Christianity beyond Christendom
Subtitle: the global Christian experience on medieval mappaemundi and early modern world maps
By: by Jeffrey Jaynes
Contributors: Otto Harrassowitz (Firm)
Series: Wolfenbütteler Forschungen -- Band 149; Wolfenbütteler Forschungen -- Bd. 149.
Publisher: Harrassowitz Verlag in Kommission; Harrassowitz Verlag
Published: 2018
Place of publication: Wiesbaden
Language: eng
Number of pages: 483
ISBN-13: 9783447107150
Subjects: Christianity and geography; Ecclesiastical geography; Cartography; Religious aspects; History; Imaginary places
Description: In 1507 Martin Waldseemüller created a remarkable Early Modern world map loaded with religious symbols. Waldseemüller's map, like almost every other world map of the era, featured legends of Christian communities positioned outside of Christendom. This book explores this religious tension as a component of cartographical developments from the eighth to the sixteenth century. It argues that throughout this era Western Christian thinkers and mapmakers used the 'mappaemundi' and subsequent printed maps of the world to sustain notions of a broadly based Christian 'oikoumene', even as the reality of that assertion diminished. Moreover, cartographers incorporated various apostolic and ancient legends, furthering these with new myths, to provide increasingly sophisticated methods for understanding more distant and isolated Christian communities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The book considers a vast array of medieval world maps and later atlases, ranging from manuscripts of Beatus of Liebana's commentary on the Apocalypse to the maps in Sebastian Münster?s 'Cosmographia' and Abraham Ortelius's 'Theatrum Orbis Terrarum', to trace the legacy of these scattered traditions.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.