This gem in the history of cartography is the outcome of the combined efforts of the workshops of the first two ‘schools’ of Portuguese cartography
A 16th century view of North America in the Vallard Atlas
January 22, 2015 By
The scene above shows the second American map, which is of the East Coast of North America, and is one of the most significant of the Vallard Atlas.
The Original Placement of the Hereford Map
January 1, 2015 By
This paper relies on new masonry and dendrochronological evidence and the system of medieval ecclesiastical preferments to argue that this monumental world map was originally exhibited in 1287 next to the first shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe in Hereford Cathedral’s north transept.
Intellectual Cartographic Spaces: Alfonso X, the Wise and the Foundation of the Studium Generale of Seville
November 7, 2014 By
This dissertation, “Intellectual Cartographic Spaces: Alfonso X, the Wise and the Foundations of the Studium Generale of Seville,” I reevaluate Spain’s medieval history, specifically focusing on the role of Alfonso X and his court in the development of institutions of higher education in thirteenth-century Andalusia.
Real and imaginary journeys in the later Middle Ages
September 1, 2014 By
For a proper understanding of the actions of men in the past it is necessary to have some idea of how they conceived the world and their place in it, yet for the medieval period there is a serious inbalance in the sources.
A Peripheral Matter?: Oceans in the East in Late-Medieval Thought, Report and Cartography
August 24, 2014 By
It is something of a truism that the Ocean Sea {mare oceanum in medieval texts and cartography) marked out a real and conceptual periphery for medieval Western Europeans.
Seeing again : geometry, cartography and visions in the work of Opicinus de Canistris (1296-C.1354)
February 8, 2014 By
Set against erratic textual content, the images in the Palatinus are combinations of mathematical forms, collection of figures and zodiac symbols.
Vespucci’s Triangle and the Shape of the World
January 17, 2014 By
Interdisciplinary interactions between sixteenth-century travellers and cosmographers produced visual models that challenged normative modes of visual thinking, even as they tried to clarify ideas about the earth’s surface.
The so-called Genoese World Map of 1457: A Stepping Stone Towards Modern Cartography?
May 18, 2013 By
Around the time of Christopher Columbus’s birth, we find on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, especially in the north of Italy, a variety of people particularly interested in problems of geography and cartography.
‘Fromm thennes faste he gan avyse/This litel spot of erthe’: GIS and the General Prologue
May 2, 2013 By
This paper was given at the Canada Chaucer Seminar on April 27, 2013.
Queen of All Islands: The Imagined Cartography of Matthew Paris’s Britain
April 29, 2013 By
In the middle decade of the thirteenth century, the Benedictine monk and historian Matthew Paris drew four regional maps of Britain. The monk’s works stand as the earliest extant maps of the island and mark a distinct shift from the cartographic traditions of medieval Europe.
The Cone of Africa . . . Took Shape in Lisbon
February 19, 2013 By
The year that Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic and Isabel and Ferdinand expelled the Jews from Spain, an unheralded event took place. A cartographer in Lisbon, Portugal, drew an amazing map detailing the coasts of Europe, the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and western Africa.
A Peripheral Matter? Oceans in the East in Late Medieval Thought, Report and Cartography
October 21, 2012 By
Focusing in particular on the southern and eastern parts of the Ocean Sea, this article traces the broad contours of a representational and conceptual shift brought about, I argue, by the interplay between geographical thought and social (navigational, mercantile) practice.
One World under the Sun: Cosmography and Cartography in the Liber Floridus
September 2, 2012 By
To a modern cartographer a map should represent geographic reality by means of coordinates such as latitude and longitude. Not one of the cartographic images in the Liber Floridus corresponds to this definition, yet not a single work on historical cartography omits the early-twelfth-century encyclopaedia
Reflection of European Sarmatia in Early Cartography
August 23, 2012 By
While looking for the origins of the state of Lithuania, it is the study of old maps that helps solve a number of riddles, so far weighing on the history of our nation. Historical data, traced in maps and their images, unrestricted by any political, religious or pseudo- scientific taboos, allow us to cast a broad view on the dim and distant past of our state.
The African Paradise of Cardinal Carvajal: New Light on the “Kunstmann II Map,” 1502-1506
June 14, 2012 By
The Kunstmann II map (99 x 110.5 cm) records the discoveries made in the New World by Miguel Corte-Real and Amerigo Vespucci in 1501–1502.
Settlement Morphology and Medieval Village Planning: A Case Study at Laxton, Nottinghamshire
June 10, 2012 By
In 1980 The East Midland Geographer published a collection of papers examining the history and development of the village of Laxton in Nottinghamshire. Among them, a paper by A. Cameron was the first serious attempt to explore the medieval development of Laxton, through the medium of Mark Pierce’s map of the village produced in 1635 .
Exploring Byzantine Cartographies: Ancient Science, Christian Cosmology, and Geopolitics in Imperial-Era Mapping
May 19, 2012 By
Dr. Papadopoulos will explain how the study of Byzantine maps illuminate how Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean people understood themselves, their belief systems, and their political positionality in territorial terms.
The Power of Disembodied Imagination: Perspective’s Role in Cartography
February 19, 2012 By
The Renaissance flowering of cartographic activity following rediscovery of Ptolemy’s formulae for map projection is well documented, as are connections between this rediscovery and the oceanic expeditions subsequently undertaken during ‘The Age of Discovery’
The Medieval and Renaissance Transmission of the Tabula Peutingeriana
February 8, 2012 By
Some time ago close correspondences were discovered between the content of the Tabula and a very unusual text composed in the eighth century, the Cosmographia of the Anonymous of Ravenna.
Local and Regional Cartography in Medieval Europe
November 15, 2011 By
This article examines medieval cartography.
Biblical, mythical, and foreign women in the texts and pictures on medieval world maps
September 4, 2011 By
Biblical, mythical, and foreign women in the texts and pictures on medieval world maps Baumgartner, Ingrid The Hereford world map: medieval world maps and their context, (University of Chicago Press, 2006) Abstract On the mappamundi of Hereford Cathedral, which dates back to the late thirteenth century, Richard of Holdingham or Sleaford, who is thought to have designed […]
Representations of Jerusalem in Christian-European Maps from the 6th to the 16th Centuries: A Comparative Tool for Reading the Message of a Map in its Cultural Context
July 19, 2011 By
Representations of Jerusalem in Christian-European Maps from the 6th to the 16th Centuries:A Comparative Tool for Reading the Message of a Map in its Cultural Context Siew, Tsafra (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Center for the Study of Italian Culture (2008/09) Abstract Modern maps of Jerusalem, according to the conventions of modern cartography, are conventional abstract depictions of the […]
Kingship In Early Ireland
March 17, 2011 By
Kingship In Early Ireland Doherty, Charles The Kingship and Landscape of Tara, ed. Edel Bhreathnach, Four Courts Press, Dublin, (2005) Abstract The earliest reference to the presence of kings in Ireland is in the geography of the known world compiled by Claudius Ptolemaeus c.AD 150 (generally referred to as Ptolemy’s Map). He derived his information from earlier […]
MEDIEVAL “MAPPING” OF THE WORLD IN TEXT AND IMAGE. TWO WAYS OF REPRESENTING ONE VISION
February 13, 2011 By
MEDIEVAL “MAPPING” OF THE WORLD IN TEXT AND IMAGE. TWO WAYS OF REPRESENTING ONE VISION GOSMAN, MARTIN Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol.25:4 (1989) Abstract When discussing the results of medieval cartography, we are obliged to conclude that it is difficult to determine the limits of that period. Before 1200 the cartographic production is rather static. The […]
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