A History of the World in 12 Maps

by Jerry Brotton

  However, zonal maps did allow the Church Fathers to claim a strand of Neoplatonic philosophy for the new Christian theology. Writers like Macrobius provided the Church Fathers with a crucial concept, which can be detected in the Hereford mappamundi. This was the belief in transcendence, in rising up above the earth in a moment of physical separation and spiritual insight. Interpreting Cicero’s description of Scipio’s dream, Macrobius argues that ‘his reason for emphasizing the earth’s minuteness was that worthy men might realize that the quest for fame should be considered unimportant since it could not be great in so small a sphere’.15 For the Church Fathers, this insight appeared consistent with the redemptive belief in the Resurrection – of Christ rising up to Heaven, transcending the petty, local conflicts of the earth on which he looks down from his omniscient perspective above, offering the holistic scene of salvation we can see at the top of the Hereford mappamundi.

  This Neoplatonic vision was developed by early Christian writers, including Paulus Orosius, one of the sources for both Entertainment and the maker of the Hereford mappamundi. Orosius’ History against the Pagans was commissioned by and dedicated to St Augustine. Like Augustine’s City of God, Orosius’ book refuted the belief that Rome’s collapse was due to the rise of Christianity. Orosius starts his history of what he calls ‘the founding of the world to the founding of the City [of Rome]’ with a moralized geography. ‘I think it necessary’, he tells his reader, ‘to disclose the conflicts of the human race and the world, as it were, through its various parts, burning with evils, set afire with the torch of greed, viewing them as it were from a watchtower, so that first I shall describe the world itself which the human race inhabits, as it was divided by our ancestors into three parts.’ Orosius claims that such an approach is necessary so that ‘when the locale of wars and the ravages of diseases are described, all interested may more easily obtain knowledge, not only of the events of their time, but also of their location’.16

  T-O maps were easier for Christians to accommodate than zonal maps, and provided fewer philosophical difficulties for the Church Fathers, partly because of the simplicity of their appearance. Gradually, the T was appropriated as an image of the Crucifixion, and its location, Jerusalem, was placed at the centre of maps using this design, as well as mappaemundi like the Hereford example. The one figure most closely associated with Christianizing the T-O map, and another key source used in the making of the Hereford mappamundi, was Isidore of Seville. During his tenure as bishop of Seville (600–636), Isidore was instrumental in a series of Church councils aimed at formalizing the principles of Christian belief and teaching. Today, he is better known for writing two of the most important encyclopedic texts of the early Middle Ages, both of which had a decisive impact on all subsequent Christian geography. Their titles emphasized Isidore’s intellectual ambition: De natura rerum – The Nature of Things – was written c. 612–15, and, as its title suggests, attempted to explain everything, from the Creation, time and the cosmos, to meteorology and other divinely inspired natural phenomena. Isidore stressed that he was presenting his ideas ‘as ancient writers have done and, even better, adding whatever one finds in the work of Catholic men’.17

  Similarly, his Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX (622–33) – the Etymologies, also known simply as Origins – fused classical and biblical knowledge to argue that the key to all knowledge was language. ‘When you see where a name has come from,’ argued Isidore, ‘you understand its meaning more quickly. For everything is known more plainly by the study of etymology.’ Developing this method into the sphere of geography, book 14 of the Etymologies contains a detailed summary of the Christian world. In a move that would influence most subsequent mappaemundi, including the Hereford example, Isidore began his description of the world in Asia, with the location of Paradise, before moving westwards through Europe, Africa and, in an acknowledgement of the influence of classical zonal maps, describing a projected fourth continent, ‘which is unknown to us due to the heat of the sun’.18 Throughout his description, Isidore uses classical and biblical etymology to explain geography: Libya must be older than Europe, he observes, because Europa was the daughter of a king of Libya; Africa is named after Afer, a descendant of Abraham; and Assyria takes its name from Assur, son of Shem.19 For Isidore, all natural phenomena reflect the divine creation of God. The seasons follow the vicissitudes of the Christian faith: winter represents tribulation, spring the renewal of faith. The sun represents Christ, and the moon the Church. Isidore even argues that the constellation of the Great Bear represents the seven Christian virtues.

  Early manuscript copies of Isidore’s books contain T-O maps, often little more than basic diagrams showing the tripartite division of the world. But from the tenth century more elaborate maps began to illustrate Isidore’s works, until more than 600 were created, many showing Jerusalem at their centre. The written geographical accounts of writers like Orosius and Isidore were soon incorporated into the early medieval curriculum under the rubric of the seven liberal arts. The trivium involved the study of grammar, rhetoric and logic. But it was the introduction between the ninth and twelfth centuries of the other four arts, known as the quadrivium – arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy – which allowed for the dissemination of the new Christian approach to geography. Although geography was not itself regarded as an academic discipline, the fifth-century pagan scholar Martianus Capella introduced the figure of Geometry as one of the seven personified liberal arts who speaks the language of geography. In Martianus’ The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, Geometry explains, ‘I am called Geometry because I have often traversed and measured out the earth, and I could offer calculations and proofs for its shape, size, position, regions and dimensions’, before going on to offer a classical zonal account of the world.20 Martianus’ innovation provided a new outlet for the academic study of geography under the umbrella of geometry and the quadrivium. It also allowed Christian scholars to produce written accounts of the known world, which described the places and events depicted in mappaemundi. These were written versions of mappaemundi, and they scoured classical geographical sources as a way of understanding the references to particular locations in the Bible.21

  This new tradition of describing mappaemundi in written form introduced a story of the Christian creation into geography. The classical Graeco-Roman religions did not conceive themselves according to a chain of events of creation, salvation and redemption, nor did they have an account of the world with a beginning, middle and an end. The Christian Fathers from Jerome to Isidore understood the physical world according to a finite biblical story that begins with Genesis and ends in Revelation and Apocalypse. According to this belief, all earthly relations between time, space and individuals were connected along a vertical chain of narrative events which inevitably ended just as they began, with God’s Divine Providence. In this approach, every human, terrestrial event anticipated, or prefigured, the fulfilment of God’s Divine Plan. The Church Fathers’ approach to biblical exegesis involved a clear distinction between a historical figure or event in time, and its wider fulfilment within God’s plan. For example, the Old Testament story of the sacrifice of Isaac ‘prefigures’ the New Testament sacrifice of Christ. The former is a figure that anticipates the latter event, which fulfils (or justifies) the former. Their connection is through the logic of Divine Providence, as set out in the Scriptures.22

  The impact of this new Christian philosophy of time on maps was acute. From the ninth century both visual and written mappaemundi began to appear not just in texts illustrating authors like Macrobius and Isidore, but also in school manuals, geographical treatises used in universities and monasteries, literary compositions in epic and romance poems, and in public spaces like monasteries and churches for more political and didactic purposes.23 World maps emerged that conflated aspects of both zonal and T-O maps, as well as more detailed accounts of particular geographical locations. All this was done in the name of Christiani
ty. Hardly any of these maps provided new geographical material on the world based on travel or exploration. Instead, they fused classical and biblical places to project a history of Christian creation, salvation and judgement onto the surface of a map. On most of these mappaemundi, viewers could trace the passage of biblical time vertically, from its beginning at the top of the map in the Garden of Eden in the east, to its conclusion in the west, with the end of time taking place outside its frame in an eternal present of the Final Judgement.

  One early mappamundi that reflects these various traditions, and which also bears a close resemblance to the Hereford mappamundi, is the so-called Munich ‘Isidore’ world map, dated c. 1130. Made in Paris in the early twelfth century to illustrate a manuscript copy of Isidore’s Etymologies, the map has a diameter of just 26 centimetres. This was a book, and a map, to be read in private by scholars, rather than seen in public by the laity. Nevertheless, the similarity to the Hereford mappamundi is striking. The general conformation of land masses is extremely close, and both maps are framed by the twelve winds, with islands floating round their circumference. The monstrous races of southern Africa are in the same positions, either side of an almost identical portrayal of the Upper Nile. Both maps agree on the location of the Red Sea, as well as the prominent islands of the Mediterranean, including a triangular Sicily. Although the Munich map is far smaller than the Hereford, and therefore lacks the elaborate depiction of the Earthly Paradise and extensive quotations from classical authors, it still fuses classical and biblical sources, tracing the travels of Alexander, the location of Gog and Magog, the whereabouts of Noah’s Ark and the crossing of the Red Sea. The Munich ‘Isidore’ mappamundi shows how Christian scholars were gradually departing from classical and early Christian sources. Although it illustrates a copy of the Etymologies, the shape and detail of the Munich mappamundi bears little resemblance to Isidore’s text. Instead, it represents the summation of the shape and outline of an evolving Christian world picture.

  The Munich mappamundi is also based on the thinking of Hugh of Saint-Victor (1096–1141),24 which exemplified the new approach to the use of mappaemundi in Christian teaching. Hugh was one of the twelfth century’s most influential theologians, a follower of Augustine who used his position as head of the school at the abbey of St Victor in Paris to disseminate his scholastic writings like the Didascalicon (1130s), a textbook on the basic teachings of Christianity, where he argued that ‘the whole sensible world is like a kind of book written by the finger of God’.25 In his Descriptio mappe mundi (c. 1130–35), probably written as a lecture for St Victor’s students, Hugh provided a detailed description of the earth and its regions along the lines of the Munich mappamundi.

  Hugh’s interest in geography was part of a larger understanding of God’s creation, expounded in his mystical text De Arca Noe mystica (1128–9). In his treatise Hugh compares the earth to Noah’s Ark, describing a cosmic plan which seems to have been painted on the wall of the cloisters at St Victor and used in his teaching. Although it no longer survives, it is possible to recreate this mappamundi in some detail, thanks to Hugh’s detailed instructions. The painting depicted the body of Christ flanked by angels. He becomes an embodiment of the universe as he embraces it in an explicit reference to Isaiah’s vision of God surrounded by the seraphims announcing ‘the whole earth is full of his glory’ (Isaiah 6: 3). Six circles emanate from his mouth, representing the six days of Creation. Moving towards its centre, Hugh’s model portrays the signs of the zodiac and the months of the year, the four cardinal winds, the four seasons, and finally at its very centre a mappamundi, drawn according to the dimensions of Noah’s Ark:

  the perfect Ark is circumscribed with an oblong circle, which touches each of its corners, and the space the circumference includes represents the earth. In this space, a world map is depicted in this fashion: the front of the Ark faces the east, and the rear faces the west . . . In the apex to the east formed between the circle and the head of the Ark is paradise . . . . In the other apex, which juts out to the west, is the Last Judgment, with the chosen to the right and the reprobates to the left. In the northern corner of this apex is hell, where the damned are thrown with the apostate spirits.26

  Like the Hereford mappamundi, Hugh’s world as an ark can be read as a story where the passage of time moves from top to bottom. At its apex is the literal godhead, overseeing the top (east) of the map and the Creation and Paradise. Moving downwards, from east to west, hell is to the north, Africa lies to the south with its monstrous races, while the westernmost point contains the Last Judgement, and the end of the world. For Hugh, the world as the Ark represents a prefiguration of the creation of the Church: just as the Ark saved Noah’s family from the destruction of the Flood, so the Ark of the Church, built by Christ, will protect its members from death and eternal damnation. The Ark is a repository of all religious knowledge, part-book, part-building, in which ‘are bountifully contained the universal works of our salvation from the beginning of the world until the end, and here is contained the condition of the universal Church. Here the narrative of historical events is woven together, here the mysteries of the sacrament are found.’27

  Within this mystical theology is a unification of Christian time and space. The world as Ark both shows and tells a complete story of the Christian history of creation and salvation, stretching from the beginning to the end of time. Like Orosius and Augustine, Hugh proposed a version of Christian history based on a progression of time, starting in the east, and ending in the west. He claimed that ‘in the succession of historical events the order of space and the order of time seem to be in almost complete correspondence’. He went on: ‘what was brought about at the beginning of time would also have been brought about in the east – at the beginning, so to speak, of the world as space.’ According to this belief, Creation took place in the east, as shown on the Hereford mappamundi. But following the Flood, ‘the earliest kingdoms and the centre of the world were in the eastern regions, amongst the Assyrians, the Chaldeans and the Medes. Afterwards, dominion passed to the Greeks; then, as the end of the world approached, supreme power descended in the Occident to the Romans.’ This movement can be seen on Hugh’s mappamundi, which moves vertically, from the beginning of the world and time in the east at the top, to its anticipated end in the west, at the bottom.

  This transfer of imperial power from east to west was also a summation of the prefiguration of both individual salvation and the end of the world. Or as Hugh put it, ‘as time proceeded towards its end, the centre of events would have shifted to the west, so that we may recognize out of this that the world nears its end in time as the course of events has already reached the extremity of the world in space.’28 For Hugh, who repeatedly turned to geography to define his theology, the vehicle for this unification of Christian time and space was the mappamundi, a space within which biblical time and the end of the world could be projected, and mankind could chart its final salvation – or damnation. His views may sound extreme, even eccentric, but the fifty-three surviving manuscripts of his book and extensive references to his work on medieval mappaemundi (including the Hereford map’s debt to his descriptions of the ‘splendid column’ at Rhodes, and people riding crocodiles down the Nile) show that he was widely read and believed.29

  At the zenith of this long, historical tradition stands the Hereford mappamundi. There are other mappaemundi contemporary with the Hereford example, but none survives that rival its scale and detail. Although earlier examples of mappamundi existed in England, there is no consistent explanation or contemporary accounts of how these texts were transmitted and influenced each other; nevertheless, they share striking topographical and theological similarities. The so-called ‘Sawley Map’, dated around 1190 and generally regarded as the earliest known English mappamundi, was discovered in the library of Sawley Abbey, a Cistercian monastery in Yorkshire. Like the Munich ‘Isidore’ mappamundi, this was a tiny map, illustrating a popular twe
lfth-century book on geography. Size may have limited its ability to portray Paradise and the Last Judgement, but the four angels in each corner of the map appear to derive from Hugh of Saint-Victor’s cosmology, and represent the angels holding back the winds in Revelation.30 The topography of the map is extremely similar to the Hereford map, from its biblical references and monstrous races in the far north, to the almost identical placement of rivers, gulfs and seas. Among surviving maps of the time, the Hereford mappamundi, however, is unique in assimilating so many diverse strands of classical and contemporary geographical and theological belief and in the process providing a comprehensive written and visual statement on the past, present and projected future of Christianity and its believers. The Bible, St Jerome, Orosius, Martianus Capella, Isidore and a range of other sources, from the ‘marvels of the east’ described in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (AD 74–9) to Caius Julius Solinus’ book of wonders and monsters, A Collection of Memorable Facts (third century AD), are evoked (directly or implicitly) in the map’s 1,100 inscriptions. These range from direct biblical quotations to reproducing Pliny’s length and breadth of Africa and quoting Isidore’s belief in unicorns (‘monoceros’).

  It also registers a new and particularly Christian version of physical and spiritual travel: the pilgrimage. Pilgrimage routes to the Holy Land were well established in northern Europe by the twelfth century, and the pursuit of such a route was regarded as a statement of personal piety. The Hereford mappamundi shows three of the most important pilgrimage sites in Christianity – Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela, identified on the map as ‘The Shrine of St James’.31 Each place is illuminated in bright red, and towns associated with the routes to each shrine are all carefully recorded. The mappamundi also retraces St Paul’s journeys throughout Asia Minor, as well as reflecting contemporary experiences of pilgrimage to the Holy Land by reproducing fifty-eight place names in the region, twelve of which are not on any other maps of its time.32