Eucher de Lyon, Iona, Bobbio: Le destin d’une mappa mundi de l’antiquité tardive

Abstract

The textual description of a mappa mundi, preserved in a twelfth-century manuscript from northern Italy (Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale IV.D.21), presents striking similarities with the two regional maps (Asia Minor and Palestine), erroneously assigned to Saint Jerome (British Library Addit. 10049, 12th c.). Two catalogues of the Bobbio library mention a liber I cosmographie (9th c.) and a “world map in Irish tradition and Lombard script [= pre-Caroline minuscule]” (1461). This article argues that the model is a mappa mundi made in Iona, Saint Columba’s foundation (565), perhaps during abbot Adomnán’s lifetime (d. 704), as the description contains a unique list of the Hebrides. Moreover, like the maps, the text refers to the Theban legion and the Desert Fathers’ Thebaid. These last subjects interested Eucherius of Lyon (5th c.). On that grounds the author presents the hypothesis that the ultimate model was elaborated by Eucherius or his circle or, at least, in an environment influenced by his exegesis methods.