The Peutinger Map remains the sole medieval survivor of an imperial world-mapping tradition. It depicts most of the inhabited world as it was known to the ancients, from Britain's southern coastline to the farthest reaches of Alexander's conquests in India, showing rivers, lakes, islands, and mountains while also naming regions and the peoples who once claimed the landscape. Onto this panorama, the mapmaker has plotted the ancient Roman road network, with hundreds of images along the route and distances marked from point to point. This book challenges the artifact's self-presentation as a Roman map by examining its medieval contexts of crusade, imperial ambitions, and competition between the German-Roman Empire and the papacy.
Author(s): Emily Albu
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: XVI+170
List of Figures ix
List of Plates xi
Acknowledgments xiii
1. Introduction 1
The World of the Peutinger Map 3
The Material Object 4
A Brief History of the Map 13
2. Roman Roads and Roman Perceptions of Space 19
The Roads and the Route Network 19
The Roman Cosmic View 24
3. The Battle of the Maps 31
The Challenge of the Christian Oikoumene 31
The Secular Counterpoint: Display Maps of Roman Imperium 35
Early Christian Mapping 36
Charlemagne and the Battle of the Maps: The Roads, the Orb, the Maps 42
A Carolingian Mediator or a Carolingian Prototype? 47
4. Christian Maps and the Peutinger Map 59
Route Maps of Matthew Paris 66
The Gough Map of Britain 68
The Peutinger Map and Mappae Mundi 70
5. German Emperors, Crusades, and an Imperial Map 73
Dating the Medieval Imperial Map 76
Imperial Claims of Popes and Hohenstaufen 78
Symbols of Imperium 83
Tracking the Peutinger Map to Swabian Monasteries 85
Hohenstaufen Ambitions and the Map's Imperial Design 89
6. Images and the Medieval Map 95
Imperial "Tychai" and the Three Personified Cities 95
Antioch and the Lure of the East 103
Six Walled and Towered Cities 108
The Peloponnese and Mediterranean Islands: Hohenstaufen Ties 110
Mediterranean Trees in German Forests 115
The Map in the Longer Twelfth Century 116
7. Conclusion: Roman Roads and "Romanitas": The Medieval Map in the Holy Roman Empire 119
Notes 123
Works Cited 151
Index 165
