Map Awareness in the Mid-Seventh Century: Jonas’ Vita Columbani

Abstract

Imago MundiPrize

The fourth biennial Prize will be awarded in 2011 to honour the Imago Mundi article judged to have made the most significant contribution to the discipline. The judges will consider articles published in the 2009 and 2010 issues (volumes 61 and 62). The winner will receive $1000 and will automatically qualify for a J. B. Harley Travel Award to the next International Conference on the History of Cartography (Moscow, Russia, 2011). The winner will also receive a certificate, which, if he or she is able to attend, will be presented at the conference.

Full length articles will be eligible for the Prize, but not shorter articles, since only full length articles are automatically subject to the (anonymous) external refereeing process before acceptance for publication. Articles by Directors of Imago Mundi Ltd (who take it in turns to serve on the panel of judges) are not eligible for consideration. The Imago Mundi Prize is generously sponsored by Kenneth Nebenzahl.

Notes

Notes and References

1. For a summary of what is known about Jonas, see Michael Richter, Bobbio in the Early Middle Ages: The Abiding Legacy of Columbanus (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2008), 50–53.

2. Vita, bk 1, ch. 27, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum IV, ed. Bruno Krusch (Hannover and Leipzig, Impensis Bibliopolii Hahniani, 1905), 104. In another edition, Jonas, Vita Columbani et discipulorum eius, ed. M. Tosi (Piacenza, Emiliana Grafica, 1965), part of the text reads solet stilo urbis describere (98), but urbis here is clearly an error for orbis.

3. All quotations from the Bible are taken from the Latin Vulgate (Robert Weber ed., Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, 4th rev. ed. (Stuttgart, Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994); all translations are my own.

4. ‘See, the whole land is in your sight; go wherever you choose and wherever it seems good for you to go’; Jonas echoes both the sentiment and the wording of this verse.

5. The use of an image of the world, a map, in Jonas has been noticed by Chet Van Duzer and Ilya Dines, ‘The only mappamundi in a bestiary context: Cambridge, MS Fitzwilliam 254’, Imago Mundi 58:1 (2006): 7–22 at 14.

6. See David Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, in The History of Cartography, vol. 1: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987), 286–370 at 301–2.

7. I am citing the generally accepted dates for Isidore's writings as found in Hermann Josef Frede, Kirchenschriftsteller: Verzeichnis und Sigel, 4th ed. (Freiburg, Verlag Herder, 1995).

8. Alban Dold and Johannes Duft, Die älteste irische Handschrift-Reliquie der Stiftsbibliothek St Gallen mit Texten aus Isidors Etymologien (Beuron, Kunstverlag 1955).

9. See Michael W. Herren, ‘On the earliest Irish acquaintance with Isidore of Seville’, in Visigothic Spain: New Approaches, ed. Edward James (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980), 243–50.

10. See Thomas O'Loughlin, Teachers and Code-Breakers: The Latin Genesis Tradition, 430–800 (Turnhout, Brepols, 1998), 194–98.

11. Jacques Fontaine, ed., Isidore de Seville, Traité de la nature (Bordeaux, Féret et Fils, 1960).

12. Ibid., Jacques Fontaine's stemma codicum is on 70bis, and his map on 83bis.

13. See J. F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical (New York, Columbia University Press, 1929), 204–5; and Richter, Bobbio in the Early Middle Ages (note 1), 50–51.