Note 292 — Chapter II · THE CONTRIBUTION OF WESTERN CHRISTENDOM BEFORE 1100 A. D.
Reading edition
Simar, Afrique centrale, 1912, pp. 159–169, classifies these early maps as follows:
A. Maps derived from Roman representations of the orbis terrarum, or circle of known lands, and adapted to serve the immediate purpose of the cosmographer or historian whose works they were drawn to illustrate. To this group belong the Sallust maps, the T-O maps, and many maps in which the influence of Orosius appears to be predominant. Simar believes that he can detect evidences of Byzantine influence upon the latter, among which he includes the Albi and Cotton maps (see the preceding note), and, from the time of the Crusades, the maps of Guido 390(see above, p. 124), Henry of Mayence (see above, p. 124), and the “Jerome” maps (see above, pp. 125–126). To this group also belong the Psalter map, the Hereford and Ebstorf wall charts, and the maps in the Chronicle of Ralph Hygden (see above, p. 125)—all dating from the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
B. Maps which aim to show the earth in its cosmographical relations, “the lamentable débris of Greek cosmography.” To this group belong the Macrobian maps of the zones.
AB. Maps in which the purpose is a combination of the two elements shown in the maps of classes A and B above. These show the orbis terrarum but add a fourth, uninhabitable part of the world beyond the equator. To this class belong the Beatus maps (see above, pp. 122–124), the mappaemundi in Lambert’s Liber floridus (see above, p. 124), (and, we may add, the Ripoll map described by Vidier, op. cit.).