Christian Maps of the Holy Land: Images and Meanings by Pnina Arad

Abstract

Reviewed by: Christian Maps of the Holy Land: Images and Meanings by Pnina Arad Judith Collard Arad, Pnina, Christian Maps of the Holy Land: Images and Meanings (Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 28), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020; paperback; pp. xxv, 176; 62 b/w illustrations, 11 colour plates, R.R.P. €80.00; ISBN 9782503585260. In this book Pnina Arad focuses on representations of the Holy Land in Christian and Jewish visual culture. Since much of the discussion about maps of the Holy Land have tended to be written with an interest in cartography and historical geography, this has meant that questions about geographical accuracy have played a significant part in the discussion of such works. While a growing knowledge about the reliability of maps, and questions around accuracy, has been of interest, maps in the medieval and early modern periods were also interested in depicting broader questions of cultural concerns, such as religious questions. As is signalled by the book’s title, Christianity and the meanings imposed on the region of the Holy Land are the focus of Arad’s study. The book is well illustrated and provides extensive images from the sixth century through to the nineteenth, including Byzantine, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Greek Orthodox examples. It is set out chronologically, beginning with the sixth-century floor mosaic known as the Madaba Map from Jordan. This Byzantine mosaic is found before the apse of the church of St George in Madaba and is the only known regional map from late antiquity. Arad argues that the map emphasizes its Christological nature by showing the Church of the Holy Sepulchre but not the Temple, perhaps using this erasure to underline the idea of the primacy of Christianity over Jewish beliefs. The second collection of maps Arad examines are described as innovative Western spiritual iconographies, being devised in the West after the establishment of the short-lived Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1099. There were three types of maps that were predominant from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. These are: the twelfth-century maps of the Holy Land that were dominated by a circular, disproportionately large Jerusalem; Matthew Paris’s versions of the Holy Land found in his chronicles; and grid maps from the fourteenth century. Ten versions of the twelfth-century circular maps have survived; each was attached to a variety of texts including pilgrimage guides, chronicles, religious texts, and encyclopedic compilations. The focus on Jerusalem also meant that only a small number of additional towns or features were included, and these were similar and mainly derived from the New Testament. There is also a close alignment with pilgrimage guides. From the mid-thirteenth century, the maps found in Matthew Paris’s chronicles are quite different in type, placing the Holy Land within a wider geographical context including the countries surrounding it. Arad also briefly [End Page 217] summarizes several interpretations of these maps, including those by Daniel Connolly and Katherine Breen, which both suggest that these maps ‘functioned as a device for conducting an imaginary journey’ (p. 46). Neither the proponents, nor Arad, address the difficulties such an interpretation presented for the reader, given the size and weight of the manuscripts, although perhaps such a use may have been possible before the works were bound. She also suggests that these maps, along with the grid maps she then discusses, may also be influenced by pilgrimage accounts. In the case of Matthew Paris’s maps, I suspect that these accompanied history texts and that a major source for Paris were crusaders and other travellers, especially given the information he provides on Acre, an important centre for his contemporaries. Marino Sanudo’s Liber secretorum fidelium crucis contained a larger set of maps, including a world map. Sanudo was interested in crusading, and the grid that featured on his map was useful for military planning and provided the framework for an index found in his book. Pilgrimage plays a central role in the next chapter, which deals with fifteenth-century maps, including early printed examples. Two maps, those of Gabriele Capodilista and Bernard von Breydenbach, were included in their accounts of their journeys, while that...