Psalter world map
The Psalter World Map is the name historiography gave to a medieval world map that was found in a psalter. This mappa mundi is now conserved at the British Library in London.
The small map (c. 9.5 cm or 3.7 in high) shows a lot of detail. It was drawn around 1260; the artist is unknown. According to historian Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, it looks like a small version of the Ebstorf Map from Northern Germany.
It is a typical mappa mundi that does not only show the geographical and historical knowledge, but also puts it into the frame of salvation history. Jesus Christ appears in the East (i.e. "above"), as the maps of Christian Middle Ages have East at the top, giving a blessing with his right hand.
An open-access high-resolution digital image of the map with place and name annotations is included among the thirteen medieval maps of the world edited in the Virtual Mappa project.
General references[]
- von den Brincken, Anna-Dorothee (1992). Fines Terrae. Die Enden der Erde und der vierte Kontinent auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten. MGH-Schriften. 36. Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung. ISBN 3-7752-5436-6.
External links[]
- Psalter map, c. 1265 Deep zoom feature, highlighted details. Video introduction from Peter Barber, Head of Maps at the British Library.
- Virtual Mappa: Digital Editions of Early Medieval Maps of the World, edit. Martin Foys, Heather Wacha, et al. (Philadelphia, PA: Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies, 2018): https://sims2.digitalmappa.org/36. DOI: 10.21231/ef21-ev82.
- Historic maps of the world
- Illuminated psalters
- Works of unknown authorship
- British Library collections