Project Blog

UCMS Guest Lecture
On Thursday 26 November, the first Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies (UCMS) guest lecture of the academic year took place on Zoom. The lecture was by Dr Seb Falk, University…
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Utrecht online workshop on ancient and medieval city walls
Today, attending the online workshop on ancient and medieval city walls, “Muros et Moenia: City Walls, Urban Boundaries, and the Articulation of the City in the First Millennium CE” organised at Utrecht…
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Some online resources on Maps and Geography
There has been much interest in the development of geographical perceptions and in the history of cartography in recent years (arguably, not only in recent years, but steadily throughout the…
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Maps of Europe at the BnF
This year we are more reliant than ever on digital resources not only for research, but for recreation (a growing number or virtual museums and virtual exhibitions have made this…
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Matters of the Heart
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…
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Honorius Augustodunensis, his “Elucidarium”
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…
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Old Maps at the University Library
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…
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More Medieval Maps
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…
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What’s in a name? Honorius Augustodunensis
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…
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Utrecht Centre for Medieval Studies Annual Colloquium (2019)
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…
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More Globes
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…
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Medieval ‘Encyclopedias’
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…
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The creation of a digital database
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…
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Piece by piece
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…
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Medieval Maps: the Catalan Atlas
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…
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