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Martin Behaim's famous globe, conceived and realized in Nuremberg in 1492, is not the only medieval witness of this particular form of representation of the Earth. When we examine the first testimonies, we realize that the function and content of these globes change significantly: they stop illustrating the effects of celestial phenomena and are limited to the representation of the Earth's surface. Hence the questions: how and why did we move from the two-dimensional representation of the mappae mundi to the three-dimensional in the fifteenth century? And how and why did the change of content in the three-dimensional representations take place? The adaptation of the Ptolemaic image to the particular shape of a globe, and its enrichment with data from voyages in Asia and maritime explorations in Africa have arisen before Behaim in Germanic circles that are still little known.

During the last thirty years, thanks to the discovery of unpublished texts and maps, work on mappaemundi has multiplied and research has been revitalized in new directions. Attention previously foc...

The Mediterranean portulans knew a greater success than the small number of surviving manuscripts may have led people to think. These technical aids quickly spread to milieux well beyond those interested in their daily navigational use and they became tools for the preparation of the voyage and companion volumes for travellers with different interests: royal officers preparing crusading expeditions, merchants, pilgrims. The chapter describes to treat medieval portulans in a different fashion, first by examining the different problems raised by this type of document of great importance excluding the Atlantic descriptions, and then by showing how contemporary geographers or authors of travel literature used the portulans to gain knowledge of the regions they described, especially the Greco-Byzantine world. There is only one general work on the portulans, written by the historian of geography, Konrad Kretschmer. Published almost a century ago, the work betrays its time by its desire to explain the origins of the genre.

A schematic map of Cyprus, unique in the Byzantine world, is found in two Greek manuscripts of the mid-fourteenth century (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, MS A 95 sup.) and its copy (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS gr. XI.21 (coll. 453)). The article examines the context of its creation, possibly by the physician who collected the medical texts copied in the manuscripts. The map testifies to the perception of a man who is able to sketch the shape of the littoral freehand. He exaggerates the bays and headlands, and notes almost exclusively localities on the coast; inland, only Nicosia, the capital of the island, is shown. In particular, two religious monuments, considered the oldest and most visited on the island (the Basilica of St Epiphanius in Salamis and the Monastery of the Holy Cross–Stavrovouni) are marked, indicating that the author also wanted to celebrate the Christian antiquity of Cyprus and its relics.

EnglishMuch information has been preserved from Late Antiquity about the study of geography, but modern scholars have paid small attention to it. The present article offers a critical synthesis of the evidence, in three parts. The first part is an analysis of the geographical information learned at different stages of the curriculum, from the writing exercises given by the d?d?s?a??? or by the paedagogus, to the explanation of literary texts in the middle school of the grammaticus, and to the superior level, of secular or religious schools, in which one could consult Ptolemy�s �Geography�. Our evidence goes from lists of place names in Egyptian papyri, to glosses in the manuscripts of Sallust, Vergil, Lucan, to exhaustive commentaries � like those by Servius � and to more elaborated works?� like those of Vibius Sequester, Julius Honorius, Solinus, Stephanus of Byzantium, Priscian the Grammarian. The second part of the article deals with the relationship between texts and graphic representations, both used with pedagogical aims. During Late Antiquity, maps were more frequent than in previous times. Today, we know about different types of cartographic representations from literary references � such as the penax Dionysii mentioned by Cassiodorus or the monumental maps of Autun and Constantinople in the time of Theodosius?II. We have also topographical sketches, in the Commenta Bernensia or in the manuscripts of Lucan and Oppian. Also, by studying medieval mappaemundi � such as the one from Albi, from the Cotton manuscript collection of the British Library, or like the archetype of the so-called Saint-Jerome�s maps � one understands that their models go back to the IVth�VIth centuries. Last but not least, the Tabula Peutingeriana and the texts of the Divisio orbis terrarum, the Dimensuratio provinciarum, the Expositio totius mundi et gentium, the Notitia dignitatum, the Laterculi, the Nomina provinciarum omnium, the ?p?t?p?s?? ?e???af?a? ?? ?p?t?µ? as well as the geography taught to the Christians by Hippolytus in his Chronicon and by his followers as late as the Chronicon Paschale, are all echoes of school geography in the culture of the high-class. These elites were educated to participate in the administration and to defend the ideological unity of the empire and of the world born after its fall. In conclusion, this static but complex picture underlines the unifying role played by the geographical teaching in the late Roman culture, shared by people from the different parts of the orbis terrarum. LatinCum multa vestigia de terrarum situ in scholiis perdiscendo posterior imperii Romani aetas nobis tradidisset, moderni de hoc argumento parum scripserunt. Commentariolum hoc criticam compositionem in tres partes divisam proponit. Primo, geographicae informationi per omnes institutionis gradus consulitur: in scripturae apud d?d?s?a??v vel paedagogum exercitatione; in auctorum apud grammaticum praelectione; in eloquentiae apud rhetorem vel in ecclesiasticis scholiis institutione. Hic recognoscuntur locorum nomina scripta et in Aegyptiis chartis, et in scholiis ad Sallustium Vergilium Lucanumque, et in commentis perfectis quae Servius inter alios composuit, et in operibus absolutis quae Vibius Sequester Iulius Honorius Solinus Stephanus Byzantius Priscianusque grammaticus confecerunt. Secundo, cum in posteriore aetate tabulae pictae magis in promptu fuerunt, de textibus pinacibusque (ut cum Graecis loquamur) in litterarum studio inter se colligatis disceptatur. Varia tabularum pictarum genera textuum commemorationis beneficio denotata habemus, ut Dionysii penacem secundum Senatoris Institutiones et, apud alios auctores, orbes illos in civitatis Augustodunensis porticis tempore Constantii, Constantinopoli tempore Theodosii depictos. Insuper codices in medio aevo exarati geographica, chorographica aut topographica schemata vetustioris aetatis nobis tradiderunt, exempli gratia in Lucani Oppianive operibus necnon et Commentis quae dicuntur Bernenses. Satis superque probatum est quod mundi mapparum in medio aevo descriptarum (inter quas praecipue illae orbis descriptiones in Albigensi Londoniensique bibliothecis servatae duaeque sancto Hieronymo falso tributae memoria digniores sunt) exemplaria ab quarto ad sextum seculum composita repetuntur. Denique geographica magistratuum eruditio in scholiis comperta multis monumentis illustratur: Tabula quae Peutingeriana dicitur, Divisio orbis terrarum, Dimensuratio provinciarum, Expositio totius mundi et gentium, Notitia dignitatum, varii laterculi, ?p?t?p?s?? ?e???af?a? ?? ?p?t?µ? , vel apud christianos Hippolyti Romani Chronicon et ex hac fonte rescriptos textus. In fine profertur quod consimilis geographiae institutio in scholiis ad id valuit, ut Romani animi cultus in omnibus provinciis idem esset, cum populi imperio subiecti variam originem traxissent et tanto extenso orbe.

Programme de l’annee 2011-2012 : Representations de l’espace et souverainete au Moyen Âge (suite).85-94

Abstract The influence of Arab geography upon the Latin tradition in the Middle Ages is difficult to assess due to several factors including the former’s definition, content, and origin, as well as the tangled historiography on the question of its influence. The purpose of this paper is not to provide a comprehensive study of this complex issue but rather to define the terms of the problem and to examine some concrete cases of contact between both geographical cultures during the twelfth century. The author first considers the impact of the introduction of Greek conceptions, transmitted through the Arabic Ṣūrat al-arḍ (The Picture of the Earth), upon medieval Latin cosmography. Special attention is devoted here to the influence of Greco-Arabic knowledge on contemporary Western Latin ideas about the habitability of the remotest parts of the earth. The author then deals with the relationship between both cultures in the field of descriptive geography and cartography. Unexpectedly, these different traditions can be shown to be largely isolated from one another, and the alleged Arab origin of some documents is, in most cases, dubious. The cause of the obvious lack of interest among Western Christians in Arab descriptive geography could lie in the general conditions of the Latin schools of the time, and perhaps also in the fact that Arabic writings and maps emphasize the domination of Islam over lands formerly under Christian rule.

Gautier Dalché Patrick. Les côtes de Lycie et de Carie dans les portulans médiévaux. In: Anatolia Antiqua, Tome 19, 2011. pp. 433-439.

The textual description of a mappa mundi, preserved in a twelfth-century manuscript from northern Italy (Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale IV.D.21), presents striking similarities with the two regional maps (Asia Minor and Palestine), erroneously assigned to Saint Jerome (British Library Addit. 10049, 12th c.). Two catalogues of the Bobbio library mention a liber I cosmographie (9th c.) and a “world map in Irish tradition and Lombard script [= pre-Caroline minuscule]” (1461). This article argues that the model is a mappa mundi made in Iona, Saint Columba’s foundation (565), perhaps during abbot Adomnan’s lifetime (d. 704), as the description contains a unique list of the Hebrides. Moreover, like the maps, the text refers to the Theban legion and the Desert Fathers’ Thebaid. These last subjects interested Eucherius of Lyon (5th c.). On that grounds the author presents the hypothesis that the ultimate model was elaborated by Eucherius or his circle or, at least, in an environment influenced by his exegesis methods.

Au debut du De origine actibusque Getarum, Jordanes declare que cette histoire des migrations des Goths jusqu'en 551 est un resume d'une Historia Gothorum de Cassiodore perdue, ce qui a donne lieu a diverses hypotheses sur la part respective du Senateur et de Jordanes dans le texte dont nous disposons. Grâce a un indice jusqu'a present inapercu, fonde sur l'utilisation de la Geographie de Ptolemee dans la description de l'ile de Scandza, origine des envahisseurs, on parvient aux conclusions suivantes : l'excursus geographique du debut des Getica remonte a Cassiodore et n'est pas pas un ajout de Jordanes ; Cassiodore avait a sa disposition l' œuvre de Ptolemee dans sa langue originale a Rome ou a Ravenne des les annees 520-530 ; le « Ptolemei codex » dont il recommanda par la suite l'examen aux moines de Vivarium etait aussi en grec.

Programme de l’année 2008-2009 : I. Études de textes et de documents figurés. — II. Travaux récents sur les représentations médiévales.

Programme de l’année 2007-2008 : I. La réception antique de la Géographie de Ptolémée. — II. Les antipodes au Moyen Âge (II). — III. Travaux récents sur les représentations médiévales de l’espace.

Gautier Dalché Patrick. Mappae mundi antérieures au XIIIe siècle dans les manuscrits latins de la Bibliothèque nationale de France. In: Scriptorium, Tome 52 n°1, 1998. pp. 102-162.

Die Vorstellung vom Norden und der Eurozentrismus. Eine Auswertung der patristischen und mittelalterlichen Literatur. By Piotr Kochanek. [Veroffentlichungen des Instituts fur europaische Geschichte Mainz: Abteilung fur abendlandische Religionsgeschichte, Band 205.] (Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern. 2004. Pp. xi, 631.) This book offers a contribution to the current re-evaluation of the European self-perception by analyzing the representation of the northern regions of Europe from the biblical ages to the thirteenth century. The author focuses on the progressive integration of those regions into what Europe and Christianity were considered to be. He explores the ambivalence of this process, in which the North was either idealized or viewed as a threat to civilization, stating repeatedly that the construction of such representations held a reciprocal relationship with the rise of Eurocentrism. It would hardly be possible to give an abstract of the three chapters in which the author offers an in-depth and innovative study of the images developed during Biblical and Greco-Roman Antiquity, the Patristic period, and the Middle Ages. The author succeeds in establishing significant distinctions such as the East-West axis that structures the oikoumene symmetrically in the Bible and, sticking to a significantly different agenda, in the works of ancient pagan authors. As a matter of fact, the Patristic period may be held responsible for the fusion of biblical images and the ethno-geographic knowledge of classical Antiquity as well as for the creation of a Christian schema of the World (through the acrostic of Adam's name in Greek being a sign of the Christian oikoumene; the Cross being a structuring element of the imago mundi; or Europeans being descendants of Japhet according to the reformulations of the table of peoples in Genesis). Hence the political geography of Antiquity seems to fade away leaving space for a theology of geography in which the New Alliance is extended to all the people of the oikoumene in connection with the typology of Jesus Christ as the new Adam-two ideas that were at the basis of missionary activity. After the disaster of Adrianopolis (378), this conception faced the crude facts of the barbarian invasions (mostly those of the Goths and the Huns), which appeared to many as the concretization of the prophetic threat of plagues coming from the North. As for the Middle Ages, one can eventually identify, as the author does, a progressive integration of those regions into a Christian Europe that was growing northwards and hence restoring the lost unity of the pars Europae of the Japhetites. …

Die zunehmende Zahl an mittelalterlichen Plänen und lokalen Karten ist ein Phänomen, dessen Ausmaß erst seit Kurzem erfasst wird. Was die Siedlungsgeschichte betrifft, so informieren uns diese Dokumente über das Erscheinungsbild der Landschaft. Im Hinblick auf die Geistesgeschichte gewähren sie Aufschluss über die Wahrnehmung der Landschaft durch die Zeitgenossen und, ganz allgemein, die Anwendung figürlicher Verfahren als Mittel, verschiedene Bereiche der Praxis abzubilden. Nach einer kurzen Einführung zur Chronologie und Verteilung, den Techniken und Funktionen (Verherrlichung, Verwaltung, Rechtsstreitigkeiten) werden ungefähr 130 Pläne und Karten aus der Zeit zwischen dem 12. und dem ersten Drittel des 16. Jahrhunderts behandelt. Zum 13. Jahrhundert lässt sich nichts sagen, aber seit dem Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts wächst ihre Zahl ständig. Sie verteilen sich über einen Raum, der die Form einer Sichel annimmt und sich von der Garonne aus über den Westen des Zentralmassifs, die Rhône und die Alpen erstreckt, um sich schließlich nach Westen bis an den Ärmelkanal auszudehnen., Historians have only recently begun to realize how many plans and local maps were produced during the later Middle Ages. For settlement history, such documents provide information about the appearance of landscapes. For intellectual history, they witness how space was viewed in the past, and how figurative processes were used to meet a variety of practical needs. This article offers a brief introduction to the chronology and distribution of these documents, to their technical aspects and to their functional uses for such purposes as celebration, administration and litigation. It includes descriptions of some 130 items from the twelfth century to the first third of the sixteenth century. None are known from the thirteenth century, but the number of such plans increases steadily after 1300. The area covered forms a large crescent extending from the Garonne to the Channel, including the western part of the Massif Central and the regions of the Rhône, the Saône, and the Alps., La multiplication des plans et des cartes locales au Moyen Age est un phénomène dont l’ampleur n’a commencé que récemment à être mesurée. En histoire du peuplement, ces documents renseignent sur l’aspect des paysages. En histoire intellectuelle, ils témoignent de leur perception par les contemporains et, plus généralement, de l’utilisation de procédés figuratifs comme moyen d’éclairer divers domaines de la pratique. Après une brève introduction traitant de leur chronologie et de leur répartition, des techniques mises en oeuvre et de leurs fonctions (célébration, administration, règlement de litiges), sont décrits environ cent trente plans et cartes, entre le XIIe siècle et le premier tiers du XVIe siècle. On n’en connaît pas du XIIIe siècle, mais leur nombre ne cesse de s’accroître à partir du début du XIVe. Ils se répartissent dans un espace en forme de croissant qui, depuis la Garonne, couvre la partie occidentale du Massif Central, le Rhône, la Saône et les Alpes, puis s’étend vers l’ouest jusqu’aux côtes de la Manche., Gautier-Dalché Patrick. Essai d’un inventaire des plans et cartes locales de la France médiévale (jusque vers 1530). In: Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes. 2012, tome 170, livraison 2. pp. 421-471.

Ethiopia according to Grifon of Flanders, Martino de Segono and Pietro Ranzano ; In the last quarter of the 15th century, hopes of an alliance with Ethiopia to outflank and surround the Turks, made this country the centre of Western powers’ preoccupations. Based on diverse levels of knowledge about Ethiopia, some unpublished or little known humanistic geographical texts inform about scholarly discussions on the geography of this country and about the tensions between clerics and secular thinkers on the subject of the 1481 Ethiopian embassy : the Supplementum Asiaticum of the Franciscan Grifon of Flanders († 1475), well versed in Arabs geographers and cartographers ; the letters to Sixtus IV (De Aethiopum situ, lingua, religione, De expeditione legationis ad Aethiopiam et de aliis viis) of the Serb Marino de Segono, bishop of Dulcigno († after 1481) ; the Annales omnium temporum of the Dominican Pietro Ranzano († 1492)., Dans le dernier quart du XVe siècle, à cause des espoirs d’alliance en vue de prendre les Turcs à revers, l’Éthiopie est au coeur des préoccupations des souverainetés d’Occident. À partir d’une connaissance variable des réalités éthiopiennes, quelques textes inédits ou peu connus relevant de la géographie humaniste renseignent sur les discussions entre savants sur la géographie du pays et sur les tensions entre religieux et séculiers à propos de l’ambassade éthiopienne de 1481 : le Supplementum Asiaticum du franciscain Grifon de Flandres († 1475), connaisseur des géographes et cartographes arabes ; les lettres adressées à Sixte IV (De Aethiopum situ, lingua, religione, De expeditione legationis ad Aethiopiam et de aliis viis) par le Serbe Martino de Segono, évêque de Dulcigno († après 1481) ; les Annales omnium temporum du dominicain Pietro Ranzano († 1492)., Gautier Dalché Patrick. L’Éthiopie selon Grifon de Flandres, Martino de Segono et Pietro Ranzano. In: Annales d'Ethiopie. Volume 27, année 2012. pp. 91-106.

Gautier Dalché Patrick. Ethiopia according to Grifon of Flanders, Martino de Segono and Pietro Ranzano. In: Annales d'Ethiopie. Volume 27, année 2012. pp. 319-320.

L'A. etudie l'evolution de la representation de l'espace francais a travers l'imaginaire geographique et la merveille medievale des oeuvres de Jean de Mandeville (XIV e siecle) et d'A. Thevet (XVI e siecle), precurseurs d'une nouvelle geographie et de l'ethnologie. L'essor des sciences et de la cosmographie font de N. de Nicolay, contemporain de Thevet, l'ancetre de la premiere carte generale de France, realisee par Cassini au XVIII e siecle, elle-meme ancetre de la carte dite d'Etat-Major

La mappemonde du monastere feminin d’Ebstorf en Saxe, diversement datee dans le courant du xiiie ou du xive siecle, n’est plus connue que par des fac-similes anterieurs a sa destruction lors de la seconde guerre mondiale. Par ses dimensions (une trentaine de feuilles de parchemin cousues ensemble mesurant au total 3,58 x 3,56 m et couvrant 12,74 m²), c’etait la plus grande et la plus riche des mappae mundi monumentales du Moyen Âge. Outre des textes ecrits dans les parties exterieures, elle c...

ISBN : 978-2-503-54330-7; Fiche du Répertoire L'oc et l'oïl (IIa. Oc vers l'oïl), dans le Corpus Transmédie.

L’article examine d’abord la question des éventuels antécédents antiques et médiévaux des globes attestés par des sources textuelles au xve siècle. Ces premiers globes proviennent de la France du Nord-Est (1432), de Bourgogne (1440-1444) et d’Allemagne (1447-1450) ; ils ne devaient distinguer la surface de la terre que de façon sommaire ou schématique, mais les possibilités « pratiques » de mesure exacte des distances offertes par la tridimensionnalité de la représentation ne tardèrent pas à être perçues. Les premiers globes italiens apparaissent dans l’iconographie du dernier tiers du xve siècle : le disque plat de la terre habituel dans ces types iconographiques antérieurs est parfois remplacé par une image de l’œcumène ptoléméenne donnant ainsi l’illusion d’une sphère en trois dimensions. Le succès de cette image issue de globes réels fabriqués à Florence par Nicolaus Germanus provient de l’intense travail de réflexion théorique sur les différents modes de représentation cartographique qui s’étaient développés en Allemagne à la suite de la réception de la Géographie de Ptolémée. Le fait de figurer la terre et les cieux par des objets distincts traduisait un rapport différent où la terre n’était plus dans une situation subordonnée mais constituait un objet en soi, sur lequel pouvait s’exercer une réflexion autonome. Ces globes permettaient en outre une vision de la terre tout entière et non plus limitée à l’œcumène. After an analysis of the potential ancient and medieval antecedents attested by textual sources, the present article studies the earliest globes, from NE France (1432), Burgundy (1440-1444) and Germany (1447-1450). They are supposed to present just a basic, schematic distinction of the surface of the earth, but the “practical” possibilities offered by this three-dimensional representation for a precise measure of distances had been promptly remarked. The first Italian globes appeared in the iconography of the last third of the fifteenth century (manuscript decoration and painting): the flat disc of the earth, common in previous iconographic representations, was sometimes replaced by an image of the Ptolemean oekoumene, thus giving the illusion of a three-dimensional sphere. The success of this image, inspired by real globes made at Florence by Nicolaus Germanus, can be explained by the intense effort of theoretical reflection upon the different methods of cartographic representations developed in Germany, as a consequence of the reception of Ptolemy’s Geography. Shaping the earth and the sky as different objects reflected a peculiar relationship between the two, as the earth was not a subordinate, but an independent object, upon which an autonomous thinking could be developed. Moreover, these globes allowed the vision of the entire earth, not only of the oekoumene.

"Attitudes Towards the Mongols in Medieval literature: The XXII Kings of Gog and Magog from the Court of Frederick II to Jean de Mandeville." This article gives an example of how myth and historical fact interpenetrated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It shows how texts on the wonders of nature and an episode from the Alexander Romance were brought together and progressively modified during the period in which Europeans first became aware of the Mongols. These modifications reflect the change of attitude towards the Mongols, from the initial hope that they-would help western Christians and destroy Islam from the rear, through a period in which they were viewed with deep mistrust and fear, to a time when they could safely be relegated to the pages of an entertaining and not-too- factual travel book. The first half of the article describes the nature and sources of a recently discovered text-the Mirabilia mundi-which identifies the races of Gog and Magog with the Mongols and forms the starting p...

Gautier-Dalché Patrick. Un problème d'histoire culturelle : perception et représentation de l'espace au Moyen Age. In: Médiévales, n°18, 1990. Espaces du Moyen-âge, sous la direction de Patrick Gautier Dalché . pp. 5-15.

Au Moyen Âge, les rapports entre savoirs theorique et pratique dans la mesure des champs sont difficiles a apprehender. L’article examine d’une part l’evolution de la geometrie depuis les premiers traites de l’epoque carolingienne jusqu’a l’apparition de la geometria practica, puis l’evolution de ce dernier genre, d’autre part la pratique effective des mesureurs telle qu’on la reconstitue a partir d’une documentation evasive. On observe que les techniques de mesure ne relevent jamais de la geometrie savante, euclidienne ou pratique, malgre les tentatives de quelques savants a partir du xiiie siecle.