The sea monsters in the Madrid manuscript of Ptolemy's Geography (Biblioteca Nacional, MS Res. 255)

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 – For example, Wilma B. George, Animals and Maps (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 25, explicitly excludes sea monsters from the subjects she addresses. Some discussion of the symbolism of sea monsters in non-cartographic medieval contexts is supplied by G.F. Snyder, ‘Sea monsters in early Christian art,’ Biblical Research, 44 (1999), pp. 7–21. Dahlia Peeri, ‘Marine animals and monsters in maritime cartography from the 15th to the 17th centuries,’ MA thesis, Department of Maritime Civilizations, University of Haifa, 1996 (in Hebrew), focuses on Dutch printed maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I am currently working on a study of sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps. 2 – Marcel Destombes, Mappemondes, A.D. 1200–1500 (Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1964), pp. 247–8. 3 – See R.A. Skelton, ‘A contract for world maps at Barcelona, 1399–1400,’ Imago Mundi, 22 (1968), pp. 107–13, esp. pp. 108 and 111. 4 – A chart of Beccari's from 1403 survives (New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library, Art Object 1980.158), but it does not include any representations of sea monsters. There is a high-resolution image of the chart in the Beinecke's online collection of digital images and also in Ramon J. Pujades i Bataller, Les cartes portolanes: la representació medieval d'una mar solcada (Barcelona: Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, 2007), on the accompanying DVD, number C25. 5 – For illustrations of the sea monsters in the ceiling panels at Zillis see for example Diether Rudloff, Zillis: die romanische Bilderdecke der Kirche St. Martin (Basel: P. Heman, 1989), also published under the title Kosmische Bildwelt der Romanik: die Kirchendecke von Zillis (Stuttgart: Urachhaus Johannes M. Mayer, 1989). 6 – One illustrated manuscript of Thomas's work has been reproduced in facsimile, as Thomas of Cantimpré, De natura rerum (lib. IV–XII), por Tomas de Cantimpre. Tacuinum sanitatis: codice C-67 (fols. 2v-116r) de la Biblioteca Universitaria de Granada (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1973–1974); and another in a microfilm edition as Thomas of Cantimpré, De natura rerum, Farbmikrofiche-Edition der Handschrift Würzburg, Universitäts-Bibliothek, M. ch. f. 150, ed. Christian Hünemörder (Munich: Ed. Lengenfelder, 2001). Illustrations of the sea monsters in Valenciennes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 320, and Prague, Klementinum Library MS XIV A 15, are reproduced in Thomas of Cantimpré, De monstris marinis (De natura rerum VI) = Morská monstra (O prírode VI), ed. and trans. Hana Šedinová (Prague: OIKOYMENH, 2008). On illustrated manuscripts of Thomas's work generally see Deborah Gatewood, ‘Illustrating a thirteenth-century natural history encyclopedia: the pictorial tradition of Thomas of Cantimpré’s De natura rerum and Valenciennes Municipal Library Manuscript 320,’ PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2000. 7 – Albinia Catherine de la Mare, ‘Observations on two Italian manuscripts from Madrid recently exhibited in the Bodleian,’ Bodleian Library Record, 12, no. 3 (1986), pp. 242–7. Medium-resolution images of all of the folios of the manuscript are available through the online catalog of the Biblioteca Nacional. 8 – Incidentally Jena, Universitätsbibliothek, MS El. f. 80, f. 195v, the illustration of Book 13 on water and fish in a manuscript of Jean Corbechon's translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, has some fish and a sea monster painted in a style very similar to those in the Madrid Ptolemy. This image is reproduced in Christel Meier, ‘Bilder der Wissenschaft: Die Illustration des Speculum maius von Vinzenz von Beauvais im enzyklopädischen Kontext,’ Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 33 (1999), pp. 252–86 and figures 29–102, in plate 19, figure 67, with very brief mention of it on p. 272. As this manuscript was produced c. 1400, about 55 years before the Madrid Ptolemy, it is difficult to know what to make of this similarity, but the similarity nonetheless is striking. 9 – On horror vacui as a motivation for adding illustrations to medieval maps see Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ‘Weltbild der lateinischen Universalhistoriker und –kartographen,’ in Popoli e paesi nella cultura altomedievale: 23–29 aprile 1981 (Spoleto: Presso la Sede del Centro, 1983), pp. 377–408, esp. 403; and also her Kartographische Quellen, Welt-, See-, und Regionalkarten (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988), pp. 50 and 96–7; and ‘Fines Terrae’: Die Enden der Erde und der vierte Kontinent auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1992), p. 93. 10 – Indeed, the sea monsters in the Madrid Ptolemy have a bit of the feel of the drawings in a model book. The best discussion of model books is Robert Scheller, Exemplum: Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900–ca. 1470), trans. Michael Hoyle (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995). 11 – Uwe Ruberg, ‘Die Tierwelt auf der Ebstorfer Weltkarte im Kontext mittelalterlicher Enzyklopädik,’ in Ein Weltbild vor Columbus. Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte. Interdisziplinäres Colloquium 1988, ed. Hartmut Kugler and Eckhard Michael (Weinheim: VCH, 1991), pp. 319–46. He shows connections between the Ebstorf mappamundi and the twelfth-century text De bestiis et aliis rebus, and also the bestiary Cambridge University Library MS Ii.4.26, which is reproduced in facsimile in M.R. James, ed., The Bestiary; Being a Reproduction in Full of the Manuscript Ii.4.26 in the University Library, Cambridge (Oxford: Printed for the Roxburghe Club, by J. Johnson at the University Press, 1928). 12 – See Naomi Reed Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought: The Hereford Paradigm (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2001), chapter 4,‘The world of animals’; Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘De ignotis quarumdam bestiarum naturis. Texts and images from the bestiary on mediaeval maps of the world,’ in Animals and the Symbolic in Medieval Art and Literature, ed. L.A.J.R. Houwen (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1997), pp. 189–208; Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Hic nulli habitant propter leones et ursos et pardes et tigrides. Die Zoologie der mappae mundi,’ in Dämonen, Monster, Fabelwesen, ed. Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich (St. Gall: UVK-Fachverlag für Wissenschaft und Studium, 1999), pp. 89–102; and Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Animals in context: beasts on the Hereford Map and medieval natural history,’ in The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and their Context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London: British Library, 2006), pp. 153–65. 13 – For the text on sirens in the Tuscan Bestiary see Santiago Sebastiá, El Fisiólogo atribuido a San Epifanio seguido del Bestiario Toscazo, trans. A. Serrano i Donet and J. Sanchís i Carbonell (Madrid: Ediciones Thero, 1986), pp. 23–4. 14 – The Catalan bestiary is Barcelona, Biblioteca de la Universidad de Barcelona, MS 75, and the passage on sirens in f. 164v. The text describing sirens in this manuscript is transcribed by Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez, ‘Imagen y conocimiento del mundo en la Edad Media a través de la cartografía hispana,’ PhD dissertation, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2007, Vol. 1, pp. 705–6; it is also transcribed and translated into English by Catherine Fountain, ‘From a Catalan bestiary: De la natura de la çerena,’ Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics, 17 (1999), pp. 10–3. 15 – For general discussion of drolleries see Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 16 – Given the artist's fondness for sirens, their absence from the maps between ff. 78v and 103r is curious. 17 – Edward Lynam reproduces the maps of this edition, but mostly in their first state, in The First Engraved Atlas of the World, the Cosmographia of Claudius Ptolemaeus, Bologna, 1477 (Jenkintown: The George H. Beans Library, 1941), with a list of the known copies of this edition in Appendix A and a table of the states of the maps in the various copies in Appendix B. The copy in the Morgan Library, most of whose maps are in the second state, was subsequently reproduced in facsimile as Ptolemy, Cosmographia: Bologna, 1477, with an introduction by R.A. Skelton (Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1963). Skelton's introduction is brief (pp. v–xii), and neither he nor Lynam addresses the sea creatures; Skelton includes on p. xii an updated list of known copies of this edition. 18 – The sea horse is described by Isidore 12.6.9 and Thomas of Cantimpré 6.18. For a full discussion of the history of the animal see Caroline Février, ‘De l'hippokampos à l'equus marinus. Le cheval de mer, ou les vicissitudes d'une figure double,’ Schedae, 3 (2009), pp. 33–46. 19 – Incidentally Gastaldi's nine-sheet world map titled Cosmographia Universalis et Exactissima iuxta postremam neotericorum traditio[n]em, probably published in Venice by Matteo Pagano c. 1561, which is preserved in a single known copy, British Library Maps C.18.n.1, has a great variety of sea monsters. This map is reproduced in Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps 1472–1700 (London: Holland Press, 1983), pp. 124–5, with discussion on pp. 122–3. 20 – The Hortus sanitatis ‘major’ is to be distinguished from the Hortus sanitatis ‘minor,’ which is a Latin translation of the German herbal often titled Gart der Gesundheit, first published by P. Schoeffer, Mainz, 1485. The herbal published in 1485 has 435 chapters, whereas the Ortus Sanitatis ‘major’ of 1491 has 1066 chapters. There is some very brief discussion of the different editions of each work in J. Christian Bay, ‘Hortus sanitatis,’ Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 11, no. 2 (1917), pp. 57–60, but his paper is in essence a call for further research; details about and discussion of the early editions of the Hortus Sanitatis are provided by Arnold C. Klebs, ‘Herbals of 15th Century,’ Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 11 (1917), pp. 75–92, and 12 (1918), pp. 41–57, esp. pp. 48–51 and 54–7. There is a more detailed discussion in Joseph Frank Payne, ‘On the “Herbarius” and “Hortus sanitatis”’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 6, no. 1 (1901), pp. 63–126, esp. pp. 105–24. 21 – The standard edition of Thomas of Cantimpré is Thomas de Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum (Berlin and New York: DeGruyter, 1973); in this edition the passage is on p. 237. 22 – There is also a nice illustration of a canis marinus on the folio introducing the section on fish in the bestiary which is Oxford, MS Bodley 764, f. 106r; this folio is reproduced in Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford M.S. Bodley 764: With All the Original Miniatures Reproduced in Facsimile, trans. Richard Barber (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993), p. 201. And there is an illustration of a canis marinus on the corresponding folio of Cambridge, University Library MS Ii. 4.26, f. 54r, which is reproduced in M.R. James, The Bestiary: A Reproduction in Full of MS Ii. 4.26 in the University Library, Cambridge. 23 – See Georges Duby, Giovanni Romano, and Chiara Frugoni, Battistero di Parma (Milan: Franco Maria Ricci, 1992–93), Vol. 1, figures 57 and 58. The canis marinus is also illustrated at the opening of the chapter on sea creatures in the edition of Conrad von Megenberg's Buch der Natur published in Augsburg by Johann Schönsperger 1499; this edition is available on the Internet site of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, at http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg300/ 24 – On two-tailed sirens see Edmond Faral, ‘La queue de poisson des Sirènes,’ Romania, 74 (1953), pp. 433–506; Ilaria Domenici, ‘Osservazioni sopra un caso di permanenza iconografica: antecedenti e varianti della sirena bicaudata romanica,’ Bollettino della Società Pavese di Storia Patria, 96 (1996), pp. 149–54; and there is a wealth of images of two-tailed sirens in Jacqueline Leclercq-Marx, La sirène dans la pensée et dans l'art de l'Antiquité et du Moyen Âge: du mythe païen au symbole chrétien (Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique, 1997), passim, with some discussion of the motif on pp. 102–3, 175, and 201. 25 – On the spots of the murena or lamprey see Pliny 9.39.76, who is quoted by Thomas of Cantimpré 7.49; and also Albertus Magnus, De animalibus 24.74. A lamprey with spots is illustrated in what is more or less a map of St John on Patmos in the thirteenth-century Douce Apocalypse, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 180, p. 1. This manuscript has been reproduced in facsimile as Vollständige Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat der Handschrift Ms. Douce 180, Apokalypse, aus dem Besitz der Bodleian Library, Oxford (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, and Paris: Club du livre, 1981). 26 – I cite the ceiling panels in Zillis according to the scheme in the works of Diether Rudloff cited above in note 5. 27 – There is a two-tailed male siren or merman in a mid-twelfth-century capital from Roussillon, now in New York at The Cloisters, 25.120.614. Thomas E.A. Dale, ‘Monsters, corporeal deformities, and phantasms in the Cloister of St-Michel-de-Cuxa,’ The Art Bulletin, 83, no. 3 (2001), pp. 402–36, esp. p. 434, mentions the male siren, referring to David L. Simon, ‘Romanesque sculpture in North American collections. XXIV. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Part IV: Pyrenees,’ Gesta, 25, no. 2 (1986), pp. 245–76, esp. p. 271 with figure 65, who indicates that the siren has a double serpentine tail. Unfortunately Simon's illustration of the capital does not show the siren. For other illustrations of two-tailed mermen see Leclercq-Marx, La sirène dans la pensée et dans l'art de l'Antiquité et du Moyen Âge, p. 144, figure 82, p. 200, figure 151, and p. 272, figure 137, with discussion on pp. 142 and 200; also see the illustration of Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 581, f. 134r in color figure 6 of Richard Stoneman, Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 28 – The zonal map appears in Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Cod. E Leg. Peirz, F° 2, f. 45r; it is reproduced in Destombes, Mappemondes, plate 4. 29 – This folio is reproduced in Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford M.S. Bodley 764: With All the Original Miniatures Reproduced in Facsimile, trans. Richard Barber (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993), p. 201. 30 – E.G. Ravenstein, Martin Behaim, his Life and his Globe (London: G. Philip & Son, Ltd., 1908), includes a tracing of the whole surface of the globe, and also see the photographs of the whole surface of the globe in ‘Der Behaim-Globus zu Nürnberg. Eine Faksimile-Wiedergabe in 92 Enzelbilden’, Ibero-amerikanisches Archiv, 17 (1943), pp. 1–48. 31 – There is a siren similar to this latter stern-looking siren in the illustration introducing the section on fish and sea creatures in the Alnwick Bestiary of c. 1250, which is now in a private collection; this folio is reproduced in Eric G. Millar, A Thirteenth Century Bestiary in the Library of Alnwick Castle (Oxford: Roxburghe Club, 1958), plate 68; and in Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought, p. 122. 32 – A somewhat similar creature is illustrated in Lilian M.C. Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), figure 730, from a manuscript of c. 1300 in the Rothschild collection. 33 – The best published collection of drolleries is Randall's Images in the Margins, just cited. 34 – The Lenox globe is in the New York Public Library and is illustrated in Nordenskiöld, Facsimile-Atlas, p. 75; see B.F. de Costa, ‘The Lenox globe’, Magazine of American History, 3, no. 9 (1879), pp. 529–40, reprinted in Acta Cartographica, 4 (1969), pp. 120–34, who identifies this sea creature as a whale on p. 535/128. 35 – Mecia de Viladestes's chart is reproduced in Gabriel Marcel, Choix de cartes et de mappemondes des XIVe et XVe siècles (Paris: E. Leroux, 1896); Youssef Kamal, Monumenta cartographica Africae et Aegypti (Cairo, 1926–1951), Vol. 4, fasc. 3. ff. 1367v–1368r; and Ramon J. Pujades i Bataller, Les cartes portolanes: la representació medieval d'una mar solcada (Barcelona: Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya, 2007), pp. 202–3 and on the accompanying DVD, number C30. Viladestes’ legend describing the process of whaling is transcribed by Sáenz-López Pérez, ‘Imagen y conocimiento del mundo’, Vol. 1, p. 499 (see note 14), who discusses the text and image on pp. 499–504; the legend is translated into English by Fridtjof Nansen, In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times, trans. Arthur G. Chater (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1911), Vol. 2, p. 234. On the depiction of whaling on Pierre Desceliers’ map of 1546 see Charles A. Martijn, Selma Barkham, and Michael M. Barkham, ‘Basques? Beothuk? Innu? Inuit? or St. Lawrence Iroquoians? The whalers on the 1546 Desceliers Map, seen through the eyes of different beholders’, Newfoundland Studies, 19, no. 1 (2003), pp. 187–206. 36 – The maps Asia 5 and Asia 6 are found between Asia 11 and Asia 12; evidently the order of the maps was changed when the manuscript was re-bound at some point. 37 – The ‘Genoese’ world map is reproduced in Cristoforo Colombo e l'apertura degli spazi, Vol. 1, pp. 492–3. There is now a facsimile edition of the map, with a new transcription and translation of the legends by Angelo Cattaneo, in Mappa mundi 1457 (Rome: Treccani, 2008). For the legend on the porcus marinus on the ‘Genoese’ map see Edward Luther Stevenson, Genoese World Map, 1457 (New York: American Geographical Society and Hispanic Society of America, 1912), p. 55. On the porcus marinus see Isidore Etymologiae 12.6.12, now available in English as The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W.J. Lewis, J.A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), where the porcus marinus is on p. 260; and Thomas of Cantimpré, De natura rerum 7.64. The porcus marinus also appears in Transitional, Second Family, and Third Family bestiaries; for their description in Second Family bestiaries see Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), p. 207; and the creature is also illustrated as a fish-pig in the bestiary which is St. Petersburg, Public Library, MS Lat. Q v V 1, f. 69v; this image is reproduced in Wilma George and Brunsdon Yapp, The Naming of the Beasts: Natural History in the Medieval Bestiary (London: Duckworth, 1991), p. 97, and the manuscript has been reproduced in facsimile as Bestiario de San Petersburgo (Moscow: Biblioteca Nacional de Rusia, and Madrid: A y N, 2003). 38 – In the illustration of the dolphin in the Hortus Sanitatis, the creature actually has its face in its belly, evidently an attempt to depict the creature's eyes in its back, which is where the text says they are located (Delphini oculos habent in dorso), though in fact the image agrees better with Pliny 9.7.20 and Thomas of Cantimpré 6.16, who say that dolphins have their faces in their bellies.