A Cartografia Medieval. O mundo dos homens e o mundo de Deus

OPSIS : Revista do Departamento de História e Ciências Sociais

关键词: Cartografi;    Mapa-múndi;    Idade Média;    Escatologia;    Juízo Final.;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The article suggests the study of medieval cartography, the language integrated to the communication system promoted and controlled by the Church. Two world maps located in the manuscripts were taken as examples: the Beatus of Liébana’s The Apocalypse (the British Library, Ms 11695) and the Honorius of Autun’s Imago Mundi (Cambridge, Ms 66) and two mural world maps: the Ebstorf map, originally found in the Ebstorf monastery cloister (Germany) and the Hereford map that can be seen on the altar of the Hereford Cathedral (England). It was attempted to demonstrate in this article how the world maps put into practice the art of memory, the rhetoric resource, by repeating the information from one charter to the other. The maps faced east, maintaining the Homeric tradition of land surrounded by ocean and the division of the world in three continents. The sacred took hold of the physical geography by locating the biblical places equally, on the same positions: On top - on Asia -, Heaven; in the center, celestial Jerusalem. The other vetero and neo-testamentary references such as Noah’s ark and the cities of Bethlehem and Babel are located correctly in the east part (on the top). It is in the monastery context - particularly the Benedictine Rule principle in which, fighting inactivity, determined besides handwork, the monks take some time of the day to read – that it is possible to understand the purpose of the world maps inside the medieval manuscripts, which could function as educational instrument to the aristocracy and nobility in the Court world. Similarly, it is through liturgy that mural maps become not cloister or the cathedral altar ornaments, but images capable of sending the greatest message of Christianity, the resurrection and salvation of the soul, announcing the Last Judgment.

【 授权许可】

Unknown