Theater of the World

by Thomas Reinertsen Berg

  Snorri grew up in a literary home, studying Latin, theology and geography, and he and the anonymous English cartographer probably read many of the same books about the nature of the world. In the Middle Ages, the word was mightier than the image. Eight hundred years before Snorri, one of the early church fathers wrote: ‘I shall now wander with my pen through what man knows about Europe.’ Scholars preferred textual descriptions of the world to images, which were better suited to the illiterate masses, and so in a medieval sense, Snorri’s description is a perfectly adequate map–albeit a somewhat brief one.

  At first glance, it isn’t necessarily obvious that the map in the prayer book is a world map. Unlike the maps drawn by Ptolemy–or if not by Ptolemy himself, by others but based on his work–this map does not resemble the world as we know it. This is a medieval mappa mundi, and the name is taken from the Latin mappa, meaning ‘a sheet of cloth’, and mundus, meaning ‘the world’. The map provides an image of the world as it would have appeared to a European Christian in the mid-1200s, and reproduces the theological, cosmological, historical and ethnographic notions of the age. The aim is not to represent the world as accurately as possible–more important is to explain how the divine permeates geography. Here, stories from the Bible are illustrated alongside medieval legends and geographical knowledge from antiquity. As on the earliest Greek maps, the land mass is round and surrounded by an ocean containing a smattering of islands and peninsulas–including Norwegia, far to the north on the left of the map–and decorated with biblical motifs such as the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, and the parting of the Red Sea as Moses and the Israelites flee the Pharaoh’s soldiers.

  ROMAN MAPS | The Roman conquest of Egypt, and the dominating position the Romans achieved across the Mediterranean, not only diminished Alexandria’s position as a seat of learning; it also resulted in Latin superseding Greek as the dominant written language among European, north African and west Asian scholars. Nor were the Romans particularly interested in translating the Greek geographers’ elaborate explanations of the world’s appearance–they took a more practical approach to maps. It is characteristic that the only Roman world map to have survived, the Tabula Peutingeriana, is almost 8.5 metres long but only 34 centimetres high, as it describes the world by reproducing 104,000 kilometres of roads spanning from Britain, Spain and Morocco in the west to Sri Lanka and China in the east. Marked along the roads are posting stations, baths, bridges, forests, distances and the names of countries and peoples. The only copy of the map to survive is from the Middle Ages, but it is believed that the original was created during late antiquity, some time between AD 335 and AD 366.

  Roman maps were generally used in connection with the establishment of new colonies, the construction of roads and aqueducts, court cases, education and propaganda. City maps were also a Roman genre–the Severan Marble Plan, which hung on the wall of the Temple of Peace in central Rome, consisted of 150 stone slabs engraved with the capital’s network of roads and buildings. Orbis terrarum, the round globe, was generally only drawn to show that new emperors had been granted the gift of the world from a god, and then in extremely stylised form. Countless Roman coins show emperors and gods with a symbolic globe in their hand or under a foot.

  We know of only two geographical treatises written in classical Latin. The first is De situ orbis (Description of the World) by Pomponius Mela, a slim volume that mainly builds on the work of Greek geographers; the second is the Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder, who added his own observations from northern Europe to the knowledge of the Greeks. Pliny’s world stretched from the Iberian Peninsula and Britain in the west to Serere (China) in the east, and from the Scandinavian ‘islands’ in the north to Ethiopia in the south. Both Mela and Pliny were important sources of geographical knowledge for medieval scholars.

  In the Republic, Cicero (106–43 BC), a lawyer who had studied under Greek philosophers, provides a rare Roman view of the world when he describes a dream in which the Roman general Scipio is lifted up to the stars so that he may see how diminutive the Roman Empire is in a broader context. The vision is reminiscent of Socrates’ associative thinking and the Greek maps that divided the Earth into five climatic zones:

  Look at all the different zones enveloping the earth; the two most widely separated from one another, at opposite poles of the heavens, are fixed with an icy cold, while the midmost zone burns with the heat of the sun. Only the two zones between these extremes are habitable. The zone which lies south of yours has no connection or means of connection with your zone, because they are prevented from crossing the midmost zone. If you look at your own northern zone, you can’t help but notice how small a section of this region can be regarded as yours. The territory you occupy, your vast Empire, is nothing more than a small island, narrow from north to south, a bit wider east to west, surrounded by the sea which is known as the Atlantic. In spite of the grand name given to this stretch of water, mark how small it really is.

  The Roman orator Eumenius took a more traditional approach to maps, conquests and propaganda when, in the year AD 290, he presented a map of the Roman Empire to his students and said: ‘For now, now at last it is a delight to see a picture of the world, since we see nothing in it that is not ours.’ Such panegyric speeches, given both with and without the use of accompanying maps, and in which the speakers reeled off the names of countries belonging to the Roman Empire, were a form of propaganda used in the same way as the exhibiting of looted treasures and captured prisoners. The map that opens every Asterix comic book, which features a staff topped by the Roman eagle planted firmly in the middle of Gaul, is a fairly accurate interpretation of the Roman use of maps (with the exception of the magnifying glass highlighting the indomitable Gaulish village, of course).

  World maps played such an important role in Roman propaganda that they could only be created with approval from the state. Any private person found to have created a world map was assumed to be plotting against the emperor–as Mettius Pompusianus soon discovered after drawing a world map on his bedroom wall. Pompusianus was executed–Emperor Domitian (AD 81–96) took the world map as a sure sign that Pompusianus had plans to take the throne.

  AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO | Christianity, however, took another view of geography. The story of creation taught that the Earth belonged to the people and should therefore be used by them, and that since God had come down to the world through Jesus and told the apostles to go out and make disciples of all peoples, anyone could retrace the routes the apostles had taken to convert others to Christianity. Reproductions of the world were no longer reserved for the ruling classes. But geography was not regarded as a discipline in its own right–it was merely an aid to help people better understand creation and history. Information about the world was a part of scientia, knowledge of human matters, and must be used to support sapientia, knowledge of the holy.

  Around the year AD 400, in his work De Genesi ad litteram (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), Algerian church father Augustine of Hippo wrote that a Christian should know at least as much about the Earth, heavens and other parts of the universe as a non-Christian, in order to avoid misunderstanding any of the Bible’s higher truths due to a lack of knowledge about more worldly matters. One must study the Earth alongside biblical history in order to better understand divine creation. In his book On Christian Doctrine, Augustine wrote that if ‘any competent man were willing in a spirit of benevolence to undertake the labour for the advantage of his brethren […] he might arrange in their several classes, and give an account of the unknown places, and animals, and plants, and trees, and stones, and metals, and other species of things that are mentioned in Scripture.’

  Jerome (AD 347–420) took up this challenge when he published the Liber de situ et nominibus locorum hebraicorum (Book on the Sites and Names of Hebrew Places) around the year AD 390. This was a topographical dictionary featuring the names of over 1,000 biblical sites, written because anyone ‘who knows the sites of the ancient cities and places a
nd their names, whether the same or changed, will gaze more clearly upon Holy Scripture.’

  The Bible, however, was both lacking and contradictory in its provision of geographical information. Augustine’s advice was to do as the Israelites had done when they ‘plundered the Egyptians’ before setting out for the Promised Land–in other words, to use the knowledge stemming from the heathen Romans and Greeks.

  When writing his Historiarum adversum paganos (History Against the Pagans), Paulus Orosius (AD 385–420) did as Augustine recommended. ‘Our ancestors divided the whole world, surrounded as it is by the belt of the Ocean, into three rectangular blocks, and called these three parts Asia, Europe, and Africa […]. Asia is surrounded on three sides by the Ocean and extends across the entire East. To the West on her right she borders Europe, which begins at the North Pole, and to her left Africa […].’ Orosius then gives a secular description of these three parts of the world–Jerusalem isn’t mentioned, nor is Bethlehem, Jericho, Nazareth nor any of the other cities from biblical history, confirming that Orosius consulted Roman sources. Palestine is only mentioned in passing as one of three Syrian provinces, but nevertheless, Orosius was frequently used as a source for the remainder of the Middle Ages.

  ISIDORE OF SEVILLE | Over 200 years later, a Spanish bishop would unite classical and Christian geography. Legend has it that his story starts on the day he ran away from home as a young boy, no longer able to withstand the beatings he received from his older brother, who had taken over his care after his parents’ deaths and shocked many of the family’s acquaintances with the physical punishments he so generously doled out. Fleeing into the forest outside Seville, the boy finally managed to evade the blows, but never quite managed to escape the feeling of being stupid, rejected and a failure.

  Isidore of Seville was born in the city of Cartagena in southern Spain around the year AD 560. These were turbulent times–the Roman province of Hispania had been taken by the Germanic Visigoths over 100 years earlier, and in AD 557 the Byzantines had taken control of Cartagena and the south-eastern part of the province. This is probably why Isidore’s family moved west to Seville. His mother was of Visigothic stock, possibly aristocratic, and his father was from a distinguished Spanish-Roman family. Both Isidore’s parents died not long after the family had relocated to the new city, and the responsibility for his education therefore fell to his older brother, who educated Isidore accordingly–although Isidore didn’t learn as quickly or as much as his older brother felt he should.

  Out in the forest, Isidore noticed water dripping onto a stone not far from where he sat. The drops individually appeared completely powerless, seemingly unable to have any impact on the hard stone–but Isidore could see that, over time, they had created a depression in the rock. He thought that perhaps the same might be true of his studies–that bit by bit, hard work would result in great knowledge.

  Isidore of Seville is now regarded as one of the most learned men of his time. He was the first Christian author to attempt to write a summa–a compilation of all available knowledge. His major work, Etymologiarum sive originum (Etymologies), is a kind of combined dictionary and encyclopedia in twenty volumes, which he worked on from the year AD 621 until his death. The work covers everything from grammar and medicine to agriculture and shipping. Book 14 covers the Earth and its various regions (‘de terra et partibus’). Isidore emphasised that he presented the knowledge ‘according to what has been written by the ancients and especially in the works of Catholic writers.’ For him, the universe and all its natural phenomena were an expression of God’s divine work. Isidore cited John i, 10 as evidence that ‘the world was made through him,’ compared the Sun with God and the Moon with the church, and stated that the seven stars that make up the Plough symbolise the Christian virtues.

  Isidore described the world in the traditional way, writing that it ‘is divided into three parts, one of which is called Asia, the second Europe, the third Africa.’ His Christian faith influenced his description of Asia:

  Two sections of the long road and world map Tabula Peutingeriana, drawn by cartographer Petrus Bertius in 1619 and based on a reproduction started by Abraham Ortelius the year before he died. To the bottom left of the map is Constantinopolis (today’s Istanbul), marked by a stately woman. The many branches of the Nile Delta can be seen in the south, and east of this is Sinai, where according to the map the children of Israel wandered for forty years, while Hierusalem has been placed at an insignificant location even further east.

  Asia is named after a certain woman who, according to the ancients, had an empire in the east […]. It has many provinces and regions, whose names and locations I will briefly explain, beginning with Paradise. Paradise is located in the east. Its name, translated from Greek into Latin, means ‘garden’. In Hebrew in turn it is called Eden, which in our language means ‘delights’ […]. Access to this location was blocked off after the fall of humankind, for it is fenced in on all sides by a flaming sword, that is, encircled by a wall of fire, so that the flames almost reach the sky. Also the Cherubim, that is, a garrison of angels, have been drawn up above the flaming sword to prevent evil spirits from approaching, so that the flames drive off human beings, and angels drive off the wicked angels, in order that access to Paradise may not lie open either to flesh or to spirits that have transgressed. India is so called from the river Indus, by which it is bounded on the west.

  For Isidore, there is no marked crossing from paradise to India–for him they are neighbouring regions. But he was unsure whether other regions and peoples existed in the unknown southern part of the globe.

  Greek mathematician Pythagoras had the idea that people lived on the other side of the globe–those with their feet facing the other way–long before Isidore; the Greeks and Romans such as Plato and Cicero simply took it for granted that there must be people living on the other side of the world. But in his City of God, Augustine of Hippo dismissed this idea: ‘But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, […] that is on no ground credible.’

  For the Christians of the Middle Ages, the question of whether inhabited countries existed on the other side of the Earth, separated from the world they knew by either burning heat or a great ocean, was not just a geographical question; it was also a theological one. The Bible teaches that all peoples stem from Adam and Eve–so how could any of their descendants have ended up in a region it was impossible to reach? Why was nothing written about these descendants in holy scripture? How would the apostles fulfil the Great Commission to convert all peoples to disciples if there were peoples whom it was simply impossible to get to? Were the antipodes damned? Or had Jesus visited them separately? Augustine admitted that, yes, there might be dry land on the other side of the Earth, but ‘though it be bare, [it does not] immediately follow that it is peopled. For Scripture, which proves the truth of its historical statements by the accomplishment of its prophecies, gives no false information.’

  In Book 9 of the Etymologies, which describes the Earth’s kingdoms and languages, Isidore writes that ‘the people called Antipodes […] are on no account to be believed in.’ But in Book 14, after describing Asia, Europe and Africa, he writes: ‘Apart from these three parts of the world there exists a fourth part, beyond the Ocean, further inland toward the south, which is unknown to us because of the burning heat of the sun; within its borders are said to live the legendary Antipodes.’

  This self-contradiction may be due to the fact that Isidore had several church fathers with differing views to consult. At the same time as Augustine, Jerome and Orosius, Macrobius–a man we know little about–was also writing a commentary on the Dream of Scipio, the description of the world from Cicero’s Republic. He accompanied his commentary with a map, which illustrated the world with the North Pole, South Pole, equator and two inhabitable zones, as described in the dream. Macrobius read the dream as a reminder to powerful men that achieving fame on our little planet is unimportant–in
line with Jesus’ teaching not to store up treasures on earth, where moths and vermin will destroy them. The map and commentary gave the church fathers a tangible way to express the smallness of humanity; an account of the entire world harmonised with the religious idea of transcendence–the idea of leaving one’s body and rising above the Earth in a moment of spiritual insight to witness just how small human beings really are in a cosmic context. The inclusion of the antipodes on medieval maps was therefore permitted–despite Augustine’s recommendation to ‘let us seek if we can […] the city of God that sojourns on earth among those human races who are catalogued as having been divided into seventy-two nations and as many languages.’

  Here, Augustine is referring to the genealogies described in the Book of Genesis. Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, who after the Flood gave rise to seventy-two different peoples. The Graeco-Roman tripartite vision of the world was woven more tightly into the Christian mentality when the three sons were said to each have populated a different part of the world: Shem was said to have travelled east to become the forefather of the Asians and Ham to have journeyed south to Africa; Japheth, forefather of peoples on distant shores, became the European among them. Isidore elaborated on this narrative, asserting that Japheth’s son Magog was the forefather of the Goths, i.e. the Swedes of Götaland. But other than this, the Nordic region was barely part of Isidore’s geography, and was lumped together with Great Britain, Ireland and the Gorgades–a group of islands inhabited by strapping, hairy women with wings–in a chapter about islands: