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Bede's Mapping of England

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Bede's Mapping of England Bede'sMapping of England DIANESPEED odernhistorians of mappinghave assumeda wide understandingof what 'map' rnight mean. With regardto mcdievaltexts, the idea is undcrstoodto embracea rangeof genresthat includes,for example,rvorld maps,zonal diagrams, land survcys,itineraries, street plans, and architecturaldrawings.r^ At the sametimc, it may refcrto eithervisual or verbaltexts.' Bcde'snamc has been invoked in scholarlydiscussion of medievalmaps in connectionwith his De locis sanctis(On the Hollt Places) and his De temporum ratione (On the Calculalion of Time), but thus far his nxagnunlopus has rcrnainedoutside such discussion. This paper,however, will argue that mapping is central to the meaning of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorunt (Ecclesias/ical History of the English People) and substantiallyinforrns the narrative strucfurewhich advancesthat meaning.l The rcspcctiveassociations of De locis sanctisand De lentporunt ratione with rnappingprovidc a starting-pointfor this ' See CatherineDelano-Srnith and Roger J.P. Dain, EngtishMaps. A History,British Library Studies in Map History2 (London:British Library 1999)l-5; P.D.A.Harvey, Medieval Maps (London: British Library l99l) 7-15. Delano-Smithand Dain (248 n. l) pointout tharthe liberarisation 'map' of thedefinition of wasfonnally initiated by J.B.Harley and David woodward in TheHistory of cartography,I . cartographvin prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediten.anean(Chicago and London:Universiry of ChicagoPress 1987) xvi. ' SeeHarvey, Medieval Maps,7-9. 'All referencesare to Bede'sEcclesiastical History of the Engtishpeople, ed. Bertram colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, oxford Medieval Texts (oxford: clarendon1969) from which botli Latin andEnglish quotations aretaken. l0 DIANE SPEED argument,since they share relevantdiscourses with the Historia. De locis sanctis had its origins in a pilgrirnage to Jerusalemmade in the late seventhcentury by Arculf, a bishopof Gaul. On his way homehe was blown off course and was receivedfor a time by Adamnan,Abbot of Iona, to whom he describedhis travels. Soon afterrvards,between 686 and 688, basedon the noteshe had taken.Adamnan wrotea guide-bookto the Holy Places,De locissanctis; to illustratethe verbal tcxt he added ground-plansof four particularsites in the Holy Land, copied from sketches Arculf had made for him: the churchat Jacob'swell, the churchat the Placcof the Ascension,the basilicaon Mount Sion,and the building complex on Mount Golgotha. In 702- 03 Bede abridgedAdamnan's text to producehis own De Iocissanclrs, and copiedthe four drawingsinto it. The plans appearin manuscriptsof both works from the ninth century, andare treated as maps in thescholarly literature.a Latcron, in theHisloria, completed in J3l,' Bedeadds to his recordof this encounterbetween Arculf and Adarnnan (V.15)short but preciselydetailed accounts of thesites of the Lord's birth, passion,resurrection, and ascension,and the tombs of the patriarchs(V.16-17). These accountshe ' For tlre primary texts see Adantnan's De Loc'is Sanclis, ed. Denis Mechan, ScriptoresLatini Hiberniae 3 (Dublin: Dublin Institute fbr Advanccd Studies 1958) and lJede,De Locis Sctnclrs,J.-P. Migne ed., PatrologiaCursus Completus,Series Latina (Paris, 1844-91) 94 cols 1119-90. Bede's abridgementalso makes use of material from sources other than Adamnan: Colgrave and Mynors, EcclesiasticalHistory, 506- 'Bede's 07 n. l. Seealso J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, Europe,'Jarrow Lecture 1962,in Bede and His World, pref. Michael Lapidge, 2 vols (Aldershot: '16-78: Variorum 1994) l: The Jarrow Lectures I958-1978, David 'Books Parsons, and Buildings:Architectural Description Before and After Bede,' Jarrow Lecture 1987, in Bede ond His llorld 2: The Jarrow Lecttrres1979-1993,733-39: Delano-Smithand Dain, English Maps,9- 11 and 249 n. ll; Harvey,Medieval Maps, 12-13. Date of Adamnan's text: Delano-Smithand Dain, 9; date of Bede'stext: Delano-Smithand Dain.l0. 5 Date:Bede's Ecclesiastical Historv.xvli. Bede'sMapping of England ll introducesas extractsfrom Adamnan'stext, althoughtheir immediatesource is in fact his own earlier abridgement.o Adamnan's text he recommendsas a useful resourcefor thosewho can know about such distantplaces only frorn books(V. 15)- that is, he himselfregards the descriptions of the sites,presented as they might be encounteredby the traveller,as verbalmaps to be visualisedand followed in the mind's eye. In this they have a function similar to the ground-plansin the earliertexts. If Bede'sawareness of the principleof verbalmapping is thus plainly evidentin one part of the Historia, it will a priori be prornising to investigateits presencein otherparts. De temponrmralione, producedin 725, rs a developrncnt of work found in earlierforms in his De natura rerum (On the Nature of Things)and De temporibus(On Times),both from ca 703.' Bede'sDe temporumrationebecame central to a computustradition that flourished during the medicval period. Computustexts are concerned with the mcasurement of time in thecontext of thc cosmos,with specialreference to the calculationof future datesfor Easter. In thc field of cosmology, considerationsof time and spacc are interdependent,and illustrationsin the computus texts sometimestake the form of world maps with relevant indicationsadded. Bede himself supplied no suchvisual aids alongsidehis verbal argument,but they were sometimes introducedinto his work by subsequentcopyists.s The " Bede'sEcclesiastical Histon 508 n. 2. t -by All thr"e texts are edited Charles W. Jones in Beclae Venerabilis Opera, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina (Turnhout: Brepols): De natura rentm, l23A (1980) 113-231;De temporihus,l23C (1975) 580- 611; De temporum ratione l23B (1977). For dates see see Wesley M. 'Bede's Stevens, ScientificAchievernent,' Jarrow Lecture 1985,Bede and His ll/orld 2, 648. 8 For the illustratedcomputus tradition and Bede's centralitysee Evelyn Edson, Mapping Time and Space:How Medieval Mapmakers Viewedtheir World, British Library Srudiesin Map History I (London: British Library 1997)52-96. For Bede's use of existing materials and his own 'Bede's contributionsee Stevens, ScientificAchievement'. pctssim. l,) 'L DIANE SPEED potentialfor visualisationin Bede'sverbal descriptions and instructions,that is, was realisedby medievalreaders in acfualmapping, with the implicationthat the verbaltext itself waseffectively verbal mapping. The calculationof Easteremerges as a majordiscourse in the Histctria, and this is discussedbelow as it is arguably relatedto Bede'smapping of England. The immediateand obviousmanifestation of computusmapping in the Historia, however,comes at the very beginning. Book I, chapter 1, openswith an explanationof the island'sposition in the world with referenceto mainland Europe,on the one hand,and the oceansbeyond, on the other: BRITTANIA Oceani insula, cui quondam Albion nomenfuit, inter septentrionemet occidentemlocata est,Germaniae Galliae Hispaniae, maximis Europae partibus,multo interualloaduersa. (BRITAIN, oncc called Albion, is an island of the ocean and lies to the north-r.vest,being opposite Germany,Gaul, and Spain,which form the greater part of Europe, though at a considerabledistance from thcm.) This is followed by u note on the length,breadth, and circumferenceof Britain,followed in turn by an indicationof the points where Britain and Europemost nearly approach each other: to the south lies Belgic Gaul, from which the shortestjourney, of fifty miles,is betweenGaul's Boulogne (Gessoricaum),in the land of the Morini, and Britain's Richborough(Rutubi Portus). The explanationof Britain in tennsof its facing the continentthen givesway to a note of whatlies on theother side of theisland: la Bede'sMapping of England IJ A tergoautem, unde Oceano infinito patet, Orcadas insulashabet. (Behind the island,where it lies open to the boundlessocean, are the Orkney islands.) This accountassumes the reader'sability to understand directionsand distancesvery much as in a visual map, locating the relationshipof the placcs mentionedto cach other on a plan in the mind's eye. The idea that Britain is marginalto continentalEuropc, and that the oceannot only surrounds islands but lies beyond all land, irnrnediately suggestsa typical world map of the so-calledT-O kind, which setsthe threeknown land masseswithin a circre,thc O, whosebounding circumfcrence is thc ocean. The Eastis at the top, Asia occupiesthe upperhalf of the circle,Europe the lower lcft quadrant,and Afiica the lower right quadrant, the threeseparated frorn eachother by bodiesof watcr. The Meditenaneanis, as it were,the upright strokeof the T, the Don is effectively the left horizontal strokc, and the Nile servcsas the right horizontalstroke; Jerusalem often marks the approximatecentre of the world. Britain, Ireland,and othcr furthcr islandsappear near the cdgc of thc lower lcft quadrant.eEnglish exarnples include ti'e Anglo-Saxon,or Cotton,World Mup, from ca 1050,found in a manuscript with computusmaterial, and the large Hereford world Mup, paintedon parchment,from the latethirteenth cenfury.r0 'For tlre tradition of T-o mapssee, for exarnpre,Harvey, Medieval Maps, l8-37; P.D.A. Harvey, Mappa Mundi; The Here.ford Wortd Map (London: British Library 1996)20-39; Edson,Mapping Tirneand Space,4_5. '" For reproductionsof thesemaps, see Harvey, Mappa Mundi,lg and29, respectively;Harvey, Mappa Mundi,28 and facing l, respectively;Edson, Mapping Time and space,8 and PlateVlI, respectivery.Detailed sections of the Hereford world Map, togetherwith text and translationof all the inscriptions,are
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