Abstract
This essay explores the representation of the British Isles on maps and related geographical texts over the course of the Middle Ages. Emphasizing the classical basis for representation of the islands, it examines articulations of insular identity in the debate over the date of Easter as presented in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, in Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hiberniae, and in later medieval maps of various genres, including mappaemundi, regional maps, and portolan charts. It concludes with brief reflections on the contemporary crisis of insular identity manifest in the 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union.
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Notes
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 6018, fols. 63v–64r. The ‘mare mortun’ (i.e. mare mortuum) refers to the widely dispersed classical and medieval notion of a frozen sea in the far northwest. On the map’s association with Easter tables, see Chekin (1999).
See, for example, Michelet (2006).
The manuscripts are: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 400, f. vii verso; British Library, MS Arundel 14, f. 27v; British Library, MS Additional 33991, f. 26r; and Paris, BNF lat. 4846, f. 63r.
BL Cotton MS Claudius D VI, f. 12v; BL Cotton Julius D.VII, fols. 50v and 53r; BL Royal MS 14.C.VII, f. 5v; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 16, f. iv verso.
See, for example, the Sawley world map (c. 1200): Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 66, 2.
Higden here seems to draw on Bartholomeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum.
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Hiatt, A. From Pliny to Brexit: Spatial representation of the British Isles. Postmedieval 7, 511–525 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-016-0023-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-016-0023-1