambeth Map and the texts of Honorius Augustodunensis; the transfer of cartographic knowledge was not purely a graphical process.
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Schöller, Bettina Wissen speichern, Wissen ordnen, Wissen übertragen: schriftliche und bildliche Aufzeichnungen der Welt im Umfeld der Londoner Psalterkarte (Zürich: Chronos, 2014). Medienwandel, Medienwechsel, Medienwissen 32. ISBN 97830340-2447. Medieval knowledge of the world is stored in maps and texts. How this knowledge is compiled and ordered is the subject of this volume, which is based on, and provides new information about, the Psalter Map. Scully, Diarmuid ‘Augustus, Rome, Britain and Ireland on the Hereford mappa mundi: imperium and salvation’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 4.1 (2013), 107–33. http://peregrinations.kenyon.edu/vol4_1/ ScullyPeregrinations41.pdf [Accessed 9 April 2019]. Orosius’ template and the positioning of Augustus on the Hereford Map help Scully draw out the significance of the transition from imperial to Christian Rome. Sicard, Patrice Diagrammes médiévaux et exégèse visuelle: le Libellus de formation arche de Hugues de Saint-Victor (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993). Bibliotheca Victorina 4. ISBN 250350339X. Discussion of Hugh’s Libellus, his account of drawing a mappa mundi, asking how it fitted into his visualist pedagogy. Sicard, Patrice Hugues de Saint-Victor et son école (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991). ISBN 2503500730. A volume not specifically about mappae mundi but provides important context for understanding Hugh’s teaching and theography, his theological cartography. Simek, Rudolf ‘Mappae mundi’, Archiv der Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften 22-23-24 (1988), 1061–91. Described as a Lexikonartikel, an ‘encyclopedia article’, this is a solid introduction to mappae mundi. Stercken, Martina ‘Repräsentieren mit Karten als mediales Modell’, Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung 15.2 (2010), 96–113. An exploration of medieval representations of rulership on word-and-image maps. Stone, Jon R. ‘The medieval mappaemundi: toward an archaeology of sacred cartography’, Religion 23.3 (1993), 197–216. The organization, abstraction and representation of the medieval world as sacred space.
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Strickland, Debra ‘Edward I, Exodus, and England on the Hereford World Map’, Speculum: a Journal of Medieval Studies 93.2 (2018), 420–69. A reading of the map from the time of Edward I, and how this might be interpreted at a time when Jews were expelled from England. Does the map present the English as God’s chosen people and help promote the idea of English nationhood? Szabó, Thomas Studien zur Universalkartographie des Mittelalters, edited by Thomas Szabo (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008). Veröffentlichungen des MaxPlanck-Instituts für Geschichte 229. Contents (selected): ‘Mappa mundi und Chronographia. Studien zur imago mundi des abendländischen Mittelalters’ by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, pp. 17–81; ‘Europa in der Kartographie des Mittelalters’ by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, pp. 149–63; ‘Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte im Verhältnis zur spanischen und angelsäschsischen Weltkartentradition’ by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, pp. 415–31; ‘Jerusalem on medieval mappaemundi’ by Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, pp. 683–703. ISBN 9783525358849. A collection of thirty-eight of Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken’s articles dating from 1968 to 2006 reproduced in a single volume, the titles of some of which are highlighted above. Talbert, Richard J.A. Cartography in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: fresh perspectives, new methods, edited by Richard J.A. Talbert and Richard W. Unger (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008). Technology and change in history 10. Contents (selected): ‘L’héritage antique de la cartographie médiévale: les problems et les acquis’ by Patrick Gautier Dalché, pp. 29–66; ‘Maps in context: Isidore, Orosius, and the medieval image of the World’ by Evelyn Edson, pp. 219–36. ISBN 9789004166639. A broad-ranging compendium, providing important information on classical precursors to medieval maps, along with two chapters directly related to this Companion. Patrick Gautier Dalché looks at shifts in cartographic outlook over a considerable period of time, and Evelyn Edson examines how classical ideas influenced medieval maps. Teresi, Loredana ‘Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman mappaemundi’. In Foundations of learning: the transfer of encyclopaedic knowledge in the early Middle Ages, edited by Rolf H. Bremmer Jr and Kees Dekker (Paris/Leuven: Peeters, 2007). Mediaevalia Groningana, new series 9, pp. 341–78. ISBN 9789042919792. The author groups mappae mundi found in England into relevant categories, based on differing models of T-O maps, ‘list’ maps and zonal maps.
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Terkla, Dan ‘Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) and Anglo-French cartography’, Imago mundi 65.2 (2013), 161–79. Article transcending much of this Companion’s content and detailing the transmission of Hugh’s cartographical ideas to England, along with a discussion of the Victorine presence there. Terkla, Dan ‘Informal catechesis and the Hereford mappa mundi’. In The art, science, and technology of medieval travel, edited by Robert Bork and Andrea Kann (Aldershot/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008). AVISTA studies in the history of medieval technology, science and art 6, 127–41. ISBN 9780754663072. Was the Hereford Map used as a teaching tool, and if so, how and by whom was it mediated for pilgrims to the cathedral and the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe? Terkla, Dan ‘The original placement of the Hereford mappa mundi’, Imago mundi 56.2 (2004), 131–51. Incorporating new masonry and dendrochronological evidence to shed light on the Hereford Map’s likely location within the cathedral, demonstrating how the map could function as a multi-media pedagogical tool. Terkla, Dan ‘Speaking the map: teaching with the Hereford mappamundi’, Geotema: organo ufficiale dell’Associazione geografi italiani / AGEI 27 (2007), 199–214. Argues that the Hereford Map was created as a teaching tool and that it had a didactic function in the cathedral. Evidence gained in part from sermon studies helps in the development of a usage scenario for the map as teaching tool. Terkla, Dan ‘The voices of those not present: speaking the Hereford Map’, AVISTA Forum Journal 16.1–2 (2006), 40. A short article questioning how the Hereford Map might have been used by those individuals looking at it. What were the keys to its success? Todorova, Rostislava ‘Orthodox cosmology and cosmography: the iconographic mandorla as Imago Mundi’, Eikón Imago 6.2 (2014), 77-94. Although not directly analogous to Christian cartography, Orthodox iconography creates symbolic images that can be interpreted as an image of the whole world, for example the semantics and usage of the mandorla symbol. The mandorla as Imago Dei often plays the role of a symbolic imago mundi. Tomasch, Sylvia ‘Mappae mundi and “The Knight’s tale”: the geography of power, the technology of control’. In Literature and technology, edited by Mark L. Greenberg and
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Lance Schachterle (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1992). Research in technology 5, pp. 66–98. ISBN 0934223203. Linking the use of maps and the representation of spatial awareness in Chaucer’s first and most theological tale. Tomasch, Sylvia Text and territory: geographical imagination in the European Middle Ages, edited by Sylvia Tomasch and Sealy Gilles (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). ISBN 0812234227. Occasional emphasis on the Hereford Map as an early introductory marker for later geographical thinking. Torres Aguilar, Sergio Octavio Relaciones entre el códice y la cartografía medieval. La influencia del texto en los mappaemundi (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2014). — http://eprints.ucm.es/28713/1/TFM_UCM_2014.pdf [Accessed 9 April 2019]. The relationship between the map and the codex, and how the map interprets the text to deliver cartographic meaning. Tyers, Ian Tree-ring analysis of the Hereford Mappa Mundi panel (Sheffield: University of Sheffield ARCUS Dendrochronology Laboratory, 2004). ARCUS project report 782A. Crucial unpublished report commissioned by the Dean and Chapter of Hereford analyzing the tree-ring sequences from the boards making up the central panel of the map’s original triptych support, successfully dating the wood and locating the origin of the trees used to the vicinity of Hereford. Valtonen, Irmeli The North in the Old English Orosius: a geographical narrative in context (Helsinki: Société Néophilologique, 2008). Mémoires de la Société néophilologique à Helsingfors 73. ISBN 9789519040295. Recognition that Britain is the starting point for studying early medieval Scandinavia, with particular emphasis on the Anglo-Saxon Map. Van Duzer, Chet ‘Hic sunt dracones: the geography and cartography of monsters’. In The Ashgate research companion to monsters and the monstrous, edited by Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle (Farnham, Hampshire/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 387–435. ISBN 9781409407546. A global tour, region by region, identifying the location of monsters on maps from Antiquity, through the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.
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Van Duzer, Chet ‘A neglected type of medieval mappamundi and its re-imaging in the Mare historiarum (BNF MS Lat. 4915, fol. 26v)’, Viator: Medieval and Renaissance studies 43.2 (2012), 277–301. ISBN 9782503543123. Exploring an unstudied type of medieval world map, the ‘V-insquare’ mappa mundi. Attention is also focused on a three-dimensional artistic re-imaging of this map in a manuscript of Giovanni Colonna’s Isidorian Mare historiarum. This map includes depictions the monstrous races in Asia and Africa. Van Duzer, Chet and Dines, Ilya ‘The only mappamundi in a bestiary context: Cambridge, MS Fitzwilliam 254’, Imago mundi 58.1 (2006), 7–22. The only mappa mundi to appear in a medieval Latin bestiary, it is also noteworthy for its inclusion of islands in the Outer Ocean – was this taking the Gospel ‘to the ends of the earth’? Van Duzer, Chet and Sáenz-López Pérez, Sandra ‘Tres filii Noe diviserunt orbem post diluvium: the world map in British Library Add. MS 37049’, Word & Image 26.1 (2010), 21–39. An examination of an unusual mappa mundi that explicitly links the division of the world into a T-O model with the Noachian tripartition. Venema, Minne ‘De Deventer mappa mundi uit de twaalfde of dertiende eeuw = The 12th/13thcentury world map on the cover of a Sallustius manuscript in the Dutch town of Deventer’, Caert-thresoor: tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van de kartographie 32.1 (2013), 7–10. Focus on the toponymy of Africa, suggesting Sallustius as the source. Warnke, Martin ‘Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte: der Computer als Medium für selbstbestimmtes Lernen’, Computer + Unterricht: Lernen und Lehren mit digital Medien 2 (1992), 27–31. Employing computing power to further study the Ebstorf Map. Wesselow, Thomas de ‘Locating the Hereford mappamundi’, Imago mundi 65.2 (2013), 180–206. Where was the mappa mundi originally located in Hereford Cathedral? An argument in favor of the south choir aisle and not the north transept, where Terkla argues that it was associated with the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe. Westrem, Scott D. The Hereford Map: a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001). Terrarum orbis 1. ISBN 2503510566. The critical edition of the text on the Hereford Map featuring an introductory essay, color images of the map keyed to the transcription and translation
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of its more than one thousand inscriptions. There is also a comprehensive bibliography and a detailed comparsion to its very close analog, the Expositio mappa mundi. Westrem, Scott D. ‘Making a mappamundi: the Hereford Map’, Terrae incognitae: the Journal of the Society for the History of Discoveries 34 (2002), 19–33. More on the Hereford Map, and how Expositio mappa mundi is likely to have been used as a template in its design and content. Whitfield, Peter The image of the world: 20 centuries of world maps. Updated ed. (London: British Library, 2010). ISBN 9780712350891. Both Psalter and Hereford maps are included as double-page spreads in this general volume. Wilke, Jürgen Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2001). Veröffentlichungen des Institut für Historische Landesforschung der Universität Göttingen 39. ISBN 3895343358. A volume of text and a volume of imagery making for an extensive study on the Ebstorf Map. Willing, Antje ‘Orbis apertus: zur Quellenkritik mittelalterlicher Kartographie’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 86 (2004), 283–314. Comparison of the Duchy of Cornwall and Aslake mappae mundi. Wiseman, Peter ‘Julius Caesar and the Hereford world map’, History today 37.11 (1987), 53-7. Is there a direct link between Julius Caesar, Rome of the first century BC and the Hereford Map? Wittmann, Kevin R. Las islas del fin del mundo: representación de Las Afortunadas en los mapas del Occidente medieval (Lleida: Edicions de la Universitat de Lleida: Universidad de la Laguna, 2016). Espai/Temps 70. ISBN 9788484098584. The mythical Fortunate Islands shown as the western limit of the known world and how their inclusion on maps might be viewed in both exegetic and intellectual terms. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn ‘Reading the world: the Hereford mappa mundi’, Parergon: Bulletin of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9.1 (1991), 117–35. A description of and interpretive guide to the Hereford Map, noting how the map’s message remained current long after its creation.
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Wolf, Armin ‘The Ebstorf mappamundi and Gervase of Tilbury: the controversy revisited’, Imago mundi 64.1 (2011), 1–27. Controversy over the Ebstorf Map’s date – from first half of the thirteenth century or around 1300? Or was the latter a copy of the former? Wolf, Armin ‘Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte: Schöpfungsbild und Herrschaftszeichen’, Cartographica Helvetica 3 (1991), 28-32. Introductory description of the Ebstorf Map focusing on the conceptual background to its creation. Wolf, Armin ‘Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte und Gervasius von Tilbury: ein Weltbild im Umkreis des Kaisers’. In Otto IV: Traumvom welfischen Kaisertum, edited by Bernd Ulrich Hucker et al. (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2009), pp. 195-206. ISBN 9783865685001. A map of the world created in the vicinity of the Otto IV – linking the mappa mundi to the emperor. Wolf, Armin ‘Gervasius von Tilbury, Arelatischer Marschall Kaiser Ottos IV und die Ebstorfer Weltkarte’. In Otto IV Kaiser und Landesherr: Burgen und Kirchenbauten 1198-1218: Vorträge vom 6. und 7. März 2009 auf Burg Lichtenberg in Salzgitter, edited by Bernd Ulrich Hucker and J. Leuschner (Salzgitter: Geschichtsverein Salzgitter, 2009). Salzgitter Jahrbuch 29, pp. 157–87. Gathering material for a controversial dating of the Ebstorf Map and for stating that the English Gervase of Tilbury, who was in the service of Emperor Otto IV, designed the map in the first half of the thirteenth century. Wolf, Armin ‘Gervasius von Tilbury und die Welfen: Zugleich Bemerkungen zur Ebstorfer Weltkarte’. In Die Welfen und ihr Braunschweiger Hof im hohen Mittelalter, edited by Bernd Schneidmüller (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995). Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien 7, pp. 407–38. ISBN 3447037059. An account of Gervase’s travels around Europe, followed by an account of the Ebstorf Map. Wolf, Armin ‘Neues zur Ebstorfer Weltkarte: Entstehungszeit – Ursprungsort - Autorschaft’. In Das Benediktinerinnenkloster Ebstorf im Mittelalter: Vorträge einer Tagung im Kloster Ebstorf vom 22. bis 24. Mai 1987, edited by Klaus Jaitner and Ingo Schwab (Hildesheim: Lax, 1988). Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Niedersachsens im Mittelalter 11, pp. 75–109. ISBN 378483020X.
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An update on the Ebstorf Map, firmly placing the map in its contemporary geographical and historical contexts, particularly in relation to key individuals active at the time of the map’s creation. Zimmermann, Klaus ‘Eratosthenes’ chlamys-shaped world: a misunderstood metaphor’. In The Hellenistic World: new perspectives, edited by Daniel Ogden (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales/Duckworth, 2002), pp. 23–40. ISBN 9780715631805. An examination of the chlamys metaphor discussed in this Companion. What shape should the chlamys be and how would Eratosthenes visualize this? The chlamys’ relationship to its wearer should match that to the ecumene and the globe.
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INDEX Bolded page numbers locate illustrations. ‘Non-focal’ refers to maps discussed but not given their own chapters. Persons living before 1300 are listed by first names, as are saints. Abbo of Fleury, 52, 62 and Dunstan, 76 mappings, 52, 62, 70, 83 at Ramsey Abbey, 70 Adela of Blois, and To Countess Adela (Adelae comitissae), 82–3 daughter of William the Conqueror, 81 grandmother of Hugh de Puiset, 81, 86 Adelae comitissae, 82–5 and Bayeux Tapestry, 83 and Halley’s Comet, 83 and Sawley Map exemplar, 123 mappa mundi section, 82–4 Aethicus Ister (Pseudo-Aethicus), Cosmographia, 84 and Anglo-Saxon/Cotton Map, 122 and Duchy Map, 219–20 and Hereford Map, 232–3 and Poppelton Manuscript, 84–5 and Sawley Map, 123 and William the Conqueror, 83–4 Ages of Man, 10, 12, 15, 33, 37, 143, 204, 212, 213, 216 Agnes de Percy, and Hugh de Puiset, 114 Al-Idrisi, 25, n.10, 86 Alhazen (Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham), 246 Anarchy, the, and Hugh de Puiset, 81 Anglo-Norman Durham, 14, n.69, 16, 68–91 library holdings, 68–70 maps, 3, 294 monasticism, 72–3, 76, n.41 Anglo-Norman, language on maps, 181, 213–14, 216, 218, 227, 234–5 237
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Anglo-Saxon Scientific Miscellany, damaged, 26 Annunciation, on Hereford Map tryptich, 240, 251–2 Antipodes, xviii, 18, n.16, 151, 166, 168, 170, 174, 191, n.43, 211, 278–9 Antonine Itinerary, 20, 21, n.23 and Hereford Map, 241 Apocalypse (end of the world), 66, n.88 and Beatus Map, 27 and Hereford Map, 247 and Matthew Paris Map, 149 and Munich Map, 98 and Sawley Map, 17 Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, 98 Aristotle, and Ages of Man, 212 and filling out globe, 149 and schools and university curriculum, 28, 71, n.14, 78 on sleep, 6, n.31 works of, in Durham Cathedral Priory Library, 78, 80 Artists and full-page miniatures in books, 39 and maps, 18, 39, 43, 152, 172–3, 178, 183, 201, 229, 232–3, 240–1, 249–50 , 297 and Winchester Bible and Spanish frescoes, 38 at Westminster court 250 itinerant, and Hereford Map 22, 40 Matthew Paris as, 39, 152, 153, 289 Artist-scribe (Eadui Basan), 27 Artist-scribes, and work of Giraldus Cambrensis, 32
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Ashridge (England), College of Bonhommes founded in, 70 manor of as gift to College of Bonhommes 199 one of two English Bonhommes houses, 199 Ashridge Comestor (Historia scholastica of Peter Comestor), influenced by Hugh of St Victor’s work, 85 likely made at Westminster, 225 made for College of Bonhommes, 38, 199, 224–5 script a match for Duchy Map, 41, 224–5 Atlas Mountains, 116, 122 Augustine, St, Bishop of Hippo, and ductus, 7 and Greek and Roman geography, 23 and Hugh of St Victor’s pedagogy, 11 and Isidore of Seville, 213, n.73 and monstrous peoples of India, 188 on dangers of wordliness, 250, n.92 on Jerusalem and Sion, 244–5, nn.71 and 72 on spes/specula, 245, n.72 Augustinian canons, 50, 71 Continental houses: Abbey of St Victor, Paris, 50; St Andrea, Vercelli, Italy, 134 English (‘Austin’) houses: Creake Abbey, 200; Kirkham Priory, 4; Waltham Abbey, 156 libraries, 85, n.84 outnumbering other orders, 50 Augustodunum (Autun), 33, 46, 47 Babel, tower of, on maps: Sawley Map, 115, 116, 119, 121, 124; Hereford Map, 244, 248 Babylon, on maps: Hereford Map, 90, 244, 247, 250, n.92; Sawley Map, 115, 119 in Little book on the formation of the ark (Libellus de formatione arche), 104 Baudri of Bourgueil, and William the Conqueror, 83–4 archbishop of Dol, 82 his To Countess Adela (Adelae comitissae) and Adela of Blois, 82–4 Beatus of Liébana, Beatus maps and their execution, 42
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Commentary on the Apocalypse and Saint-Sever Beatus quadripartite mappa mundi, 27–8, 193 and Ranulf Higden maps, 269 Silos Beatus Map, 18, n.16 the Spanish Beatus tradition and the Vercelli Map, 133, 194 Bede, the Venerable, and diagrams, 28 and spherical earth, 23 and Victorine mnemonics, 79 exegetical and conceptual influence and Thorney Abbey Map, 24, 25 his Ecclesiastical history and T-O map, 25 his On the nature of things and Y-O map, 25 works in monastic libraries with mappae mundi, 20, 34, 55, 56, 57, 71, 76, 173 Benedict, St, in Eadui Psalter, 41 Benedictines, and England’s monastic revival, 50–66, 71–7 mapmakers, 152, 164 mnemonics and historia, 58, 63, 66 monastery on Sawley Map, 119 nuns and Ebstorf Map, 35, 275 semiotic tradition and encyclopedic mappae mundi, 281 Benedictine houses: see individual houses; i.e., Glastonbury Berkhamsted Castle, administrative center of Edmund of Cornwall, 199 Painted Chamber and Duchy Map at, 18, 70, 86, 225 Bernard of Clairvaux, St, contact with Durham, 73 letter for Lawrence of Westminster, 75, n.34 Berwick-upon-Tweed, architectural vignette on Hereford Map, 229 Bible, as map source and complement, 20, 21, 62–5, 119, 173 Bitter River, Ocean, Ocean River, Oceanus, xx, 23, 24, 47, 100, 147, 150, 181, 297 in Description of the world map (Descriptio mappe mundi), 101–3 on Babylonian Map, 21, 22 on Duchy Map, 201–2, 203, 204, 208, 211 on Hereford Map, 159 on Lambert of St Omer Map, 164, 165, 169
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on Munich Map, 95–6 on New College Map, 173, 175–6 on Peterborough Map, 29 on Psalter Map, 186 on Sawley Map, 116 on Vercelli Map, 130, 131 Bible moralisée, and compass-bearing God, 25, 236 Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy (Consolatio philosophiae), and specula on Hereford Map, 251 Bonhommes (Ashridge), College of, and Ashridge Comestor (Historia scholastica), 224–5 and Duchy Map, xxii, 18, 37, 70, 86, 199, 225 and Hemel Hempstead advowson, 199 bilingualism at, 213 elaborate decoration of, 223 scriptorium at, 200, 225 Bonhommes, religious order, unique to England, 199 Byrhtferth of Ramsey Abbey, zonal mappa mundi and computus diagram, 70 Caesar, Julius Augustus, and maps by Lambert of Omer and Matthew Paris, 166 ecumene survey commissioner, xxiii, 205, 219 on Hereford Map (in papal triregnum), 220, 233, 236, 240, 248, 298 results of survey on Duchy Map, 205–6, 219–20 Caesar, Octavian Augustus, and so-called Agrippa map, xxiii, 240, 248 Canterbury, Anglo-Saxon Map made in scriptorium, 26, 70 and Bayeux Tapestry, 214, n.74 on Psalter List Map, 195 Carter, John, and drawing of Hereford Map in tryptich, 228, 238 Cassiodorus of Vivarium, and maps and textually-based imagery, 23 on studying geography and maps, xxiixxiii, 47–8, 63, 217, 287 see also ‘complementarity’ below Célestines de Marcoussis (France), monastery of, Munich Map owner, 92 Center, and monstrous peoples, 196
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in Little book on the formation of the ark (Libellus de formatione arche), 242 of On Noah’s ark (De archa Noe) mappa mundi, 13 of Roman Empire, 63 of triptych, Hereford Map as, 240 of universe, 169–70 of Westminster Retable, 240, n.51 of western Christianity, 63 on Duchy Map, 205, 214 on Ebstorf Map, 110, 119 on Hereford Map, 119, 230, 235, 237, 240–1, 242, 243–4, 247, 250 on Munich Map, 96–7, 99, 109 on Psalter Map, 108, n.51, 185–6 on Sawley Map, 119, 121 on Wallingford (Climate) Map, 169–70 on William Wey’s Map, 199 Chalivoy-Milon (France), mural mappa mundi in church, 21, 38, n.68, 287 Charlemagne, gold and silver maps of, xxiii, 22, 86 Chlamys, (garment), 159, 160, 162, 190 as map shape/metaphor, 156, 157–63, 166, 168, 171–2, 174–5, 178, 191, 193, 201, n.20, 300 term interchangeable with ‘chasuble’, 160, 162, 190–1 Christ, crucified/ resurrected body, and mandorla-shaped mappae mundi, xvii, 33, 243–4, 241–4 Hereford Map’s calfskin nailed to triptych, as metaphor, 19, 240 on maps: Ebstorf, 35, 110; Hereford, 36, 121, 230, 235–6, 243; Little book on the formation of the ark (Libellus de formatione arche), 104; Psalter, 36, 41, 181–5 Christ Church, Canterbury, library collection, 46 scriptorium’s text and image integration, 27 Cistercian/s, approach to the role of art, 40 and historical writing, 115 cultural contacts with Benedictines, 75, 113–14 Cluny Abbey (France), first to adopt Rule of St Benedict, 72 impact on later English houses, 72 College of Bonhommes (Ashridge), see ‘Bonhommes, College of ’ above
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Coming, Second, and maps: Ebstorf and Psalter, 25; On Noah’s Ark (De archa Noe), 33; Hereford, 231, 244, 249 and other artworks: John of Thanet Panel, 249–50; Tiberius Psalter, 25 Complementarity, of manuscripts and mappae mundi, as key to learning, 272 at Durham Cathedral 75–80, 85–7 at Glastonbury Abbey 54–67 concept described, 46; 105–6 in texts of Eumenius, 46–7; Cassiodorus, 47–8; Hugh of St Victor, 48, 183; John of St Victor, 49; Gervase of Tilbury, 182; Roger Bacon, 182; at Merton, Exeter and Madgalen colleges, Oxford, 49; at Hereford Cathedral, 49; at Evesham Abbey, 49 of codicological mappae mundi: Sawley, 35–6, 114–16; Psalter, 36, 45–50, 272 of manuscript and mappae mundi scripts, 41 of maps and discursive texts, 182–3 of mural mappae mundi and images, Winchester Great Hall, 38 of Scholastic history (Historia scholastica) and mappae mundi, 224 of stained glass and mappae mundi display, 40 of stand-alone mappae mundi: Duchy, 197, 218–20, 223–6; Hereford, 201, 218–20, 238–41; Ebstorf, 201 of textile and manuscript pigments, 39 paired with books, by William of Avalun, 48; Hugh de Puiset, 48–9 Computus, 2, 25, 28, 52, 62, 80, 274 Cosmology, 170, 171, 295 Crates of Mallos/Mallus, 149, 150, 170 Creator, the, on Ebstorf Map, 25; Psalter Map, 25, 41 image of, with compass, in Tiberius Psalter, 25; and Bible moralisée, 236 in De Lisle Psalter, with orbis cruciger, 36 transcendent perspective of, 240 Cyclades, centered on Sawley Map, 97, 119, 121
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De Lisle Psalter, Ages of Man in, 212–14 Christ in, holding orbis cruciger, 36 Wheel of Life in, 247–8 Dead Sea, on maps: Sawley, 116, 122; Hereford, 248 Digital technology, 254–8, 277 and Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilizations, 256–7 and Digital Hereford Map, 255–6 and Digital Mappa 1.0 and Virtual Mappa, 257–8 and Pelagios project, 254–5 Dionysius of Alexandria, Periegesis (Description of the known world)/ (On world places and names [De situ et nominibus terrarum]), trans. Priscian, 27 and Cassiodorus, 47–8 and missing Glastonbury mappa mundi and Anglo-Saxon/Cotton Map, 59–61, 85 at Glastonbury Abbey, 56 Disputatio, and monastic education, 55; in scholastic education, 78 Doom (Last Judgment), on Hereford Map, 34, 40; Duchy Map, 214, 216 Dunstan, St, archbishop of Canterbury, 53 and Glastonbury books, 53 bishop of Worcester, 54 books of, 55 geospatial curiosity of, 52, 61–2, Durham Cathedral, and Abbey of St Victor 13, 73–4 and geospatial curiosity, 5, 16, 68–69, 73–5; see also ‘Hugh de Puiset’, ‘Roger of Howden’ below and Hugh de Puiset’s mappa mundi, 17, 34, 49, 69, 70, 85–7, 113 and Roger of Howden’s An exposition of the world map (Expositio mappe mundi), 89, n.100 and Sawley Map 78–80; 113–14 and Victorine pedagogy and mnemonics, 78–9 books at, 53, 73, 68–80 by Hugh of St Victor, 78–9 scriptorium at, 34, 40 Ecumene, and Ebstorf Map, 285 and tripartite ordering on Hereford Map, 248–9 center of, xix-xx, in Antiquity 97, 150 defined, xvii, 24, 174, 191, 205
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Dionysius’ description of, 60 divisions of in Antiquity, 93 Eratosthenes, chlamys and ecumene shape, 300 graphically aligned, xviii objectively represented on Munich Map, 16, 110–11 on encyclopedic mappae mundi, xix-xx surrounded by ocean, 177 Eden, Garden of, and geographical knowledge, 289 on mappae mundi, 24: Ranulph Higden map, 29; Hereford Map, 37 Edington Priory, Wiltshire, and William Wey maps, 199 Edmund of Almain, second earl of Cornwall, 18 and Hereford Map, 37 and Richard Swinfield, bishop of Hereford, 220 and St Thomas Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford, 222–3 as commissioner of Ashridge Comestor (Historia scholastica), 199, 224–5 as commissioner of Duchy Map, xxii, xxiii, 18, 37, 86–7, 220–6 as philanthropist, 199, 223 bilinguality of, 213 Edward I, king of England, as map owner, xxii, 39, 70, 86 Edward II, king of England, and map for ‘the king’s use’ in Privy Wardrobe account, 222 as owner of Queen Mary Psalter, 41 coat of arms on Ashridge Comestor (Historia scholastica), 224 Eumenius, on students using maps, 46–8, 58, 241 Euphrates River, on Psalter Map, 186 on Sawley Map, 116, 122 part of Vercelli Map inscription, 141 Eva/Ave, as sacred palindrome, and Hereford Map, 251–2 Expositio textuum (textual exposition), university pedagogy and map use, 78–79; see also ‘Schools, pedagogy’ below Galilee, Sea of, as cognitive territory, 66 on Psalter Map, 185, 186 on Sawley Map, 116, 122, 125 Ganges, and monstrous peoples, 186
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on Sawley Map, 116, 124 Genesis, Book of, and Noah’s sons, xx, n.20, 147 and On Noah’s ark (De archa Noe) as visualist diquisition, 79 and Sawley Map, 118 events from and mental mapping, 8–9 on paradise as source of four rivers, 116 on paradise’s orientation, 116 Geographia, Roger Bacon’s, and perspectivist theory, 246 Geography, and Cassiodorus’ pedagogy, xxiii and relationship between Munich Map and Description of the world map (Descriptio mappe mundi), 99–102 at Plantagenet court, 271 biblical and classical on Sawley Map, 114 Greek and Roman, tenets of, 23, 118, 167, 275 Hugh of St Victor’s ‘course’ on, 93, 99 in Acts and Orosius Saxonice, 60 indexical function on Munich Map, 108 interest in at Durham and in Yorkshire, 5 mental and physical, 268 objective, and Munich Map, 105, 111 of devotion, 272 of monsters, 296 reconfigured on Psalter Map, 186 Roger of Howden’s interest in, 88; focus on maritime and urban, 242 Geospatiality, 15–16 Archbishop Sigeric’s itinerary as exemplar, 61–2 at Durham Cathedral, 68–91; see also ‘Durham Cathedral’ above at Glastonbury Abbey, 44–67; see also ‘Glastonbury’ above first English cartographical expression of, 45 monastic, 57–8 post-Conquest interest in, 68 see also ‘Hugh de Puiset’, ‘Roger of Howden’ and ‘Robert de Poppleton’ below Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), topographical works, 31 map of Europe, 31 Gervase of Tilbury, and Ebstorf Map 35, 299
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Gervase of Tilbury, and Ebstorf Map [continued] criticism and traits of cartographers, 106 on complementarity of maps and discursive texts, 182–3 perspective on thirteenth-century ecumene, 271 Gildas, map accompanying his History of the Britons (Historia Brittonum), 115 Giraldus Cambrensis, topographical works of, 31 Glastonbury Abbey, and first English monastic revival, 50–66 and geospatiality, 44–67; see also ‘geospatiality’ above books, 15–16, 53–7 books and maps, 58–67 importance to history of cartography, 52 mappa mundi (missing) at, 15–16, 44, 52, 58 ‘bound’ with Dionysius Periegetes’ Description of the known world (Periegesis), 48, 58–62 and Anglo-Saxon Map, 52 as Anglo-Saxon Map’s model, 62; as proxy, 58, 61 Gog and Magog, on mappae mundi, 98 on Munich Map, 100 on Vercelli Map, 136 Gospels, apostolic travels (viae apostolicae) in and mental maps, 62–7 Guala Bicchieri, cardinal, 134 and Vercelli Map patron, 17, 35, 135, 139 travelling chest of and Vercelli Map, 135–6 Henry III, king of England, his mural mappae mundi, and Psalter Map, 179–80, 189–96 as ‘great history’ mural (magna historia) at Westminster, 236 Edmund of Cornwall, nephew of, 37, 221 Guala Bicchieri as papal legate to, 35, 134 see also ‘mappae mundi (lost)’ below Hereford Cathedral, awareness of northern geospatiality at, 5, 70, 90
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interaction with Abbey of St Victor, 13 Hereford Map in triptych, as ornamentation for, 233 Historia, according to Hugh of St Victor, 4, 58 and geographical description, 105 and Hugh of St Victor’s theological cartography (theography), 11, 78–9 and mappae mundi design, 6, 7, 61, 110, 140, 224 and memory, 65 and monastic reading (lectio divina), 11, 14, 17 and pedagogy, 224 importance for map historians, 91 other meanings of term, 234 texts as, 61, 64 Historia scholastica (of Peter Comestor): see also ‘Ashridge Comestor’ above and Matthew Paris, 172 and pedagogy, 224 as Duchy Map’s complement, 197, n.2, 199–200, 224 debt to Hugh of St Victor, 85, 224 medieval ubiquity, 224 Holy Land, in religious and political thought, 97 maps of, by Pietro Vesconte, 42; and William Wey, 199 on Hereford Map, 242 on maps, 17, 24, 281 on Matthew Paris maps, 277 on Munich Map, 97, 108 on Sawley Map, 114, 116, 119 sites, Adamnan’s drawn plans of, 28 Honorius Augustodunensis (of Autun), Imago mundi, 292–3 and other verbal maps, 89 and Poppleton Manuscript, 84 and Psalter Map, 188 and Sawley Map, 17, 34, 114 influence of on mappae mundi, 33, 292 opens in paradise, 89 Honorius, Julius, Julius Caesar’s cosmography (Cosmographia Iulii Caesaris), and Cassiodorus’s pedagogy, 47–8 redaction of by Pseudo-Aethicus, 233 Hugh de Puiset, prince bishop of Durham, and cartographical florescence, 16
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and Roger of Howden’s An exposition of the world map (Expositio mappe mundi), 89 his mappa mundi, 17, 34, 70, 85, 87 and Joshua commentary map, Sawley Map, 123 his territoriality and the To Countess Adela (Adelae comitissae), 81–2, 113 lineage of, 81, 84 postitions of authority, 81 relationship with Roger of Howden, 87 Hugh of St Victor, and Roger of Howden’s An exposition of the world map (Expositio mappe mundi), 89–90 concept of historia; see ‘historia’ above mural mappa mundi (lost) at Abbey of St Victor, 21, 23, 92–3 pedagogy, 39, 48, 74, 92–3, 99, 224 rayonnement (diffusion of ideas), 10–11, 31, 36, 73–5 via works at Durham, 73–4, 78–9; and Whitby, Tynemouth and St Albans, 73 theography (theological cartography) of, 3, 10–15, 48, 79, 183, 293, 295 ubiquity of works, 48 works On Noah’s Ark (De archa Noe), cartographical components, 13–15, 33, 35, 48, 74, 75, 79 Ark shape in, xvii image of Hugh in, 11 Description of the world map (Descriptio mappe mundi), 13, 278, 290 a verbal map, 14, 48, 85, 183 and Munich Map, 99–111, 185–9, 195 and Psalter Map, 183–5 and Roger of Howden’s An exposition of the world map (Expositio mappe mundi), 89–90 realistic description of St Victor mappa mumdi, 99 Little book on the formation of the ark (Libellus de formatione archae), 13, 74, 293 a guide to map drawing at St Victor, 14, 104 an appendix to De archa Noe, 242 and Hugh’s visualist theography, 75 and Psalter Map, 185
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at Durham, 79, 90 contents, 242–3 Lawrence of Westminster as student/stenographer, 74; see also ‘Lawrence of Westminster’ below Imaging technologies, 19, 253–66, 297 and Gough Map, 263–4 and manuscript/map damage, 253 and Martellus Map, 253 and Vercelli Map, 259–62 deep mapping, 264–6 hyperspectral, 19, 259 multispectral, 259 spectral, 258–9 Incarnation, celebrated by HerefordMap-in-triptych, 239, 240 Indus River, on Sawley Map, 116, 122, 124 Inscription, Walter Melion and Susanne Külcher’s theory of, 58 Inscriptions, on maps, xx, 7, 289, 298 and the identification of objects, 98–9 Matthew Paris’ explanatory, 155–6 Matthew Paris’ record of Westminster mural map, 190 on Hereford Map, rubricated and gilded, 229 over 1,000, 37, n.61, 227 switched Europa and Affrica [sic], 230–3, 248–52 on Vercelli Map, by two scribes, 143 once illegible, 259 placement of, on Sawley Map, 121 transcriptions of, from Duchy Map, 204–11, 213–15, 216–17, 219; from Sawley Map, 124–6 Investiture, royal, and monastic wealth, 71 Iona, Island of, site of Bishop Arculf ’s drawing plans of Holy Land sites, 28 Isidore, St, bishop of Seville, and Ages of Man, 214 Etymologies (Etymologiae), as cartographic source, xx, 7, 24, 119, 173, 189, 294 begins in paradise, 89 books thirteen and nineteen repeated in Roger of Howden’s The seamen’s book (Liber nautarum), 88
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Isidore, St, bishop of Seville [continued] Etymologies [continued] describes landmasses as ‘partes’, not ‘continentes’, 145 in Durham catalog, 79, 80 in Glastonbury catalog, 55–6 in Poppleton Manuscript, 85 indexed on Duchy Map, 213, 218–19 Munich Map placed at opening of, 16, 92 paraphrased on Vercelli Map, 141 schematic T-O map in, 14 Itinerary/ies, Antonine Itinerary (Itinerarium provinciarium Antonini Augusti), 20, 242 apostolic, in Acts, 8, 63 Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury’s, 21, 26–7, 52, 62 Giraldus Cambrensis’ Welsh itinerary (Itinerarium Cambriae), 31 Matthew Paris’, 17–18, 32, 144, 152, 154, 164, 167–8, 178 on mappae mundi, xx-xxi Roger of Howden’s On the ways of the sea (De viis maris), 88 William of Coventry’s King Richard’s itinerary to Jerusalem and his return from Messina (Jeresoliminitanorum de recessu Ricardi regis de Messana), 80 Jean of St Victor, on St Victor wall map, 49, 99, 134 Jerusalem, as non-geographical place, 242–3 as royal destination, 80 as Sion, 245, nn.71 and 72 as virtual pilgrimage destination, 155, 162 centered on maps, xix-xx; 9, 16, 24, 25, 26, 37, 96–7, 99, 108, n.51, 156, 170, 178, 185–6, 196, 215, 235–6, 242–4, 246–7, 269, 286 locus of new religious movement, in Acts, 63 on mappae mundi, xix-xx, 4, 9, 16, 17, 24, 28, 121, 149, 167, 229, 282, 294 see also ‘center’ above Jews, and anti-Judaism on Guala Bicchieri’s traveling chest, 135–6 and Hereford Map, 250, n.92, 294 conflated with monstrous hordes, on Vercelli Map, 136
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John of Wallingford, climate map of, 151–2, 168–72, 174, 177 and chlamys shape, 178 Jordan River, on Sawley Map, 116, 122, 123, 186 Joshua commentary map, and AngloSaxon/Cotton Map, Hugh de Puiset’s map and Sawley Map, 123 Judgment, Last, in Hugh of St Victor’s cartographical eschatology, 181–2 on Hereford Map, 10, 34, 36, 121, 230–1, 236, 242, 243, 247, 248 on Sawley Map, 120 Kirkham Priory, links to Hereford Cathedral, 5 on Hereford Map, 4, 91 Roger of Howden’s An exposition of the world map (Expositio mappe mundi) at, 70, 90 Lambert of St Omer, 164 and Matthew Paris, 152, 162–8, 178 corpus of maps, 153, 164 Liber floridus, his ‘encyclopedia’, 153, 273 map of Europe, 162, 163 Sfera geometrica/mappa mundi, 165, 273 Lawrence of Westminster, 73 at Durham, 16, 68, 78 at St Albans, 73 at St Victor, 73 at Westminster, 73 connecting Clairvaux, Durham, Rievaulx and St Victor, 75 student of Hugh of St Victor and stenographer of Hugh’s Description of the world map (Descriptio mappe mundi), 73–5, 78, 102 Lazarus Project, and Vercelli Map, 128–30, 139 multispectral imaging by, 17 Lectio divina (monastic reading) and pre-Conquest monastic pedagogy, 54, 78, 198 life is journey, see ‘metaphor’ below Lincoln Cathedral, and mappa mundi, xxii Bishop Oliver Sutton of, dedicated Ashridge collegiate church, 199 Hereford Map and, 276
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mappa mundi borrowed from library by William of Avalun, 48, 70 Richard de Bello, prebend at, 36 Scholastic history (Historia scholastica) at, 225 topographical works of Giraldus Cambrensis made at, 32 Longchamp, William, justiciar with Hugh de Puiset, 82 Louis IX, king of France (St Louis), architectural and relic competition with Henry III, 222, 224 God-with-compass in Bible moralisée owned by or by his queen, 236 letter from delivered by Matthew Paris, 167 Macrobian mappae mundi, 283, 290 illustrating Commentary on the dream of Scipio, 192 Macrobius, Commentary on the dream of Scipio (Commentarii in somnium Scipionis), borrowed from Crates of Mallus/Mallos, 150 in Durham Cathedral library, 80 in St Albans library, 173 Lambert of St Omer, reliance on, 166 manuscripts of, 274 mappae mundi source, 20, 23, 24, 149 Matthew Paris, reliant on for chlamys analogy, 158–9, 162, 190–3 on the Antipodes, 151 Majestas, on Hereford Map: see ‘Judgment, Last’, above Mandeville, John of, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, 282 as antithesis of Roger of Howden’s On the ways of the sea (De viis maris), The seamen’s book (Liber nautarum), 88 as exemplar of Christian European paranoia, 146 ‘Map’ and ‘mappa’, etymologies, 16 Map types, 17–21 climate, 24, 32, 149, 150, 151, 164–5, 168–71, 173, 174–5 cognitive, 11, 48, 65–7, 80 comprehensive, xxiii, 7, 61, 65–6, 85 encyclopedic, xxii, xviii, xx, 8, 23, 32, 33, 37, 43, 114–15, 119, 154, 283 hemispheric, 165, 168, 174, 176, 178 itinerary, 17–18, 32, 144, 150, 154, 164, 167–8, 178
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list, xvii, 14, 18, 62, 135, 180, 182, 185, 194–5, 294 non-schematic, 61 quadripartite/four continent, xxii, 6, n.29, 27, 150–1, 157, 158–62, 166–7, 169, 191 schematic, xvii, xxii, xix, 14, 17, 22, 26, 67, 93, 95, 105, 121 strip, 65–6 tripartite, xxii, xx, 6, n.29, 93, 168, 219, 248–9 , 250 verbal, 14, 62, 70, 85, 87, n.93, 89. ‘Mappa mundi room’, Palace of Westminster, 221–2 Mappae mundi (non-focal), extant, pictorial, Abbo of Fleury’s, 52, 70, 76, 84 Albi, 95, 218, 258 Aslake, 24, 34, 38, 41–2, 179, 189, 200, 268, 280, 291, 298 Babylonian, 15, 20–22, 21, 23, 32 Evesham, 49, 193, 200 Peterborough, 28, 29, 287 Peutinger, xxi, n. 23, 86, 267 Vatican ‘Easter Tables’, 17, 117, 121–2, 124, 275 extant, verbal, Baudri of Borgueil, To Countess Adela (Adelae comitissae), 82–5 Dionysius of Alexandria, Periegetes, 27, 47–8, 52, 56, 59–61, 67 Hugh of St Victor, On Noah’s ark (De archa Noe), 11, 13–15, 33, 48, 74, 75, 79, 241 Description of the world map (Descriptio mappe mundi), 14, 49, 74–5, 85, 89–90, 95, 99–100, 102–11, 183, n.12, 184–8, 194, 278, 290, 295 Little book on the formation of the ark (Libellus de formatione arche), 14, 74–5, 79, 90, 104, 185, 241–2, 293 Roger of Howden, An exposition of the world map (Expositio mappe mundi), 35, 70, 78, 88–90, 120, 239, 240, 242, 247, 278, 279, 298 lost, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa’s, xxiii, 86, 198, 240 Charlemagne’s, xxiii, 22, 86 Ebstorf, xix, xxi, 25, 32, 34, 35, 39, 93, 98, 107–08, 110, 117, 119, 133, 139, 141, 179, 182, 187, 188, 201, 212, 232, 237, 240, 275, 278, 280,
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INDEX
Mappae mundi (non-focal, lost) [continued] Ebstorf [continued] 283–5, 287, 289, 291, 292, 297, 298, 299–300 Edward I’s, xxii, 86 Henry III’s at Clarendon Palace, 38 Henry III’s at Westminster, xxi-xxii, xxiii, 4, 18, 21–2, 38, 70, 86, 145, 156, 179–80, 189–92, 195, 198, 221–2, 225, 235, 270 Henry III’s at Winchester, xxi, 18, 38, 70, 86–7, 222, 225 Hugh de Puiset’s 34, 49, 70, 85, 86, 89 Hugh of St Victor’s abbey mural, xxi, xxi, 16, 48, 49, 74, 92–3, 99, 108, 110, 134, 224, 241, 295 Lateran Palace’s, 86 Lincoln Cathedral’s, 48, 70 Theodulf of Orleans’, 86 University of Oxford’s: Exeter College, 49; Magdalen College, 49; Merton College, 22, 49, 68, 70, 134, 224 Waltham Abbey’s, 70 Martianus Capella, xx, 23, 149, 206 On the wedding of Philology and Mercury (De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii), 8, 84, 115, 149 Matthew Paris, artist, Benedictine, cartographer, historian and mileu, 147–78, 270, 273, 277, 289 and John of Wallingford, 168–72 and Lambert of St Omer, 152, 164–8 and Orosius, History against the pagans (Historiarum adversum paganos), 217–18 as ‘desktop publisher’, 32, 40 colored drawing and scholarly audience, 40, 42 description/copy of Henry III’s Westminster map, 18, 38, 70, 155–7, 189–96, 234 itinerary maps, 144 kinds of maps made, 32 map of England damaged, 170, 171 mappa mundi, Plate V, 18, 148, 152–8 and chlamys: see ‘chlamys’ above as imagined pilgrimage aid, 151 non-encyclopedic, 154 oddly shaped, 153–4 ‘Ordinal’, lost (service book), 38, 149, 155–7, 159–60, 172, 190, 234
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successors at St Albans, 178 Three Holy Faces, 148–9 Martin of Tours, St, and Sawley Map, 119, 121 Matilda de Percy, Countess of Warwick, and Sawley Map commission, 113 Mediterranean Sea, centering ecumene, 99 in Hugh of St Victor’s Description of the world map (Descriptio mappe mundi), 101, 103 in Roger of Howden’s The seamen’s book (Liber nautarum), 88 on Duchy Map, 204 on Hereford Map, 147, 247 on mappae mundi, xx, 25 on Matthew Paris Map, 147–8, 154, 168 on Munich Map, 95–6, 99, 100, 116 on Peterborough Map, 29 on portolan charts, 42 on Psalter Map, 186 on Sawley Map, 119 on Vercelli Map, 139 Memory, arts of, and pedagogy, composition and reading, xvi, 7–9, 34, n.34 and books and mental maps, 45, 48, 62, 289 and Hugh of St Victor, 10–11, 15, 80 and images, 14, 58, 82–4 and mappae mundi, 14–15 and learning, 14, 58, 65, 106 Metaphor, etymology of term, 65 chlamys as, 158, 175, 300 life is journey, ubiquitous conceptual metaphor, 64–5 mappae mundi as, 65 Noah’s ark as, 34, 79 ‘vignette’, visual metaphor for mental travel, 9, n.49 Monasticism, English, 44–91 cross-Channel connections, 73–77; see also ‘Lawrence of Westminster’ above eighth-century decline, 51 eighth-century florescence, 50–3 first revival, 52–4 libraries, 52–62, 75–80 map-and-book use, 62–7, 73–5 mappae mundi ownership, 52, 69–70, 85–7 second revival, 71–7 Norman role in, 71–2
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INDEX
Monstrous peoples and beasts, xx, 9, 18, 32, 109, 13 , 280, 290, 297 in Dionysius’ Periegesis, 60–2 on Duchy Map, 201, 207–11 on Ebstorf Map, 179 on Guala Bicchieri’s traveling chest, 136 on Hereford Map, 37, 198, n.2 on Peterborough Map, 29 on Psalter Map, 35–6, 179, 182, 184, 186–8, 187, 196 on Vercelli Map, 130 Nile River, 18, 19, 24 on Anglo-Saxon/Cotton Map, 121 on Duchy Map, 205, 208, 214 on Hereford Map, 147 on Munich Map, 101–2, 109 on Psalter Map, 186 on Sawley Map, 116, 121 on Vatican ‘Easter Tables Map’, 119, 121 Ocean, Oceanus, Ocean River: see ‘Bitter River’ above Ocular journey, 6, 61, 204, 216; see also ‘pilgrimage, imagined’ below Orbis (terrarum), xvi, 268, 269, 275 and Duchy Map, 201, 216, 219–20 and Hereford Map, 232, 235, 239, 242, 247 and Munich Map, 92–3 and Sawley Map, 242–3 Cassiodorus on, 47 in Etymologies (Etymologiarum), 145, in Little book on the formation of the ark (Libellus de formatione arche), 104 Orosius on, 92 Pliny on, 176 Solinus on, 56 Orosius, 293, 294 Orosius’ history of the world (Orosii mundi historia/De ormesta mundi), 80, 293, 294 History against the pagans (Historiae adversus paganos), 7, 23, 56, 59, 63, 64, 296 and Anglo-Saxon/Cotton Map, 123 and Hereford Map, 90–1, 189, 248 and Munich Map, 96, 101 and Sawley Map, 116, 118, 121, 189 Orosius Saxonice, 56, 58, 59, 63–6 Otto IV, and mappa mundi creation, 107, 299
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Painted chambers, royal and baronial, as map display venues, Berkhamsted Castle, 18, 70, 225 Clarendon Palace 38 Lateran Palace, mural maps at, xxiii, 86 Westminster, Palace of, xxi, 18, 86–7, 180, 189, 192–3, 221 Winchester Castle, xxi, 18, 38, 71, 86–7, 222 Paradise, on maps: see ‘Eden, garden of ’, above Partes mundi (parts of the world/‘continents’), and Macrobius, 190–1 and Vercelli Map, 135, 145 in Hugh of St Victor’s Chronicon, 14, 135 on John of Wallingford Map, 170 on Lambert of St Omer Map, 166 on mappae mundi, 14 Paulin de Venise, 106 Peter Comestor: see ‘Ashridge Comestor’ and ‘Historia scholastica’ above Peter of Limoges, Moral Treatise on the Eye (Tractatus moralis de oculo), 246 Pilgrimage, imagined, 151, 157; see also ‘ocular journey’ above Planisphere, 22 Plato, Timaeus (trans. Calcidius), and Hereford Map, 245 at Durham, 80 at Glastonbury, 55 Pliny the Elder, xx, 23, 55, 149 Natural History (Naturalis historia), and Solinus, 118 and Duchy Map, 207, n.43 and New College Map, 172–3, 174–7 and Psalter Map, 188 and Sawley Map, 114–15 at Glastonbury Abbey, 56 at St Albans Abbey, 173 Pomponius Mela, 23 On chorography (De corographia) and Duchy Map, 205 Poppleton Manuscript, Adelae comitissae, and Hugh de Puiset, 84–86; see also ‘Hugh de Puiset’ above and Poppleton Map, 84–5 and Robert Poppleton, prior of Hulne Abbey, 84 Porticus Vipsania, and ‘Agrippa map’, 23, 86, 240 Preston, Thomas, Litlyngton Missal scribe, 30
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Provinces, Roman, on Anglo-Saxon/ Cotton Map, 122 on Cambridge University Library map, 115 on Duchy Map, 219–20 on mappae mundi, 23 on Psalter List Map, 182, 194–5 on Sawley Map, 114, 118, 122 on Vercelli Map, with Victorine connections, 134–5 Pseudo-Methodius, Apocalypse, and Gog and Magog on Munich Map, 99 Ptolemy, Geography (Geographia), 23, 24, 149, 290 and Cassiodorus of Vivarium, 47–8 and chlamys, 159, 160, 190 and maps of Henry III and Matthew Paris, 160 at Glastonbury Abbey, 80 Pythagoras, and Ages of Man, 212 Ramsey Abbey, and mapping interest, 24, 52, 62, 70, 76, 179, 276 Red Sea, colored red on maps, 9, 95, 99 in Description of the mappa mundi (Descriptio mappe mundi), 101–2, 103 islands in, on Munich Map, 100 on John of Wallingford Map, 170 on Munich Map, 108 on New College Map, 173–4 on Sawley Map, 116, 119 on Vatican ‘Easter Tables’ Map, 122 on Vercelli Map, 130, 139 Revelation, Book of, and monastic reading, 55 and Munich Map, 110 and Sawley Map, 119 divine, and mappae mundi, 27, 43 and monastic reading, 34, 43, 54 Richard de Bello, Richard of Battle, Richard de Batayl, and Hereford Map, 36, 233 Richard of Haldingham and Lafford (Sleaford), and Hereford Map, 36, 233 Richard Swinfield, and Hereford Map, 37, 231, 233, 236, 238 and Edmund of Cornwall, 220 and Thomas Cantilupe, 220 Rievaulx Abbey, An exposition of the world map (Expositio mappe mundi) at, 90, 120
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and Lawrence of Westminster; 73–4; see also ‘Lawrence of Westminster’ above in communication with Hereford Cathedral, 70 Robert of Adington, books of, at Durham 73 student at St Victor, 73 Roger Bacon, and complementarity of books and maps, 182–3 and intellectual apprehension of space, 106 and science of optics (perspectiva), 247 Roger II, king of Sicily, silver mappa mundi of, made by Muhammad al-Idrisi, 87 Roger of Howden, at Durham, 68 Expositio mappe mundi as source for Sawley and Hereford maps, 70, 120, 239, 242, 279 geospatiality of, in The seamen’s book (Liber nautarum), On the ways of the sea (De viis maris), An exposition of the world map (Expositio mappe mundi), 87–91, 279 relationship with Bishop Hugh de Puiset, 84, 87 Rome (ancient), and maps, xxiii, 86, 278 as new Jerusalem, 63–4, 66 on Charlemagne’s silver map, 22 on Giraldus Cambrensis’ map, 31 on Hereford Map, 8, 235, 242, 244, 248, 293, 298 on Munich Map, 94, 100 Santiago de Compostela, pilgrimage site, on Sawley Map, 119 Sawley Abbey, Sawley Map at, 34, 75, 112–16 and Cistercian austerity, 40 Schools and universities, 30, 32, 43, 54, 55, 77, 85 134 advent of, 30, 54, 59, 71, 77, 85, 137 and book trade, 30 and Matthew Paris, 32, 167 curriculum, 8, 74, 76, 78, 80, 97 in France, 30, 32, 46, 59, 73, 88, 167 libraries and collections, 50 maps made and used at, 43, 48–50, 58–9, 77 pedagogy, 46, 78; see also ‘expositio textuum’ above
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Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury, 55, 62 and Anglo-Saxon/Cotton Map, 26, 62 his itinerary, 7, 21, 26, 52, 61 Sodom and Gomorrah, 248 Solinus, 20, 23, 96, 115, 123, 211 and Duchy Map, 207–9, 214 and Hereford Map, 210 and Psalter Map, 188–9 and Sawley Map, 115–16, 118, 123 works at Durham, 49, 79, 85 works at Glastonbury, 55–56 Space, 2, 35, 66, 84, 106, 139, 141, 144, 149, 153, 159, 171, 175, 178, 213, 233, 256 and humanity, 14, 16, 94–5, 97–8, 110–11, 164 and monsters, 98, 144 and time, 11, 20, 27, 41, 116, 242 at end of the world, 12 on Hereford Map, 242–3, 247 on Vercelli Map, 144 sacred, 41, 121 terrestrial, 99, 104–5 Symeon of Durham, History of Durham Church (Historia Dunelmensis Ecclesie), 113 Thanet, John of, panel, 249–50 Theodulf of Orleans, 86 Thomas Cantilupe, St, bishop of Hereford, 37, 220, 222–3, 238 his heart, 223 his shrine, 200, 238–9 relationship with Edmund of Cornwall, 220–3 Tigris, 116, 122, 124, 141 T-O maps, xviii, 6, 17, 24, 89, 93, 130, 249 and Duchy Map, 204, 219 and Hereford Map, 249–50 and Isidore St, bishop of Seville, 14, 24 and Lambert of St Omer, Liber Floridus, 164–5 and Psalter Map, 25, 36, 181 and Sallust, 24 and Thorney Abbey Map, 24–5 and Vercelli Map, 130, 139 and Westminster Psalter, 36 Trinity Apocalypse, 249 Triptych case, Hereford Map, 18, 228–30, 232, 237–40, 242, 251–2, 268, 296 Ur-map, 3, 10, 198 Ur-text, 3, 198
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Vercelli, Collegiate Church of St Andrew, 35, 134, 137 Vercelli Map, damage, 128, 129, 132, 134, 143, 145–6, 259, 261 Veronica image, 149, 154–5, 162, 167 Victor, St, Royal Abbey of, 13, 16, 21, 49, 73–4, 92, 96, 99, 104, 108, 134, 137 School, 13, 30–2, 48–9, 73, 99, 135, 224, 242 Victorines, 13, 50, 80, 93, 111, 134–5, 137, 224; see also ‘Hugh of St Victor’ above Vikings, 26, 50–2 Virgin Mary, 17 and Hereford Map, 19, 228, 236–8, 240–1, 247, 251–2 and Matthew Paris Map, 149 and Psalter Map, 181 Westminster Abbey, xxii, 13, 30, 38, 70, 73, 133, 137, 221, 223, 250 Westminster, Palace of, Painted Chambers; see ‘mappae mundi (lost)’ above map of Holy Land and mappa mundi at Edington Priory, 199 Wheel of Fortune, mural, Henry III’s at Winchester, 38, 222 Wheels of Life, 248 Wife, Lot’s, 248 William I, king of Scotland, 81–2 William de St Calais/Carilef, bishop of Durham, and the priory library, 75–7, 79 William of Avalun, and borrowed Lincoln mappa mundi, 31, 48, 70 William of Conches, Philosophy of the world (De philosophia mundi), at St Albans, 170–3 A dialogue on natural philosophy (Dragmaticon philosophiae), and Calcidian epicycle, 245 zonal map of, xviii, n.17 William of Malmesbury, on Glastonbury library, 53, 57 William the Conqueror, William I of England, 71–2, 75, 81–4, 113; see also ‘Anglo-Norman Durham’ above William Walcher, first prince bishop of Durham, 76, n.42 WilliamWey, Itineraries, 199
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Winchester Castle, Henry III’s Great Hall in and mural mappa mundi, 18, 21, 38, 70, 87, 222, 225; see also ‘mappae mundi (lost)’ above and ‘Painted Chambers’
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Zacharias, Pope and world map, xxiii, 86
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ALREADY PUBLISHED The Art of Anglo-Saxon England Catherine E. Karkov English Medieval Misericords: The Margins of Meaning Paul Hardwick English Medieval Shrines John Crook Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces Edited by Elina Gertsman and Jill Stevenson The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe Kirk Ambrose Early Medieval Stone Monuments: Materiality, Biography, Landscape Edited by Howard Williams, Joanne Kirton and Meggen Gondek The Royal Abbey of Reading Ron Baxter Education in Twelfth-Century Art and Architecture: Images of Learning in Europe, c.1100–1220 Laura Cleaver The Art and Science of the Church Screen in Medieval Europe: Making, Meaning, Preserving Edited by Spike Bucklow, Richard Marks and Lucy Wrapson Motherhood and Meaning in Medieval Sculpture: Representations from France, c.1100–1500 Marian Bleeke Graphic Devices and the Early Decorated Book Edited by Michelle P. Brown, Ildar H. Garipzanov and Benjamin C. Tilghman Church Monuments in South Wales, c.1200–1547 Rhianydd Biebrach Tomb and Temple: Re-imagining the Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem Edited by Robin Griffith-Jones and Eric Fernie Art and Political Thought in Medieval England, c.1150–1350 Laura Slater Insular Iconographies: Essays in Honour of Jane Hawkes Edited by Meg Boulton and Michael D.J. Bintley English Alabaster Carvings and their Cultural Contexts Edited by Zuleika Murat
Z01 Terk Book B.indb 315
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This volume provides a comprehensive Companion to the seven most significant English mappae mundi. It begins with a survey of the maps’ materials, types, shapes, sources, contents, conventions, idiosyncrasies, commissioners and users, moving on to locate the maps’ creation and use in the realms of medieval rhetoric, Victorine memory theory and clerical pedagogy. It also establishes the shared history of map and book making, and demonstrates how pre-and post-Conquest monastic libraries in Britain fostered and fed their complementary relationship. A chapter is then devoted to each individual map, and an annotated bibliography of multilingual resources completes the volume.
A Critical Companion to English A Critical Companion to English
Mappae mundi (maps of the world), beautiful objects in themselves, afford modern viewers unique insights into how medieval scholars conceived the world, and their place within it. They are a fusion of geographic, historical, legendary and theological material. Their production reached its height in England in the twelh and thirteenth centuries, with such well-known examples as the Hereford Mappa Mundi, the maps of Mahew Paris, and the Vercelli map.
of the TWelfth AND Thirteenth Centuries
DAN TERKLA is Emeritus Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University. NICK MILLEA is Map Librarian at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Contributors: Nathalie Bouloux, Michelle Brown, Daniel Connolly, Helen Davies, Gregory Heyworth, Alfred Hia, Marcia Kupfer, Nick Millea, Asa Simon Miman, Dan Terkla, Chet Van Duzer.
Cover design: www.stay-creative.co.uk
OF THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
Cover image: Munich Map. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Clm 10058, fol. 154v. By permission of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München.
Edited by Dan Terkla and Nick Millea