Studying with Maps: Jerusalem and the Holy Land in Two Thirteenth-Century Manuscripts

This chapter focuses on two closely related diagrammatic maps of Jerusalem and the Holy Land in two thirteenth-century manuscripts now in Brussels (Bibliothèque Royale, MS IV 462) and London (British Library, MS Harley 658). On the basis of a comparison between the maps and their transmission contexts it is argued that the maps served as didactic tools, aiding the study of biblical history. The layout of the maps is analysed in relation to wider developments in Western medieval manuscript production and learning during the second half of the twelfth and first half of the thirteenth centuries, particularly in relation to the emphasis on a more systematic and rigorous structuring of knowledge. The manuscripts are seen as indicative of how topographical information concerning the Holy Land was put to use in biblical study, and of how scholasticism could have influenced the ways in which Jerusalem was represented and perceived.

The Exegetical Jerusalem: Maps and Plans for Ezekiel Chapters 40–48

Drawing for explanation flourished in the medieval West in biblical exegesis. Some Christian and Jewish scholars, holding that the literal meaning of the holy scriptures had to be established before the allegorical and typological meanings could be reached, made good use of visual exegesis. Of the few Christian scholars who attempted a literal interpretation of the notoriously difficult Old Testament book of the prophet Ezekiel, one was Richard of St Victor (In visionem Ezechielis, before 1173) and another was Nicholas of Lyra (Postilla literalis super totam Bibliam,1323–32), who had read Richard's work and also, like him, seen the Jewish scholar Rashi's illustrations for Ezekiel. Both Richard and Nicholas supported their arguments with the plans of Ezekiel's visionary temple and the map that places the temple in its regional context discussed in this essay. Also discussed is the subsequent adaptation of these medieval diagrammatic maps for a quite different readership.

An Illuminated English Guide to Pilgrimage in the Holy Land: Oxford, Queen’s College, MS 357

Few medieval pilgrims' guides were written in English; even fewer were illuminated. This chapter examines Oxford, Queen's College, MS 357, a manuscript made in England in the late fifteenth century, which possesses both qualities. The manuscript contains a variety of texts written in Latin and English including pilgrims' guides, prayers to be said at holy sites in Palestine, travellers' tales, and descriptions of miracles that have taken place at shrines. It is also exuberantly illuminated. The miniatures begin with an Annunciation and end with Christ in Judgment. These two images form the parentheses around the others in the manuscript, which depict sites in the Holy Land. The miniatures and decoration unite the disparate texts, turning them into a scale model of salvation history and providing a prompt to virtual pilgrimage.

Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places: the Holy Landscapes

This chapter attempts to differentiate between types of monumental representations of Jerusalem, to locate them historically and to explore the reasons for their extraordinary density by deciphering the essentials of their function as mnemonic devices in the framework of medieval devotionalism. Conditioned by historical events such as the Crusades, Franciscan canonization of the Stations of the Cross and the Counter-Reformation, representation of Jerusalem gradually expanded from copies of Christ's tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to commemorate the Stations of the Cross and other holy places in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. The holy landscapes are multimedia representations: they combine topography and architecture (neutral or reflecting the original) with life-size figural groups and wall painting to identify the holy places. Groups of such representations could form separate sites at a certain distance from settlements, or encompass a city with a network of reproduced loca sancta.

Adomnán’s Plans in the Context of his Imagining ‘the Most Famous City’

Adomnán of Iona's work on the holy places of Jerusalem and surrounding regions (De locis sanctis) has been used as a guide to seventh-century Palestine. In particular, its plans of monuments such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre have been used by archaeologists for information about buildings, while their form interests historians of cartography. However, these plans must be read with the book's several purposes in mind. They attempt to harmonize biblical data (and Adomnán's other literary sources) visually. In addition, they project elements of Iona's monastic liturgy into an alien liturgical space. The plans are not simply illustrations to clarify the text but constitute a distinct, parallel text of their own, with elements shown that Adomnán would not have asserted in writing. They indicate that, for Adomnán, there were different orders of verification for written texts and visual materials such as plans.

Introduction

After providing an overview of the content and argument of each of the nine chapters, the introduction outlines three themes that run through the book as a whole: the impact of developments in the West on the production of representations of Jerusalem; the way in which such representations relate to their specific contexts, whether manuscripts, buildings or wider landscapes; and the role played by the imagination in the process of creating and responding to these images. A brief account is then given of a display of manuscripts and early printed books at the Bodleian Library, Oxford that accompanied the conference at which the papers were delivered. Finally there is a fuller description of comparatively little-known depictions in two of the manuscripts exhibited: a plan of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and its surroundings in MS Laud Misc. 241; and a schematic map of Jerusalem in MS Lyell 71.

‘Ista est Jerusalem’. Intertextuality and Visual Exegesis in Peter of Poitiers’ Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi and Werner Rolevinck’s Fasciculus temporum

This chapter analyses the circular plan of Jerusalem in Peter of Poitiers' Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi, a synopsis of history widely disseminated and frequently adapted. The plan of Jerusalem reveals how Peter of Poitiers modified and fused different sources, including Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica, to create a visually persuasive image of perfect formal and social order, with six gates foreshadowing the twelve gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem. The visual alignment of the plan of Jerusalem and other diagrams in the Compendium prompts the beholder to reflect on analogies of structures and events, and thus on the order and meaning of history. This argument extends to the late fifteenth-century diagram of the heavenly Jerusalem in Werner Rolewinck's Fasciculus temporum, which functions at the same time as a visualization of the Creed and as an allegorical image of the church, predetermined and eternal.

The Imaginary Jerusalem of Nicholas of Lyra

Manuscripts and early printed copies of Nicholas of Lyra's influential biblical commentary, the Postilla litteralis et moralis in totam bibliam, were made to include a series of around forty illustrations, mostly in the biblical books of Exodus and Ezekiel, to accompany the sections on the Tabernacle of Moses, Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, and Ezekiel's re-visioning of the Temple. Although they are not present in all copies of the work, it is known that they were planned by Nicholas himself, since he refers to them in the text. This chapter considers possible sources for Nicholas's drawings and diagrams, including Richard of St Victor, and the Jewish commentators, Rashi (whom Nicholas uses as a direct comparison with Christian scholars) and Maimonides. It argues that, far from being mere decoration, the illustrations are meant as an integral part of Nicholas's literal exegesis of the scriptural text.

The ‘Pictures’ of Jerusalem in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 156

Imagining structures from the ekphrastic descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple and Temple Mount in I Kings and Ezekiel is an ancient meditation discipline, which was adopted from Jewish practices into early Christian monasticism. Though it could take various forms, ‘imagining/remembering Jerusalem’ was often practised as a devotional exercise throughout the European Middle Ages. Drawings of such an imagined character are significant to late medieval exegesis of these and related scriptural materials, particularly those associated with the commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra and the collection of visual meditations known as the Speculum theologie. This chapter queries a late medieval illuminated manuscript (Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 156) that, in the fifteenth century, formed part of the library of St John's Hospital in Exeter, to suggest that its materials were acquired and used for scriptural study and sermon composition by scholars of the hospital and its associated school.

Jerusalem under Siege: Marino Sanudo’s Map of the Water Supply, 1320

The map of Jerusalem, which appeared in 1320 in Marino Sanudo's book, Liber secretorum fidelium crucis, has no obvious precursor, though it draws on textual sources from the works of Josephus to the thirteenth-century description of the Holy Land by Burchard of Mt. Sion. Surrounded by an irregular polygon of walls, the city is mapped in a style similar to the other maps in the book, drawn by the sea-chart maker Pietro Vesconte. These maps emphasize the contemporary, physical reality of an area, the Holy Land, often seen through a romantic veil. Sanudo's book was a plea for the revival of the crusading movement and a programme of practical suggestions for its success. Of special interest on the map is the depiction of the city's water resources, important to future Crusaders.