Beatus map

The Beatus Map or Beatine Map is one of the most significant cartographic works of the European Early Middle Ages: It was originally drawn by the Spanish monk Beatus of Liébana, based on the accounts given by Saint Isidore of Seville, Ptolemy and the Holy Bible. Although the original manuscript is lost, there remain several copies extant, which retain a high fidelity with respect the original.

The Map is shown in the prologue of the second book of Beatus' work Commentary on the Apocalypse. Its main goal is not to depict a cartographically exact depiction of the world and its continents, but to illustrate the primitive Diaspora of the Apostles.

According to the descriptions of the Book of Genesis (which was one of the main sources of Beatus), the Earth was thought to be plane and to sustain the vault of heaven, where the Sun, the Moon, and many other minor luminaries like planets and stars, moved. There were two sorts of water masses: The waters above the firmament, which were contained by the vault of heaven and occasionally fell to Earth in form of rain, when the floodgates opened, and the waters below, which nurtured the rivers, the streams and the great salt water masses.

In this mappamundi, the world is represented as a circular disc surrounded by the Ocean. The Earth is divided in three continents: Asia (upper semicircle), Africa (right lower quadrant) and Europe (left lower quadrant), which belonged respectively to the descendants of the three sons of Noah: Shem, Ham and Japheth. The continental masses are separated by water streams and inner seas like the Mediterranean (Europe-Africa), the Nile River (Africa-Asia) and the Bosporus and the Aegeus Sea (Europe-Asia). In the center of the world lays Jerusalem, sacred city to Christianity and Judaism alike, where Abraham was about to sacrifice his own son, Isaac, and where the happenings of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus did take place. The conception of Jerusalem as an ombilicum mundi was quite usual in the medieval Christian spirituality: In the Divine Comedy, Dante starts his travel to hell from the soils of this city.

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