The Tournai maps, often known as the Jerome maps, are a pair of maps with

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

labels found in a single late 12th-century

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

copy of

Jerome Jerome (; ; ; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was an early Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, theologian, translator, and historian; he is commonly known as Saint Jerome. He is best known ...

's Latin translation of Eusebius ''Onomasticon''. One map depicts the Holy Land (Palestine) while the other depicts Asia. Although the preface of the ''Onomasticon'' refers to a map of the Holy Land, the 12th-century map cannot be a faithful copy of such a map.Susan Weingarten, ''The Saint's Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome'' (Brill, 2005), pp. 207–208.

Description

There are 278 labels on the Asian map and 195 on the Palestinian map. The Asian map includes Greece and the eastern Mediterranean.Evelyn Edson, ''Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their World'' (The British Library, 1997), pp. 26–30. It extends as far east as

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

(Taprotane). It is in portrait format with east at the top. Asia Minor takes up an inordinate amount of space in the middle. The Palestinian map is also oriented east up, but is in landscape format. It covers an area stretching from the

Nile The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the List of river sy ...

to the

Ganges The Ganges ( ; in India: Ganga, ; in Bangladesh: Padma, ). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international which goes through India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China." is a trans-boundary rive ...

.P. D. A. Harvey
''Medieval Maps of the Holy Land''
(The British Library, 2012), pp. 40–59. There are few pictorial elements. Most cities are shown with generic towers, mountains with humps. The Trees of the Sun and Moon and the

Pillars of Hercules The Pillars of Hercules are the promontory, promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The northern Pillar, Calpe Mons, is the Rock of Gibraltar. A corresponding North African peak not being predominant, the identity of ...

are among the few "illustrative flights". The Hyrcanian forest is illustrated by trees. Noah's ark is shown on the map of Asia but only labelled on that of Palestine. The maps were intended as a supplement to the text. The labelling of the maps mainly reflects late Roman terminology rather than that of the 12th century. There is only one later name:

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

. It is equated with

Moesia Moesia (; Latin: ''Moesia''; ) was an ancient region and later Roman province situated in the Balkans south of the Danube River. As a Roman domain Moesia was administered at first by the governor of Noricum as 'Civitates of Moesia and Triballi ...

, where the Bulgars only settled in 678. There are mythological elements, such as an island of

Gorgons The Gorgons ( ; ), in Greek mythology, are three monstrous sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, said to be the daughters of Phorcys and Ceto. They lived near their sisters the Graeae, and were able to turn anyone who looked at them to stone ...

in the Red Sea. Rivers are always shown rising in mountains or springs in accordance with classical geography and the

Garden of Eden In Abrahamic religions, the Garden of Eden (; ; ) or Garden of God ( and ), also called the Terrestrial Paradise, is the biblical paradise described in Genesis 2–3 and Ezekiel 28 and 31.. The location of Eden is described in the Book of Ge ...

is not depicted. A natural hole in the

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared Tanning (leather), untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves and goats. It has been used as a writing medium in West Asia and Europe for more than two millennia. By AD 400 ...

was patched before the maps were drawn. The mapmaker used the hole to represent the island of

Crete Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

on the Asian map and the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...

on the Palestinian map.

History

The manuscript is now number 10049 of the

Additional manuscripts The Additional manuscripts is a collection of manuscripts stored at the British Library. The collection was started at the British Museum in 1756, and passed to the British Library on its establishment in 1973. They form by far the largest collecti ...

in the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

in London. The maps are found on the recto and verso (front and back) of the last

folio The term "folio" () has three interconnected but distinct meanings in the world of books and printing: first, it is a term for a common method of arranging Paper size, sheets of paper into book form, folding the sheet only once, and a term for ...

, number 64. It was produced at Saint Martin's Abbey in Tournai for the abbey's own library. The book of "Jerome on the Hebrew names in one volume" that is mentioned in the library catalogue for 1159 may be this work. The current maps are not the original drawings but are

palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid ski ...

s. Before the end of the 12th century, an earlier map of Palestine on the recto was erased to make room for the map of Asia. Likewise, a map of Palestine on the verso was partially erased and redrawn to produce the current (third) map of Palestine. It cannot be determined which of the earlier two maps of Palestine was drawn first, but the parchment patch was added after the first map on the recto was drawn. Both erased maps were drawn before the map of Asia. All the maps were the work of a single mapmaker, as the consistent handwriting attests. There are, across both maps, only eight labels that were added over subsequent centuries. The Tournai maps are extracts from a

world map A world map is a map of most or all of the surface of Earth. World maps, because of their scale, must deal with the problem of projection. Maps rendered in two dimensions by necessity distort the display of the three-dimensional surface of t ...

, but the erased maps and the final maps were based on different source maps. The model for the final maps is lost but a description of it survives in a 12th-century north Italian manuscript, now Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, IV.D.21. The text itself was written at the abbey of Bobbio in the 11th century. The world map that the writer saw is recorded in a catalogue of the library of Bobbio from 1461. It was "in the Irish style" and in "Lombard script", indicating that it was of great age. It may be the 'book of cosmography' recorded in a 9th-century library catalogue. The lost map of Bobbio and the model for the Tournai maps both go back to a map created at the abbey of Iona between the 6th and 8th centuries, itself based on a continental world map, tentatively linked to

Eucherius of Lyon Eucherius (c. 380c. 449) was a high-born and high-ranking ecclesiastic in the Christian church in Roman Gaul. He is remembered for his letters advocating extreme self-abnegation. From 439, he served as Archbishop of Lyon, and Henry Wace ranked h ...

.Patrick Gautier-Dalché
"Eucher de Lyon, Iona, Bobbio: le destin d'une ''mappa mundi'' de l'antiquité tardive"
''Viator'' 41 (2010): 1–22. The manuscript remained at the abbey until its dissolution in 1796, after which it passed through the hands of Amans-Alexis Monteil before being acquired by the British Library in 1836. The first study of the maps was published by in 1895, arguing that they were copies of Jerome's original maps, themselves based on Eusebius' maps. There is no evidence, however, that either Jerome or Eusebius produced maps of Palestine or Asia.

References

{{reflist 12th-century maps Maps of Palestine (region)