A World Transformed<\/a> is an engaging, meditative study of what she calls the \u201cspirituality of medieval maps.\u201d<\/p>\nMaps, she argues, are never neutral. They \u201cshow what their users want and need to believe about the world. They allow us to daydream, to plot and scheme, to envision our future. They help us take journeys, both real and imagined. Maps are belief systems in miniature\u201d (19).<\/p>\n
Modern maps elide worldview. Not medieval maps, which, whatever the makers thought about the real configuration of the terrain, depict a vision of the world, typically a Christian one. Maps were made in a T-O format \u2013 circular overall, but with a T formed by the intersection of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Jerusalem is at the center of the T on many maps, sometimes with the risen Christ in the center of Jerusalem. At the margins are monsters, the evil that stalks the edges of human life. In the fourteenth-century Hereford map that Deam explores most fully, there\u2019s a picture of St Augustine in north Africa.<\/p>\n
The Ebstorf Map (c. 1300) combines the \u201cforbidden garden at the top of the world\u201d with \u201cmonsters at the edges of the earth\u201d \u2013 twenty-four monsters along the Southern tip of the map. Yet the map is also encompassed by Jesus: \u201cthe head, hands, and feet of Jesus peep out from behind the round image of the world. It is as though Jesus stands behind the earth, grasping it firmly in his hands. . . . He even holds the monstrous creatures; his left hand appears inside the boxed area that pictures a Troglogyte. . . . An adjacent inscription reads, \u2018He holds the earth in his hands\u2019\u201d (52).\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is a world in which believers feel quite at home.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lisa Deam\u2019s\u00a0A World Transformed is an engaging, meditative study of what she calls the \u201cspirituality of medieval maps.\u201d Maps, she argues, are never neutral. They \u201cshow what their users want and need to believe about the world. They allow us to daydream, to plot and scheme, to envision our future. They help us take journeys, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1249,597],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maps","category-medieval-thought"],"yoast_head":"\n
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