It is February the 14th, and heart-shaped things seem to be everywhere. In keeping with the theme, I would like to talk about heart-shaped maps. While heart-shaped chocolates and decorations…

Honorius Augustodunensis wrote a large number of works in addition to the Imago mundi, which forms the center of the present project. Of these, the most influential and best-studied is…

The Utrecht University Library Special Collections division has an impressive collection of maps. Digitalized maps can be accessed online, through the library’s geographic search engine . The University Library’s extensive…

A fantastic introduction to medieval maps in general by P. D. A. Harvey is available on the British Library website in an updated version of an article first published in…

Honorius Augustodunensis, author of the Imago mundi (and several other works, of which the most famous was perhaps the Elucidarium), is an author as elusive and mysterious as he was prolific. This…

On Thursday, June 13, 2019, the Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies held its 6th Annual Colloquium. The Colloquium, which took place at Drift from 13:00 until 18:00 presented a varied…

The earliest European globe, made by Martin Beheim in 1492 (mentioned in our previous blog post “Globes and Celestial Spheres”), precedes the discovery of the Americas and shows the world…

In the course of this project, the question of the genre of Honorius Augustodunensis’s Imago mundi often arose. Can we describe this text as an “encyclopedia” if the term was not used…

One of the more visual results of the research done in the Defining Europe project is a manuscript database containing as many manuscripts as possible of Honorius Augustodunensis’ Imago Mundi…

Many of the copies of the Imago mundi text and its translations that we have catalogued for our database are in a fragmentary state. Medieval manuscript fragments are an important resource…

The Bibliothèque nationale de France manuscript Esp.30, better known as the ‘Catalan Atlas’ is one of the more spectacular adaptations of the Imago mundi by Honorius Augustodunensis which we study in…

Medieval mappae mundi help us see that cartographic representations of the world are not only omnipresent but often used for purposes other than navigation. This mural painting by Peter Alma…

The medieval view of the world in medieval Wales largely corresponded to that on the Continent, as can be seen, for instance, in the poem known as ‘Greater Song of…

Whilst the most famous medieval maps are the T-O type mappae mundi, there are other types of map surviving from the Middle Ages. A fascinating example is the Gough Map,…

Amongst the most interesting and informative virtual exhibitions currently available is the exhibition of marine maps by Bibliothèque nationale de France. The wonderfully organised exhibition provides information on nautical maps, including…