The Hereford Map: Its Author(s), Two Scenes and a Border

Abstract

The Hereford Map is drawn upon a single pentangular skin of very high quality and, presumably, expense. It measures some 5′2″ by 4′4″ at its longest and widest points, and has, in addition to the world map from which it takes its name, a number of ornamented borders, inscriptions in Latin and Anglo-Norman, and illuminated scenes. The map thus has a great many claims to the attention of medieval historians, art historians and linguists, but I would single out three. Firstly, as a result of the loss of the Ebstorf Map, the Hereford Map is now die largest and most elaborate medieval mappa mundi known to have survived. Secondly, it is still one of the most difficult there is of the genre definitively to date, place and understand; this in the face of over more than one hundred and fifty years of effort on the part of a whole series of accomplished scholars and cartographers, effort of which the recent short and penetrating book by Professor Harvey is a triumphant example. Thirdly, though the map is rightly now regarded by the Hereford Cathedral Chapter as one of its greatest treasures, and is quite beautifully cared for and displayed in Hereford, we are still all a little hazy about how it got there in the first place. Professor Harvey suspects it may originally have been made in Lincoln, a suspicion to which I might perhaps now bring a little additional support. But if it was made in Lincoln, how, then, did it come to Hereford, when did it come and, perhaps most importantly of all, why?