 Hello, welcome everyone, welcome to everyone in the room and of course everyone at home as well. And so just like to start with a few practical notes. So after this talk there will as in previous weeks be a Q&A session. If you're in the room, raise your hand. And if you're at home, type your questions into the Q&A box on zoom and a staff member in the room will read them out loud. There is closed captioning available for the lecture and it will be recorded and put online and will be available at a later date. I also for those of you in the room have a fire safety notice. So there are no fire drills scheduled for the duration of this event. If the fire alarm sounds, please leave your belongings behind and calmly begin to evacuate the building. The nearest fire exits are on the ground floor through either front doors of the center. Please assemble outside 28 Bedford Square to the right as you leave the building and do not leave the area or attempt to return to the center until you've been advised it is safe to do so by a member of the PMC staff. Okay so on to the less practical and more intellectual side of the evening. It's my great pleasure and honor to introduce Professor Alfred Hyatt. He's the professor of medieval studies in the Department of English at Queen Mary University of London. So his research or at least his current research is principally about geographical culture and that's my term and I suppose I'm using this to convey to you the really the range of his research. So literature and ideas involved in the understanding of space and the image of the world in the broadest sense. So to tell you just a few of his remarkable publications. There's Tara Incognita mapping the antipodes before 1600 dislocations maps a classical tradition and spatial play in the European Middle Ages, 2020. And very recently, cartography between Christian Europe and the Arabic Islamic world, 1100 to 1500 and that's very recently out, edited by Alfred but he also wrote a good chunk of it as well. And yes also he's written many essays and many collections and I always turn to his first because they're always great. And this kind of area of his research actually does go back to his first book, the making of medieval forgeries, in which he described and I found this sort of quite a story when I read it at the time maps and charters as in his words cognate forms of documentation. And so I suppose this quotation to me sort of encapsulates his real insight, not just into what medieval objects are saying, but into the medieval way of representing things. And this is something that we talked about a bit in the first lecture there was an excellent question about why are there people holding buildings and we talked a little bit about the medieval way of representing. And this is, this is Professor Hyatt's particular special area of expertise. And it's obviously critical to understanding the way in which medieval people saw envisioned the British Isles and their place in the world and how they represented it. And so, without further ado, please Alfred. Thank you very much Jessica for that very generous introduction. Thank you, Jessica and Lloyd for the invitation to speak today in this excellent series, and thank you to the Paul Mellon Center for welcoming us all here thank you everyone for coming in on a very beautiful spring afternoon and also hello to everybody watching online I've watched the last two lectures online so I know what you're experiencing now. It's good. We live in a society saturated with maps where the use of a map to find direction to check the location of a geopolitical event. We can make a statement of national identity, or even to function as a decoration has become commonplace. Most of us today probably consulted a map on our way here, maybe simply a London tube map. I don't know if you're doing this online but I noticed in the first online event, people were asked to state where they were watching from, and that itself was a form of mapping. So we are saturated with maps. Some, but not all of the functions that I just mentioned characterize the use of maps in the Middle Ages. And then served other purposes to not all of which we have maintained. In general, the following precepts should be born in mind when thinking about medieval maps. This is a bit like my own version of Jessica's rules about the instructions about the fire drill. Just need to go through this before we get going. The maps were not drawn to scale. They were not, despite everything we might think used for travel. They were not, as we will see, and as those of you watching last week saw uniformly oriented to the north. They are full of historical material. They are copied again and again across the span of centuries. All of those aspects of medieval maps differentiate them from modern maps, which are drawn to scale, which are generally north oriented, which form an indispensable aid to travel, which are continually updated, and in which history has been relegated to a specialist genre, the historical Atlas, time firmly separated from space. There is an exception to these remarks. This is the category of maps, which I call sea charts, sometimes called port-a-land charts, a genre of medieval map produced in significant numbers in the 14th and 15th centuries. And these can, if you like, act as a bridge between medieval map making and modern maps. Such maps did employ a scale. They were used for travel, particularly for navigation in the Mediterranean. They tended to be oriented to the north. Perhaps you can see the outline here. There's Britain. And then we can follow the French coast. Very recognisable Spanish peninsula into the Mediterranean, the Bout of Italy. So this is a map from early 15th century. Nevertheless, research has emphasised the continuities and convergence of sea charts with other forms of maps in the later Middle Ages. It's a point I'll return to at the end of this lecture. One final caveat. Contrary to a lingering myth, what I hope is a dying myth. Medieval map makers were not flat earthers. The sphericity of the earth was a victim inherited from ancient Greek and Roman science. It was taught throughout the Middle Ages as an accepted fact and all the maps that we are going to see today were made by people who accepted, believed in the sphericity of the earth. This lecture has two main theses. The first that to represent Britain on a map during the Middle Ages was automatically to think about its relationship with other places. With the near neighbors Scandinavia, France, Flanders, Spain, as well as more distant locations. Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, perhaps even the earthly paradise. The second thesis is that to represent Britain on a map during the Middle Ages was again, most automatically, to think about its internal political divisions and to ask the fundamental questions. What was and what is Britain? England plus Wales plus Scotland plus Ireland plus islands. Or something more than the sum of its parts. And how had Britain become Britain in the first place. Placicle Greek and Roman references to Britain could be presented in two ways. One was to emphasize the remote nature of the island. To show that it was in fact part of the ancient world, seen in terms of its relation to other parts of Europe. Virgil's first egg clog famously referred to Britain's completely cut off from the entire world. But plenty the elder in his natural history put it differently. And it was well known. And across a large interval of water, it faced the greatest regions of Europe, Germania, Gaul and Spain. True Isidore of Seville, seventh century author of the influential etymologiae etymologies. A work containing a significant amount of geographical material. Heated the Virgillian gloss cut off from the entire world while emphasizing the island's size and fertility. But medieval authors such as bead took their lead from plenty. Noting the great natural abundance of Britain and Ireland and the proximity, not distance of the rest of Europe. That duality, Britain near to, but somehow simultaneously distant from Europe, sounds quite familiar today. But I would argue that for much of the Middle Ages, it was the proximity and the connections to surrounding lands, whether continental Europe, Scandinavia or other islands that map makers and the writers of geographical works emphasized the most. We can begin to gauge some of the complexity of the medieval reception of classical geography and Britain's place within it. We're looking at one of the earliest surviving map I money world maps, the cotton map, the cotton map was copied around 1025 to 1030, probably at Christchurch Canterbury. Those of you who attended the lecture last week will already have seen this map. It's clearly based on late antique sources. There is a very strong element of its toponymy of place names and design, which is derived from the description of the world that begins palace erosius as histories and seven books against the pagans. There is also a certain amount of material, which does come from Isidore's etymologies. There are other sources to particularly in Europe. The map is oriented to the east. So at the top of the map this island is actually tapirabana. That's a cool name for what we call Sri Lanka now. You also have as mentioned last week, the Red Sea, the Nile, very prominent Mediterranean mentioned last week. I don't have a close up of them were Gog and Magog up here in this part of the map. We have also the pillars of Hercules marking the western most extent of the world. So in many ways this is still a classical image of the world that we're looking at. Africa and the North pilot of Africa here. Asia in the top half of the map. This is the Holy Land quite enlarged. That's Jerusalem there. What we see here are the nine of the 12 tribes of Israel material. It's clearly coming from the book of Joshua Britain. British Isles appears quite enlarged. In the bottom left hand corner of the map. You can see it in close up here. This representation of Britain reveals something of the palimpsest that this map is. I mentioned that it was copied around 12, sorry, around 1025, 1030. But as I said, it's also based on late antique sources. It's very hard to say what specific date this map actually represents. It doesn't perhaps represent a specific moment in time at all. I think that comes out in the representation of Britain. The very term Britannia which you can see here is not a neutral or obvious turn. In one way it's a geographers term that succinctly encompasses the whole island. It's also archaic, carrying the charge of the Roman Empire, Britain, the province of the Roman Empire, but also those authorities such as Pliny and Bede who use the term. Well, it also glides over the subsequent subdivisions of the island. Some Anglo-Saxon kings did grandiosly style themselves. Rex, King, Emperor, or even Basilias of the whole of Britain. By the time this map was copied, the style Rex Anglorum, King of the English, had been established and would not change. So what can we see here? London, Winchester, the Anglo-Saxon capital. Over here, Khumbrians, sometimes being suggested this, we might want it to be Khumbri, meaning the Welsh, but it's in the wrong place. So it's been something that suggests that this represents the Strathclyde British. And this here, the southern Britons, the Bretons, interestingly, in Old English. And then an island, a single toponym, Amar, obviously a place of ecclesiastical significance and association with St Patrick to the north, the Orkneys. And then here at the bottom left of the image, Thule, classical island representing the extreme northwestern most point of the world. So already in the small image of the island, different time periods are compressed. Classical and late antique, Anglo-Saxon. But we might also note several different peoples on and thinking of the Bretons off the island. Around 30 to 40 years after this map was copied, the Norman conquest changed the political landscape of the island. Some of those changes are evident on an unusual map that dates from around 1200, which is strongly connected with the work of the historian Gerald of Wales, if you're also hearing about last week. What we're looking at here is essentially a map of Europe. And almost certainly it's a copy of part of a Mapa Mundi. It appears between a copy of Gerald's topography of Ireland. And a sort of companion work to that is work on the conquest of Ireland, which relates the English invasion and colonization of parts of Ireland. The first versions of these works were written in the late 1180s. There are two other copies of the topography, which contain maps. There's much more schematic than this one, which does on inspection represent certain aspects of Gerald's description of Ireland. Looking at this map, we can see the British Isles in relation to continental Europe. It's been plausibly read in terms of pilgrimage to Rome. We can see many other important European cities and geographical features represented on it as well. In Ireland, the cities represented a Dublin, Wexford, Waterford and Limerick, rivers, Liffey, Slaney, Sweere and the Shannon. And these are places that Gerald describes in his description of Ireland, particularly emphasizes the Shannon as major river of Ireland. But we might also know Scotland, Scotsia, Wales, Germany, of course, and also Britannia, which perhaps represents the whole of the island or perhaps the English part of it. We're getting to these cities of ecclesiastical significance, York, Lincoln, which Lincoln particularly is associated with Gerald as well. So the map shows the relationship between the British Isles. And it must be read, I think, in the context of the Anglo-Norman colonization of southern and eastern Ireland. So I mentioned a process narrated by Gerald began in the 1170s and continued for the next century. Gerald himself visited Ireland in the 1180s and was actually personally related to some of the colonists. On the other hand, the connections with continental Europe are arguably emphasized in this map even more strongly than they were on the cotton map. Particularly the relationship to Italy, Sicily, but also we can see Paris here, Leon. And the region's neighbouring Britain, Spain, Gascony, Piccadilly, Britannia, all around Normandy, Flanders, around to Frisia, Denmark and Norway, which embracing Europe's western most. And as Gerald told it, most wondrous islands. Well, some Mappemundi present the British Isles as essentially detail free lozenges floating in the Atlantic. Others, such as the Hereford map, show the lozenges filled with cities, rivers and mountains. The Hereford map is also oriented to the east that is the earthly paradise there right at the top of the map outside the frame, although it's hard to see on this reproduction is Christ in judgment. Then moving down into the map we have the Tower of Babel, Jerusalem at the centre of the map. And it tells you that all medieval maps are centred on Jerusalem. Just tell them that they are wrong. It's not true. In fact, it probably only really starts in the 13th century in any significant, any significant extent, but the Hereford map certainly does do that. Now very again very prominent Mediterranean here, but I want to focus particularly on these islands. That's the theme of the series. What we see as I said is the, the, these lozenges to floating in the island but here filled with quite a lot of detail. Interestingly, there is separation between England and Scotland. Actually, you know, complete separation less not complete separation but certain sense of physical distinction, let's say with Wales and again another representation of Ireland. There's Anglia and I didn't highlight this but this inscription here is Britannia insular so both England and again the island of Britain in proximity both being used together. These world maps or parts thereof tell a story about Britain. It was not completely cut off from the world as the self consciously exaggerated trope of Virgil suggested. On the contrary, while it was indeed on the northwestern periphery of the world image, Britain, including England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland was separated by little more than a river from European realms and markets. But what happens when we look more closely at Britain's internal borders hard or otherwise. To do so we need to examine not world maps, but regional maps. The earliest surviving maps of the British Isles alone separate that is from the context of a Mapa Mundi date from the 13th century. That may seem a late date but in fact in a European context it's relatively precocious regional maps of Britain predate maps of the Italian Peninsula, France, Spain. Naturally written description of the islands of Britain had a long history. Going back to classical authors and continuing through bead and his followers. But it's not until the mid 13th century and the work of the monk of St Albans, Matthew Paris that we find visual representation in the form of a map of Britain. There are four extant maps of Britain associated with Matthew reflecting different states. All are connected with Matthew's historical writing is chronicles, the abbreviations of chronicles. They appear alongside the chronicles chronicles of predominantly chronicles of English history. On your right, you can see a slightly less developed form of Matthew's map of Britain. This one prefaces a copy of his Historia and Glorem, his history of the English. And it notably contains the inscription as well as Wales and Scotland. Britannia nuk dicta Anglia Britain now called England, a telling comment on English hegemony within the island. Arguably the most developed of the maps of Matthew Paris appeared in a manuscript containing his abbreviation of chronicles, which is a chronicle of English history from the year 101255. Alongside genealogies of British Anglo Saxon and Norman Kings. This map certainly shows history. In fact, two walls dividing England from Scotland. We also hear that Scotland Scotsia ultra marina it Albania dicta s this is Scotland, above the sea beyond the sea called, which was called Albania why is it it's not Albania. It's going back to the legend that we heard about last week, the legend of Brutus's foundation of Britain on the island the Trojan exiled Brutus, who allegedly established kingdom in Britain. And then it was divided between his three sons. So the eldest took over the part that would become England, and then the others took Scotland one took Scotland and one took Wales. We'll come back to this legend later on, but it's there or gesture to any way on Matthew's map because the son who took over what became Scotland, it was called albin act hence this term Albania. We also see Anglo Saxon references to Anglo Saxon kingdoms on this map. So for instance in Suffolk about Suffolk we're told that Suffolk once was a kingdom which was conjoined with Norfolk, they were one kingdom. And if we look in a little more detail. The map, we have statements here such here in Wales. We're told the city of the prophet Merlin again, growing on this vein of Syrian history, history that's represented in the so called Brut tradition the tradition of British kings dating from Brutus extending through Arthur onwards. So there are also contemporary features or near contemporary features on Matthew's map. So it's structured along an itinerary that runs all the way from Dover to Newcastle forms a kind of spine up the center of the island. And of course that itinerary includes Matthew's own place and Albans. There are major south coast ports like Winchill Sea and South Hampton also see here the Welsh March, a feature of Anglo Norman colonization established in the 13th century. So in many ways this map accords with Matthew's understanding of British and or English history, which runs from ancient origins to his own day. Interruption I say without interruption with lots of the world in fact lots of interruptions, lots of breaks in this passage of history. But it's a history that can can nevertheless be constructed by Matthew by this monastic chronicler through things like lines of kings and also perhaps through things like maps through maps that represent the land and represent its history. The changing of this history things like the construction of these walls, the formation of the Welsh March, the formation of Anglo Saxon kingdoms that change over time. So it's by no means a static document, as I said medieval maps are full of history, but the gaze is far from introspective. Inside the map we find various tags and these tags indicate distances to surrounding regions to Ireland and the West Coast, Brittany Normandy and Flanders and then on the east side to Denmark to Norway and also up here to the northwest where Matthew says there is a vast sea where there is nothing except the dwelling of monsters. Matthew's maps have sometimes appeared to be the creations of a remarkable and idiosyncratic monastic historian, and in some ways that's not far from the truth. But his maps of Britain were clearly part of a broader development of regional mapping of the islands that took place during the 13th and 14th centuries. The best proof of that point is found in the Gough map of Britain. I again saw this last week where it was somewhat unflatteringly compared to an old sock. I'm not sure I agree with that, but it was named the Gough map after Richard Gough, the 18th century antiquary who purchased it. And the map and indeed published on it and reproduced it. The map has traditionally been dated to the latter part of the reign of Edward III, that is to say the 1360s. While recent scholarship has pushed at the date of this, what we have the extant copy of the map into the 15th century. The Gough map is remarkable for its level of detail. It measures two foot by four foot. It shows around 600 settlements and over 70 rivers in an elaborate hydrographical structure. And just looking at it here, you can probably get some sense of that, the hydrography of the map of the old sock. Scholars have never conclusively determined a purpose or a place of construction of this map. Was it administrative, you know, product of the Royal Court? Was it, sorry, the Royal Administration? Was it to facilitate travel? There's the often repeated theory that it was a roadmap. Was it intended for the monarch, a monarch's view of his realm? Was it an ecclesiastical or a monastic production? These questions remain open. A current project on the Gough map is arguing that the extant map is the product of three layers of copying, with names particularly in the southeast altered and added over the course of the 15th century. This project has decisively moved away from the long held view, which is based on a network of red lines. And you may see this in the next slide. You can see these red lines, which led, scholars suggested that these were roads and this was therefore a roadmap. Current project on the Gough map, which I'm not involved in, but I'm interested in its findings is seriously disputing that. And if you're interested, I can go into some of the reasons why that is disputing it. It's not really important, I think, for this discussion. What I'm interested in more thinking about is in this question of borders and internal borders. So this detail shows Wales. But also you can just see there, the wall, one of Matthew Parris's walls, dividing the English and the Scots. There is no obvious border with Wales, which may reflect contemporary as much as historical relation between the regions. There are dozens of islands surrounding Britain. I'm sorry I didn't mark these, but I'll just show you here. We have two of them, the Isle of Man and Anglesey. So it's, although it is the Gough map of Britain, and that's how it's often turned, it also shows a lot of the islands that surround Britain. And at the edges of the map appear Ireland, you can just see a little bit of Ireland on this detail, Scandinavia and the French coast. So again, neighbours are not forgotten, even if the level of detail on the map is strongest around York, we can see here. And particularly in the south and east coasts of England. Let's see an example there. Here London is clearly the dominant city, but it's hard to resist a reading of the map as depicting a kind of bustling regional prosperity. You can see the regions marked here Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, Kent here. You can also see important bishoprics like Norwich, like Ely, then in Kent, Rochester, Canterbury, of course, Chichester, thriving market towns, along with the odd monastery, Matthew Parisus in Albans, Casual University, and Royal Palace, Windsor. Was Britain by the end of the Middle Ages an island of regions of shires and parishes spinning around the axis of royal power in London? Or was it an island of nations, mutually hostile, locked in a bloody war of attrition? Certainly the most polemical of all regional maps of Britain produced during the Middle Ages was John Harding's map of Scotland. The map appears at the end of Harding's Chronicle of British history. Harding, a Northumbrian who'd served Henry V, in a military capacity, dedicated the first version of his Chronicle to Henry VI in 1457. He then rewrote it for the New Yorkist regime of Edward IV in the 1460s. He was very versatile. One of the recurrent themes of Harding's history is what he and others claimed to be the ancient right of the kings of England to hold overlordship of Scotland. And that's coming from that story of Brutus and his foundation of kingship on the island and the division of the island between his three sons, but through the idea of primogeniture, the eldest son inherited England, and so therefore he should by right be the overlord of Scotland. That at least was the version of history that Harding subscribed to and propagated in this Chronicle. The map which Harding uses in a way to complement this history, because it appears at the end of the Chronicle, is designed to show a possible invasion route for an English army. I've lost my screen here, but I'm pleased that that screen is still working. Yes, back to the invasion of Scotland. So Harding appended to his Chronicle an itinerary, which described an English invasion, including advice on which cities to attack and where to find provisions for an army. In the second version of the Chronicle, this is the Yorkist version, the map appears over three pages and that's the version I'm showing you here. The first page is pictorial, then the second and third become more schematic. Reading the map in terms of Harding's itinerary, we can follow his putative invasion plan. So he wanted an English army to march from Barrick through Dunbar to Edinburgh, then to Stirling, avoiding the formidably fortified Dumbarton, cross the Firth to Dune, and then progress should be made to St Andrews, which is here through Falkland. They should then march all the way up to the Tay crossing it at St Johnston one day Perth. An attack on the north then should be directed, Harding suggested, towards the targets of Dundee and Aberdeen. On the second page of Harding's map, the map shows land above the Tay through a largely verbal scheme, moving north with a series of brief regional descriptions which mention major castles and emphasize opportunities to provision an invading army. The final page of the map reaches Sutherland and Caithness, the final page reaches Sutherland and Caithness, and somewhat unexpectedly in the sea north of Scotland, that's here, actually this is north, that's south. The end, the map ends with the Palace of Pluto, King of Hell and neighbour to Scots. Three invective filled verses occupy the site of Pluto's palace. I'll just give you one of them. Harding does a reputation as not being a great poet, as you may be about to discover. Black bear the bunkers and the reapers also, though sorrowful say, full of stream as black. Where Pluto, King of Hell, reigneth in woe, in his Palace of Pread, with boaster and crack, neighbour to Scots, without any luck, with four floaters, furious, infernal, ebbing and flowing in the sea, boreal. Nice rhyme there from Harding at the end. So here there is a vision of Britain as a greater England. It coexists with the vision of the Goth map, which may be a vision of a functioning administrative entity. Both of those visions acknowledge and in the case of Harding depend on the layered history of interactions between the different peoples on the island. We documented also on Matthew Parris' map of Britain with its Scots, also its Picts, its Welsh and its English. How though, did Britain look from the outside? To conclude this lecture, I want to look at two maps. One produced in the 12th century by a Muslim map maker. One produced in the 14th century by a Jewish chart maker, both working for Christian patrons, which offer a glimpse of the islands as they might have appeared to interested observers from Europe and from further afield. Perhaps the greatest of all medieval geographies was the work by Ali Dresi, poetically titled, the Nusat al-Mustak Vih Tiraq al-Ahfak. It could be translated, it's difficult to translate these poetic titles, but promenade for the one eager to penetrate distant horizons. The work was composed around 1150 in Palermo at the court of Roger II, King of Sicily. Ali Dresi provided in the course of this monumental geography, the most detailed description of Britain found in an Arabic source of the era. Ali Dresi divided the world into seven climes. This was a standard move going back to classical geography. The first climb was located around the equator and then you move up northwards until you reach very far north, very cold climb, which is where you find Britain and other parts of the world. Each section was, but what he did that was different was to divide each climb into 10 sections. Each section, so he had 70 sections therefore, each section was illustrated by a map followed by a verbal description of the region. Britain fell mostly in the second section of the seventh and northernmost climb. What I've done here is actually stitched together two maps. So these are actually two openings in the manuscript of Ali Dresi's work, which I've just sort of placed one on top of the other to create this kind of Frankenstein's monster, but it gives you a composite image, his image of Britain. In his verbal description of the region, Ali Dresi noted that England was a considerable island, which has the shape of the head of an ostrich. It was extremely fertile. Its inhabitants were hardy, resolute, but winter there was perpetual. Among 18 cities he mentioned, he noted Salisbury as splendid, described the passage of the Thames. It's actually this river here. It's, sorry, I should say that south is at the top here as in really all Arabic, Islamic maps. The Thames, he said the source was the centre of the island. It ran to the south of Oxford, directed itself for 40 miles to London, and then to the sea. He claimed there were no cities in Scotland. Yeah, this somewhat unprepossessing polyp is his representation of the island, he says, Jazeera of the Spusy of Scotland. And there were only three cities in Ireland. The information about England that Ali Dresi presented, and this is, so this is, I'll just go back to show that I'm going to show you a close up of just that map or that part of the map, showing us just the south of England here, and then the continent. The information that it really gives on England, at least in part seems to have come from an informant, seemingly someone familiar with the south coast. So conceivably a navigator. Also it's worth noting the use of French forms, such as lundras for London, which seems significant. So noting here are the rubricated inscriptions denoting regions, which hints, once more, at political and commercial networks that tied the island of England, as Idrisi terms it, to what were for him, the lands of the Franks, which is also noting here. This is Normandy, and what he says is the land of France, but he in all cases he says it's, it's of the French of the, the Franks. The second map, the second view from outside that I want to finish with tonight is comes from the sea chart tradition really which I mentioned at the beginning of the lecture. These detailed maps of coastal areas which seem to have been in circulation from around 1200, whose primary place of production was Italy, particularly Genoa and Venice particularly, as well as the island of Mallorca. There's no evidence that a sea chart was ever produced in Britain during the Middle Ages, but they were clearly known and owned in Britain. And typically they showed part or all of the British Isles. Sea charts began to inform world maps during the 14th century, and they themselves could be developed into world maps. As we see here, this is the most spectacular extent example of this phenomenon of what is once a sea chart but also a world map. It's the so called Catalan Atlas, a work composed by the Mallorca based Jewish chart maker Cresques Abraham, also known as Elisha Cresquers, and was in the possession of the King of France Charles the 5th by 1380s probably produced around 1375 76. The map extends across six panels. I'm only giving you the first three here from the Atlantic across Europe so up in the Atlantic here across Europe and North Africa. And the section I'm not showing you as far as India and China. It's the first map to incorporate material from Marco Polo's travels to the east. One panel of the Catalan Atlas shows a representation of Britain, colored purple. If we look south on the same panel. We find Mansa Musa Lloyd mentioned actually in the first lecture, the King of Mali famous monarch who made a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 and spent so much gold in Cairo that Arab historians wrote about him for decades to come. So what this map is doing as well as showing us these coastal is you can see that the place names along the coast is typical of the genre of sea charts but it's also showing us these interiors filled with rulers filled with regions different polities. And if we look more closely at Britain, the dominance of coastal cities and towns typical of the sea chart tradition is evident here we have some, but really only the most important cities like London mentioned, which are inland. Major's ports and cities are shown in red and I've tried to draw them out with these captions on the image. And you can see the progression from Barrick, Scarborough, Hull, Lynn, these are, you know, these are places that had become very well known, become well known within certain circles, certain commercial circles or circles of mariners, the kinds of people who contributed no doubt to the construction of maps such as this. But we also see these flags on the map. This is also a part of at least some sea charts, and particularly the sea charts that are developed into world maps so we can see the realms of England, Anglaterra and Scotland, which are represented by maps. So in some sense these are also political maps. If on these foreign maps of Britain, the commercial political significance of places on the island, its ports and its rivers as well outweighs any interest in its history. We are far from a timeless Middle Ages. There were many Britons over the course of the Middle Ages, and many shifts in its representation. And in fact, understanding the different times of the island, pre Roman, Roman, Saxon, Norman, post Norman is an important part of its representation. It's tempting to say that the maps we have seen today witnessed the rise of the English from encumbers in the fifth century to political, cultural and linguistic masters of the islands by the 13th. And yet, for propagandists like John Harding, Britain retained meaning. He and other English authors repeatedly fantasized about the unity of Britain, no doubt encouraged by its physical unity. As the maps themselves show though, unity could not satisfactorily be realized. Wales, Scotland, Ireland remained realms never wholly assimilated to an English polity. And as the maps of Aledrici and Crescus Abraham show, there was another view, another Britain, a Britain of thriving ports in a trading network reaching to the North Sea, across the Mediterranean, and as the 15th century was increasingly to realize, out into the Atlantic. Matthew Parris's Last Sea of Monsters. Thank you. Sorry. Thanks, Alfred. That was a wonderful, a wonderful lecture. And we were talking before the lecture started about how so many popular TV programs about the sea of monsters. And we were talking before the lecture started about how so many popular TV programs about the Middle Ages always take you start with you on a journey. And I think you did really take us on a journey tonight. It's a kind of chronological journey to some of these extremely fascinating objects. And whilst everyone's kind of composing themselves and I'm sure there's going to be lots of questions in the room and also lots of questions online. I just wanted to jump in and ask a question about kind of size, format and function. And I was struck by the first object you showed by the sea chart was in a kind of what looked like a kind of 18th to 19th century frame. And that's a relatively large object. And then some of the other well known early British maps that you showed are clearly in kind of luxury manuscripts, one of a better word. And then you come onto the kind of old sock map, which is clearly a kind of massive object. And you did talk a little bit about this and function and thinking a bit about the Hereford map of Monday, which is when it was discovered in the in the 18th century was recorded by John Carter. And it had these had these is in this wooden frame with these these panels in front of some people have hypothesized probably wrongly that this was a kind of altarpiece which surely couldn't be. But just wondered what you think about that. And as a kind of additional question, what that tells us about what kind of people outside of the realm of the luxury manuscript might have known of Britain's place in the world. No, this is an excellent question and thank you very much for it. I mean, I think you're quite right to draw attention to that, particularly as when you show a succession of images like this in a slide show, what gets flattened and, you know, obfuscated really is size precisely and that the relationship of a viewer to these objects is really very, very different depending on the size that you're talking about. So yeah, I mean basically we do need to distinguish between maps such as the Hereford map map Monday, you know, which is a large wall map, and also something like the golf map. Again, which is similar something to be displayed that must be displayed, and that could be viewed by more than one person at once. Whereas if you look at something like the cotton map. And in fact all the other maps really that I showed their maps in books. The cotton map is actually I mean, it's only one person can look at this map at a time. It's, you know, so the kind of access that you have to these maps is going to be quite different. In many cases, they, the maps that are in books are really going to be maps, perhaps, particularly for scholar for somebody who's reading this, this particular text. Once we get something like the Hereford map, then we're talking about something that as you suggested, and it's conjectured reasonably enough that it could have been displayed in in Hereford Cathedral, actually, not as an octopus, but you know, something that could have been seen. On the other hand, if you've ever seen the Hereford map, I don't know how many of you have. And again, once interaction with it is actually quite limited, particularly limited now because a lot of the inscriptions have faded but even at the time getting close to it is actually quite hard. So in some ways. The maps such as the Hereford map are there to be seen, and not necessarily there always to be read, whereas probably the maps we're looking at in book form are at least intended, at least in theory to be kind of looked at and poured over. In terms of the, you know, the representation of the image of Britain, you know, as it were outside this, the study outside the library. So I think that's quite difficult to know, actually. And here we come down. I'll try and summarize this very briefly. So I know there are other questions coming but there is a debate between historians of cartography. On the one hand, there are historians of photography say maps are very, very rare in the Middle Ages. A map is, so maps that survive as a race, it's, it's a rare and precious object. People just wouldn't have seen them very much. And there's another school which is actually by the end of the Middle Ages, particularly maps for everywhere. There were maps, not I said I started by saying we have we are saturated with map, not to our level of saturation, but you know there would be a more or less a sort of a map in every parish church, that's an exaggeration, but something along those lines. So we have to, I think, kind of balance those two views, and also perhaps think about the fact that maps would have become more and increasingly widespread, increasingly familiar through the Middle Ages. So therefore one could conjecture, particularly these big war maps they really haven't survived very well, maps in books fine, anything on parchment is going to survive, but something like this is is much more sort of precarious. So, but I think we can summarize that it's decent chance that people, you know, even not particularly learned people would have had some sense of where Britain was in relation to all these things and the rest of the world. That's great. Thanks Alfred. I mean, how quickly things change. I was, when I first moved to London, I still had a A to Z that I carried around and now it's well thumbed but sits in a bookshelf. So, you know, it changes so quickly but maybe we could take a question from the room before going to going online. Does anyone have a question they wanted to kick off with. I'll go Jessica. I probably shouldn't jump in and write the first question but it's a follow up to what you just said so about the sort of minimalist baits if you will about the, you know, rare, you know rare versus a rare survival of something that was common. I suppose, if one thinks of them as being rare or certain kinds of maps as being rare at certain times. I guess it does raise the question of why they might have risen or what function they might have had in a particular environment. And so I guess I sort of wondered about that from a specifically institutional perspective. I mean, for example, do you think there's any significance to say the monastic. Survival of particularly early regional maps in monastic context specifically. Yes, I mean I think that I mean monasteries are in some ways the most likely place you're going to find maps, because so many medieval maps come basically with this kind of as part of a kind of classical inheritance as part of a way of understanding and also through this kind of legacy of geographical writing that comes from classical antiquity so in that from for those reasons I think it's not so surprising to find a monk like Matthew Paris but who is a pretty extraordinary mark this is the problem. You know, there's maybe only one of him who's the style who starts to construct me because it's not just his map of Brittany constructs a number of other maps and couldn't itinerary from Britain to the Holy Land. So it's obviously particularly interested in doing this, but it is partly coming from his engagement with history is his reading of high schools and late antique authors as well. So I think that is one reason why that happens but but it doesn't really, there's no particularly good reason why. In fact, I think you can turn that argument around could say that actually that it was the monasteries who are responsible for producing this kind of image this kind of world map. They didn't have that much interest necessarily in the kind of regional mapping. That's something that will be more of interest to kind of people who are administrative or maybe merchants, and they to I mean because it's really only the last part of middle ages, the last centuries in the West that you have a mapping, a regional mapping tradition, and it's coming from those sources as well, you know, administration, legal disputes, I mean these kinds of things that start to demand maps but that's really quite late. We look at the Arabic Islamic context and regional maps or that's, you know, really fundamental type of map. Thank you. Tom. Thanks so much. That was so clear and interesting. And my question, maybe overlaps too much with Lloyds and Jessica's but you referred you alluded to monumental maps, and I was thinking of those records we have of monumental map and Monday in like Henry III but in Barcelona and Siena and all these other places. And so my question for you, it kind of relates to the viewers and how they interact. I don't think any of those maps survive. But do you imagine that they would be very similar to these ones from cathedral or monastic context. Or do you imagine that they are at least functioning in a quite a different way and because there are some, I think larger more can suggest that the maps alter might be based on Henry III. So, basically the same thing but it just in different contexts or they fundamentally different do you think. So, yeah, I'm part of the sort of, I guess I, I, I, I sighed with the people who tried to break down sort of distinctions between, you know, a monastic view of the world and a sort of secular one, I think that I mean some of the people who refer to method Paris is among but he's, he's in Saint Albans, I mean he actually has conversations with the king. He's, you know, he's very well connected person and knows a lot about what's going on. He's very interested in the crusades, you know there's all sorts of he's really quite engaged in the world. I don't imagine those maps that those lost maps that you mentioned would be very different really from the kinds of maps that we find, you know, in in these manuscripts in, or in herford cathedral. But I mean if we look at say the Catalan atlas, that's a map that is that seems to be, well it's specifically commissioned by a monarch and for it would seem as a gift to the king of France and you could argue that they're the interests at least at this point in the middle ages the interest have changed somewhat that this is in part a kind of that there are commercial interests and as I emphasize political interests, and also interest in the east which I'm not showing on this image I'm sorry about that but which might be more the kinds of things that are, you know, a king. The monarch is interested in, but then again, the monks are also interested in that stuff. It's really hard to make this categorical distinction. Gentlemen just yeah. Yeah, I'm going to appreciate your, you know, your, your, your focusing on the view of England Britain. But just, and that's what these maps are showing Britain in its context and so on. But just as a matter of interest, I mean, were there more local maps, I mean I can imagine land owning and, and, and indeed I mean I don't know how people, if you went on a journey. How did they, how did they know where to go did they have a sort of just a trail of just a trail of sort of villages to move on to the next. Was that was there a sort of much more detailed local, local map industry going on. Yeah, I know it's a very good question. The short answer is no not really not really until the end of the Middle Ages, where we start to find a lot more local maps being produced. Again, this is partly the argument about survival and the argument some historians, you know the historians who say well there really weren't many maps in the Middle Ages to begin with would say well and that and therefore there are no local maps maps were not used, you know, used very much. And the historians who say on the other hand, actually there were quite a lot of maps in the Middle Ages would would even they would agree that local mapping does not seem to be happening at any, any significant extent until the end of the Middle Ages. So why isn't that the case why is it the case if it is the case there aren't that many local maps I mean there are some so produced they tend to be produced when there's illegal dispute, or when there's a need for some reason sometimes to do with constructing a history of a particular area, but again often it's to show like a monastery wants to show that we have right to fishing in the fishing in this stream. So we're going to actually construct the map, because we are the literate people and we can do this, and this is going to be even there it's not going to be used in evidence it's not evidence you can produce in a court. So therefore, the impetus to produce such maps really isn't there to the same extent. So our examples of local maps, but not as many as you would think, you might suppose, as for travel. It seems that people really didn't use maps to travel with in the Middle Ages, with the exception as a set of these sea charts and even there. There's a debate about how much they were used. How do people get around. I think that they used, you know, knowing ways knowing roads. I think also they relied on guides in areas where they weren't familiar with the territory. The maps were really kind of, they had much better ways to get around the maps and the maps that existed in the Middle Ages really wouldn't have helped them that much to navigate. So I think the answer would be they didn't they didn't need them. Actually, we need them. Because, you know, we're terrified of asking someone could you show me you know where is the Paul Mellon Center, I know I got to look on my map. So, but yeah. Should we see what people think online. Yes, thanks. Thanks Alfred. I've got a question from Melissa Herman, which is quite a broad question, but a really interesting one about to what extent these maps color or limit what we know about the history and about history in the period. What, how do they shape our perception of period and of the history of the period. Yes, that is a broad question. I mean, I think, I don't think maps shape our history. I think that on the contrary, our perception of medieval history has tended to shape the way we see maps. So for example, you know, it's quite standard to refer to something like the Hereford map as, you know, this is a kind of monastic slash ecclesiastical view of the world, or to use it as a kind of crass short hand to say this is the medieval view of the world. I mean, you know, Jerusalem was at the center. Paradise was at the East. Christ was sitting in judgment. That's all we need to know. So that's, you know, but what I hope I've tried to show is that it's much more diverse is much more pluralistic than than that. This is one view of the world in the Middle Ages, but you know there are lots of others and, and also there are a lot of people coming from different cultures as well. So, I don't know if that answers the question. The only other thing I would add in response I suppose is that maps are always tied to history in the way they're presented in Middle Ages so therefore you know you have historians. I mean, going back to, I mentioned very briefly erosius's history histories against the pagans you know he begins doesn't use a map, but he does produce a verbal map of the world he describes the world before beginning on his history of the world. So, yeah, so, so the description of places and the description of the world and then the representation of that in in visual form is really tied very strongly to historical writing in the Middle Ages and medieval people's own representation of history. Another question from Laura Girk who asks, asks you whether you know whether Britain was shown or indicated in any Asian or Chinese maps at the time. Hmm. I don't think so, but I could be wrong. So people, I'd be very happy to be corrected on that point. But if it is, it's very minimally represented. The map by Alidrisi is so detailed and this, this kind of what, where, where would he have gained that knowledge is it through travellers accounts or. I think that Alidrisi is working with two things principally he's working with. On the one hand, the tradition that comes from Ptolemy's geography so Claudius Ptolemy's second century AD geography, geography, which was known in the West but sort of the certain extent drops out of circulation in the Latin West, in the Middle Ages, right until the 15th century when it's translated into Latin, but which was taken up into the Arabic world Arabic, speaking and writing world, probably via Syriac translation. So he's actually things like he's what I think he's probably working with is a version of Ptolemy's maps, an Arabized version, you could say, and that might explain the particular formation of England here. And but what he also seems to be working with is more much more recent reports. And it's hard to know exactly what I mean he says that your Roger the second king of Sicily you know sent out travellers to and you know, people to various parts of the world to get gain information. That's probably an exaggeration, maybe not true at all. But he certainly at the, you know, the Norman court in Palermo would have had access to probably quite a bit of information and people from, you know, a direct experience of different parts of Europe. And that does seem to be reflected on his, on his maps so I think that's why we have places along the South Coast and, to some extent, up the East Coast, as well as you know me I didn't mention it but he also includes for instance he includes Durham on the map Oxford. These are not places in a sort of Mariner would have had experience of so it suggests maybe a kind of ecclesiastical, you know, contact there as well. Could any more questions on. Yeah, we have a with, again Laura Gerkes asked whether there are any city maps as might be used for city planning in the period that you know of. Not so much for city planning. Again, there are other ways of planning that they didn't require constructing maps but. But yeah, we do. Because we do start to see maps of cities again they tend to be from the later the later Middle Ages. I'm just trying to I don't we don't really but we don't really have anything. If it's you might think we would have a map of London medieval map of London. Really. So, again, much less than you would think. And I think this is telling us that the sorts of things that we expect almost and demand that there should be maps for travel, you know, local local maps maps of cities actually weren't being produced in the Middle Ages. I mean you have map like yeah obviously we have. Sorry, I should say the the Locust Classics here is the Holy Land of Jerusalem and maps of Jerusalem so there are many many maps of Jerusalem, particularly from the 12th century so particularly from period, you know, following the first crusade, the capture of Jerusalem. In this case, we have maps of Jerusalem we also have maps of Rome, again, tending to feature on Rome's historical features. So, for particular cities. Again ones with historical and the case of Jerusalem, and the case of Rome spiritual significance there we do have some, some city maps, but other cities much less so. I was thinking that you've been quite cautious about the interpretive possibilities of these maps in relation to I was just thinking about something like the math, the, the Matthew Paris map, and that succession of ecclesiastical buildings that run as you said like a spine of the center of the image. And, and I was wondering about what kind of mental world or inter imaginative world that would suggest on the part of the map maker or the map reader, where they did I imagine Britain is essentially a succession of such sites, succession of such buildings in their minds, and that this is a, this is an image of a territory that's imagined as a succession of buildings and the ecclesiastic buildings with the landscape very much in the backdrop rather than the landscape with this dotted with the map. So it's almost a kind of reversal of the way which we might tend to think of maps, and that's kind of encouraged by this focus on the succession of buildings. Yeah, I think that's definitely a possible reading of this and it is a really notable feature of this, particularly this version of Matthew's map that. Yeah, he does seem to just construct it around this kind of spine. I think that, certainly, the itinerary is an extremely important mapping tool and mapping device. Not the itinerary that you travel on yourself necessarily, but a succession of places of linked places. This is an absolutely fundamental part of geography from the classical era right through the Middle Ages. It does not require you to travel, but it might require you or it might involve you knowing distances in terms of, you know, a day's travel, a day's journey. This is Matthew, of course, himself constructs just such an itinerary from from London to Italy and then you know onwards to the Holy Land. So yes. But then what about Wales I mean, where are the buildings there I mean there you have a different, you know, a different topography I suppose I'm urging. So, I think, in part, what you're saying does work. And you could also look at something like the golf map. Yeah, you can start to see and you know construct I mean obviously this is what the red line is constructing these kinds of itineraries connections between places, successions of villages and towns, and so on. So yeah, definitely one way of mapping, but not the way because there was no, there was, there was no, there was no medieval mind. There were many medieval minds. This gentleman here. So, presumably in the medieval ages, people had some idea of spatial awareness of where things were. We typically organize our spatial awareness through maps now that maybe a very modern thing. If there weren't many maps around, how did they understand spatial awareness how they understand where the Holy Land was relative to France or Durham, or anywhere. Maybe the maps were more widespread than we think, or is it because we're organized by itineraries, but is there any sort of work on how in the medieval period people thought about spatial relations about awareness of where things were relative to each other. I mean, I think that that's a good question. I think first thing I would say is that just to emphasize really that this that is precisely what I think one function of maps were in the middle ages that it was not. I want to travel to the Holy Land. Therefore, I look at the Hereford map. Just as you know I don't use the golf map because I want to get from York to South Wales. But I use the map to see what their relationship is, and to know where one place is in relation to another place. I do think that is an important function that maps play. I mean, after all, why, why have a map at all. It's a lot harder to produce something like this, then it is to just write on a page and it's a lot, a lot less economic or both in terms of time and cost and everything. So, I think that's one reason for having that there are maps at all in the legs that it's talking you to do that. But I do think also that actually a lot can be done through verbal descriptions. I mean, one of it's argued that one of the functions, one of the things people learn when they study rhetoric, both in the classical era and middle ages as well, is where things are in the world. What, what is the relation between one place and another, so to the, you know, the good rhetoric and has an understanding of the extent of the known world and the disposition of places within it. So, that's a kind of learned person. If you're asking what somebody who doesn't go to school, what, what do they, how do they learn things. I mean, I think that there will be different levels of knowledge depending on what people do I imagine people locally have an extremely good sense of where things and good sense of spatial awareness using the stars, using, you know, the sun, things that sometimes we've kind of almost forgotten about how to use in terms of to locate ourselves in terms of, you know, locate other things. And the other final example I'll give is Chaucer describes a shipment, and he says this man knew every single port from, from Carthage probably means, you know, cut again in Spain, all the way to whole new more. And that, and okay that's a fictional example because Chaucer, but it's probably a kind of knowledge that is actually real. So somebody who, and not through a map, not through a map, but through actually, you know, traveling these routes time and time again. So it was possible to have extremely detailed knowledge, extraordinarily detailed spatial awareness without maps as well. I mean, bringing up Chaucer kind of also makes you think about one thing that you could talk about in relationship to these maps, which is the wider use of scientific instruments for navigation and Chaucer's Treaties in the Astrolabe and this idea that 14th century, at the same time as the Castle Atlas, you start to see far more of these objects starting to appear or at least in the kind of record. Absolutely. I mean, there's an argument that the sea charts are produced because of the use of the magnetic compass from the 12th century. Again, that's, that's somewhat disputed, but still, that's another instrument that starts to be coming to use. So yeah, and adds to the kind of level of sophistication. But yeah, I mean people obviously, I mean, this is the thing. People, if you read kind of like the accounts of even a sort of relatively minor, you know, monastery in England somewhere in the Middle Ages, you know, people are hot-footing it to Rome all the time, like there were all these kinds of big issues that have to be sorted out. In fact, we're off. There's a dispute. We're going to take this straight to the Pope. You know, so, and you think that people were traveling all the time. I mean, and they didn't seem, there wasn't a, oh my God, how do we get to Rome? Where is Rome? It's like, no, no, he's gone. No, he's following the route. I think there are some routes. I mean, some routes would have been very unknown and difficult, but other routes were just like, yeah, it was like, don't walk down the main street. Are there any other questions? I think if not, we should probably ask you to join me in thanking Alfred once more. For those of you who joined us online, thank you very much. And for those of you here, please come and join us downstairs for a glass of wine. Alfred, thank you.