The Beatus map
Sallust-maps
The wheel-maps were, as we have said, from the first purely formal; but by degrees an attempt was made to bring into the scheme real geographical information, although the endeavour to approach reality in the representation is scarcely to be traced. To this type of map belongs the so-called Beatus map, which the Spanish monk Beatus (ob. 798) added to his commentary on the Apocalypse, and which was reproduced in very varying forms, ten of which have been preserved. The original map, which is not known, was probably round, but in the reproductions the circle of the earth is sometimes more or less round (as in the illustration, [p. 184]), sometimes oblong (cf. vol. i. p. 199), and sometimes four-sided with rounded corners [cf. K. Miller, ii., 1895]. Jerusalem was frequently placed in the centre of the wheel-maps, Paradise (often with Adam and Eve at the time of the Fall, or with the four rivers of Paradise) in the extreme east of Asia, which is at the top of the map, and the Mediterranean (Mare magnum), which forms the stem of the T, pointing down (cf. vol. i. p. 150). The cross-stroke of the T was formed by the rivers Tanais (with the Black Sea) and Nile. In the band of ocean surrounding the disc of the earth the oceanic islands were distributed more or less according to taste, and as there happened to be room. Thus in the version of the Beatus map here given, from Osma in Spain (of 1203), Scandinavia appears as an island (“Scada insula”) by the North Pole, as in the Ravenna geographer (cf. the map, vol. i. p. 152), and the “Orcades” (the Orkneys) and “Gorgades” (the fabulous islands of the Greeks to the west of Africa) are placed on the north-east of Asia. The so-called Sallust-maps, drawn up from Sallust’s description of the world in the Bellum Jugurtinum [cf. K. Miller, iii., 1895, pp. 110, ff.], were another type of very formal wheel-maps that were still current in the fourteenth century.
Northern Europe on the Hereford map (circa 1280)
Northern part of the Psalter map (thirteenth century)
The North on known wheel-maps of the Middle Ages
But by degrees many changes were introduced into the strict scheme. The outer coast-line of the continents was in parts indented by bays and prolonged into peninsulas, and the islands were given a less formal shape. Such attempts appear, for instance, in Heinrich of Mainz’s map, which is taken to have been drawn in 1110 [cf. K. Miller, iii., 1895, p. 22], and the closely related “Hereford map” of about 1280 by Richard de Holdingham [cf. K. Miller, iv., 1896; Jomard, 1855]. Some resemblance to these maps is shown by the “Psalter” map in London, of the second half of the thirteenth century, and the closely related “Ebstorf” map of 1284 [cf. K. Miller, iii. pp. 37, ff.; iv. p. 3; v.]; and it is quite possible that they may all be derived from the same original source; there is in particular a great resemblance in their representation of Britain and Ireland. On the first three of these maps Scandinavia or Norway (“Noreya” or “Norwegia”) forms a peninsula with gulfs on the north and south sides. On Heinrich’s map there is beyond this an island or peninsula, called “Ganzmir,” a name which occurs again on the Hereford map (cf. vol. i. p. 157); Miller explains it as a corruption of Canzia, Scanzia (Scandinavia). On the “Lambert” map in the Ghent codex of before 1125 [cf. K. Miller, iii., 1895, p. 45], “Scanzia,” also with the name “Norwegia,” is represented as a peninsula with narrow gulfs running up into the continent on each side. “Island” (or “Ysland”) appears on Heinrich’s and the Hereford maps as an island near Norway. On the Ebstorf map “Scandinavia insula” and “Norwegia” are also shown as islands. Many fabulous countries, such as “Iperboria” (the land of the Hyperboreans), “Arumphei” (on the Psalter map, i.e., the land of the Aremphæans, cf. vol. i. p. 88), etc., appear as peninsulas or islands in the northern regions on several of these maps; on the other hand, neither Greenland nor Wineland occurs on any of them.
