If we examine it we shall see what the people who lived in the year 1300 or thereabouts imagined the world to be like. To begin with, they made the top of the map east, and the bottom west, so their ideas of direction were different from ours.
The world is round, surrounded by the sea, and at the top of it lies the garden of Eden, with rivers running out of it. In the centre is Jerusalem, and all round that city are representations of Old Testament events: the Flood, and the Ark; the Red Sea, and the journey of the Children of Israel; Lot’s wife, etc.
Great Britain is marked on the map, with the names of very few towns, but most of the Cathedrals are noted; while the other countries of Europe are also shown, with the animals which were supposed to live there, and it is very curious to notice how monkeys were believed to live in Norway, and serpents in Germany.
We must not spend too much time here, however, for we have still to see the old chair and the old book.
The chair is in the sanctuary, on the north side of the altar. It stands here because it was used as the Bishop’s chair (for it is so plain we can hardly call it a throne) until the present throne, which stands near the choir-stalls, was erected.
We do not know when it was made, or how many Bishops have sat in it, but it must be at least nearly eight hundred years old, for we know that the wicked King Stephen visited Hereford, after its Bishop had been forced to fly, and in his pride and arrogance dared to sit in his place during Service, wearing his Royal crown.
Now let us go out by this door in the south wall of the nave, and pass along what is known as the ‘Bishop’s Cloister,’ until we come to the library which is built on the site of the ‘Old West Cloister.’ The building is new, but the books it contains are very ancient and valuable.
For this is a chained library—that is, most of the books are fastened by chains to a rod which is placed above the shelf on which they stand, so that anyone can take them down, and lay them on the broad desk-like shelf which finds a place below the bookshelves, and read them there, but they cannot be taken away.
Here is the very ancient book which I have mentioned. It is a copy of the Gospels, written in Anglo-Saxon characters, and it must be at least a thousand years old.
But old as it is, there are many other books, bound in boards of thin oak covered with sheepskin, which are quite as interesting.