This study, written to coincide with the quincentenary ... Leggi tutto

This study, written to coincide with the quincentenary in 1992 of the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, examines a vast range of medieval texts, and, first and foremost, pictorial representations (some 84 maps are considered), which demonstrate Western conceptions of the stage upon which human history has been played out (the «Ecumene»), its outer limits, and what was believed to lie beyond, from the fourth to the fifteenth century, when Ptolomaean cartography first became known to the Latin West. The A.'s very comprehensive chronological investigation of world-cartography pinpoints the strong continuity of early Greek cosmography (and hence the idea of the earth as spherical), as formulated by the Pythagoreans, Parmenides and the other pre-socratic philosophers, mediated to the textbooks of the medieval West by Martianus Capella and Macrobius. The survey is followed by a summing-up, pursuing several lines of enquiry: the positioning of the limits of the known world, the almost universal tendency to underestimate the ratio of water to land, and the placing and depiction of the unknown and unknowable fourth continent and its mysterious population. The authors examined are too numerous to list in full here, although prominent among them is Isidore of Seville, whose formulation of the so-called TO-map, and of a zone- or climate-map was highly influential. The earliest surviving map from the Latin Middle Ages, an example of the former type of Isidorean map, is a palimpsest from Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 237, f. 1, datable to the eighth century. (Rosalind Love)
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Tra i testi che tradiscono riprese dal Liber ... Leggi tutto

Tra i testi che tradiscono riprese dal Liber glossarum, si segnalano le Glosae de diversis doctoribus collectae in Regulam sancti Benedicti abbatis ad usum Smaragdi Sancti Michaelis abbatis (impiegate da Smaragdo per scrivere l'Expositio in Regulam sancti Benedicti); i Commentaria in libros II Paralipomenon di Rabano Mauro; il De situ orbis; il De corpore et sanguine Domini di Ratramno di Corbie; i commenti a Isaia, a Ezechiele, ai Romani di Aimone di Auxerre; le glosse di Eirico di Auxerre ai codici Paris, BNF, lat. 7496 (Ars grammatica Prisciani) e London, BL, Harley 2735 (Liber glossarum); il Perpendiculum di Attone di Vercelli; l'Elementarium di Papia; lo Speculum doctrinale di Vincenzo di Beauvais (attraverso l'interpolazione delle Etymologiae nel codice Paris, BNF, lat. 11864). Inoltre si considerano anonime glosse a Prisciano nel ms. Vat. Reg. lat. 1650), interpolazione a Isidoro nel ms. Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibl., 237, le glosse ai codici Karlsruhe, BLB, Aug. Perg. CCXLVIII e Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibl., 295.
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Il rec. ricorda i mss.: Bern, Burgerbibl., 1; Vat. ... Leggi tutto

Il rec. ricorda i mss.: Bern, Burgerbibl., 1; Vat. Arch. Cap. S. Pietro D. 217; Vat. Reg. lat. 191; Vat. lat. 5765; El Escorial, Real Bibl. de San Lorenzo, d.I.1; Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibl., 189; Karlsruhe, BLB, Aug. Perg. CCLIV; Lucca, Capitolare, 490; München, BSB, Clm 18524b; Paris, BNF, lat. 2341; Rouen, BM, I. 49 (524); Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibl., 237; Sankt Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibl., 5/1; Sankt-Peterburg, Rossijskaja Nacional'naja Bibl., lat. Q.v.I.15; Würzburg, UB, M.p.th.q. 18
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