The illustrations of the Benedictine monk, artist, and chronicler Matthew Paris offer a gateway into the thirteenth-century world. This new study of his cartography emphasises the striking innovations he brought to it, and shows how the maps became an investment and repository of certain medieval spatial practices: travel through the world, the occurrence of history in that world, and the religious practices and devotional attitudes that were assiduously cultivated within the larger visual culture of St. Albans abbey [in great measure produced by Matthew's own images]. Travel [i.e. space], history [time], and devotion [liturgy], then, are the primary issues and meanings deposited in and registered by Matthew Paris's cartographic landscape. In searching out these contexts, the book explores the paradigm of imagined pilgrimage as an organizing principle that pushes into greater relief medieval understandings of their arrangements of places and of histories. Thus traveling through geography could enact its meanings in a dynamic, religious, even devotional performance of the maps' materials. Richly illustrated with black and white and colour plates.
Reviews
Connollys kulturgeschichtliche Annäherungen an die Karten Matthew Paris' sind anregend, da sie Karten auf verschiedenen Ebenen in den Kontext zeitgenössischer Tradition und religiöser Praktiken einbetten und auf dieser Grundlage neue Lesarten erproben. SEHEPUNKTE
[The author] has approached the work of Matthew Paris in an original and stimulating way and has made a meaningful contribution to our knowledge of the ways manuscripts, texts, images, rituals and prayers provided the fertile ground for the pictorial and cartographic imagination of Matthew Paris. [...] His book will surely invite much discussion among scholars and serve as a springboard for much future work. THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW
This book has a scintillating subject. The sumptuous illustrations of course whet the appetite. JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
Details
First Published: 15 Oct 2009
13 Digit ISBN: 9781843834786
Pages: 278
Size: 24.4 x 17.2
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: Boydell Press
Subject:
Medieval LiteratureBIC Class: DSBB
Details updated on 23 May 2013
Contents
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Taken in the Spirit: Imagined Pilgrimage in Medieval Spirituality and Art
- 3 Journeys through Space: the codex as conveyance
- 4 Journeys through Time: the format of history
- 5 Journeys through Time: geography as prophecy
- 6 Journeys through Liturgy
- 7 Monarchical Journeys: the King's Gaze, the "Royal" Itinerary and Matthew's Maps of Britain
- 8 Conclusion
- 9 Bibliography
