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Chapter 3
HEREFORD WORLD MAP C. 1300
Maps may be regarded either as a guide to help the traveller on his way from one point to another or as a source of information about the varied countries of the world. The world map preserved in Hereford Cathedral since about the year 1300 was certainly of very limited use for the first purpose but, as to the second, no 'map' ever produced has crowded into a space 52 in. (1,320 mm) in diameter on a piece of vellum such an encyclopaedic amount of geographical, historical, biblical and mythical information. All the more extraordinary that such a masterpiece should have been created by a churchman, by name Richard of Haldingham (in Lincolnshire) of whom little is known but the bare facts of his movements between various livings and cathedral appointments. It seems safe to assume that the map was his personal work and, although it bears no signature as such, it is inscribed with a note in Norman French which reads:
Let all who have this estoire [history], or shall heat or see or read it, pray to Jesus in God for pity on Richard of Raldingham and Lafford who has made and drawn it, that joy in heaven be granted to him. Where it was compiled can only be conjectured; the author was treasurer of Lincoln Cathedral in the years between 1250 and 1260 and subsequently held an appointment at Salisbury Cathedral, apart from other livings, including Haldingham, before moving to Hereford in 1305.
The creation of such a map in the late thirteenth century must have called for a quite remarkable and exceptional depth of study of classical manuscripts and it is probable that most of it was completed during his appointment at Lincoln Cathedral. But if we look beyond the scholarship involved and visualize the task of assembling the information required, the actual drawing of the map itself and the hazards of travel on medieval roads over thirty or forty years it is little short of a miracle that the map survived the long period of preparation, let alone the 700 years since its completion.
The map itself, roughly based on the T-O design so commonly used in medieval times, is considered to be derived, albeit by a very devious route and with many variants, from the Agrippa map of the Roman world prepared in the first century AD by the order of the Emperor Caesar Augustus who is here shown enthroned in a lower corner of the map. Surrounding the map are two concentric circles subdivided into twelve sections containing descriptive details of the winds of the earth illustrated so frequently in the borders of Ptolemaic maps. As a map of the medieval world it is naturally based on the three known continents, Asia, Africa and Europe, the whole encircling Jerusalem at the hub of the 'wheel', whereas on the Agrippa map Rome was placed at the centre of the known world. Of the countries and oceans represented little is recognizable by shape; even England, Scotland and Ireland are crudely shown, much out of scale, by three oval-shaped outlines, Scotland being drawn separately as an island. Numerous cities and towns appear within turrets and castellated walls and rivers are given undue prominence with little regard to geographical position; but more important than the manuscript's geographical purpose is its pictorial message. It provides us with an account of ancient legends: the Golden Fleece, the Minoan Labyrinth and St Brendan's 'blessed isles'; the campaigns of Alexander the Great and his containment of Gog and Magog within the confines of Asia; biblical scenes from Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and the Ark to the Crucifixion. Apart from the representation of Caesar Augustus instructing his officials to survey the world there are few references to Rome, but to make up for that the geographical and historical detail is overlaid by fantasies culled from the literature of the times; monsters of every sort, human and animal, recognizable or imagined, abound -imagined as far as the twentieth century is concerned but no doubt then accepted as facts of life.
We can only guess at the reasons behind the creation of such a map; one purpose at least must have been to provide in a simple and compact form, especially for the illiterate, a pictorial encyclopaedia of knowledge available at the time, but, as it was compiled by a churchman within cathedral precincts, it does seem more likely that its primary purpose was to teach biblical history in the context of the thirteenth-century world, an objective Richard of Haldingham achieved in a unique manner.