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The Hereford Mappa Mundi c.1300 |
“With Jerusalem at its centre, and Christ standing in judgement at its head... the message of the map is made abundantly clear; all our worldy affairs are of little importance compared to the prospect of our soul’s immortality.”
- Joseph Whitlock Blundell, ‘The Folio Society’.
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Implementation of the 'T & O' map |
The Hereford Mappa Mundi is a mappa mundi, of a form deriving from the T and O pattern, dating to ca. 1300. Drawn on a single sheet of vellum, it measures 158 cm by 133 cm, making it the largest medieval map known to still exist.
The significance of the map lies in its cartographic propositions as an 'ideological map': Jerusalem is the the spiritual and, therefore the geographical centre of the world.
What is perhaps more interesting however, is the irregular 'T&O' orientation that the map takes. The Orient is depicted as compass north, and clearly shows Eden at its head, with Jesus and the Celestial beings directly above this. This orientation lies in the fact that, as the sun rose in the East, Christiandom believed Eden to be in the far Orient. This also became the reason that Church altars all over the world were orientated towards the East.
Accurate cartographic data had been present for some thousand years prior to the drawing of the Hereford Mappa Mundi. It becomes, therefore, a map that bears witness to the spiritual significance of the 'virtual' world of religious belief over scientific data.