The Outer Edge of the Earth

Abstract

At the time of the Norman Conquest of England, at the time of the First Crusade, how did people picture the world to themselves? We can answer this question from the many schematised maps which survive in medieval manuscripts. Shown overleaf is a fine example from an eleventh century commentary on the Book of Revelation.¹ Like all such maps it has the Mediterranean in the middle of the world landmass. That, of course, is what ‘Mediterranean’ means — from the Latin words medius, ‘the middle’, and terra, ‘land’. Europe lies to the left, Africa to the right, and Asia is at the top. In many ways this is a surprisingly knowledgeable map. It shows how the inland sea reaches beyond the Hellespont. It knows about the Caspian Sea and the deserts which lie beyond. It knows about the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. It knows about Mesopotamia and Persia and India. It identifies the furthest reaches of the conquests of Alexander the Great in Bactria. Somewhere up there, it believes, lies the Garden of Eden. This conception of the world has an elegant symmetry. Observe the mountain ranges, and how the rivers flow either inward towards the central sea, or outward towards the encircling ocean at the edge of the world. So what we have is a neatly counterbalancing, intellectually satisfying conception with, at the centre of creation, the city of Jerusalem, which St Jerome had described as the umbilical cord which connects the earthly life with the divine.²