Hereford Cathedral; Mappa Mundi

 Hereford Cathedral; Mappa Mundi

 

Hereford Cathedral has a couple of local saints (one martyred in Saxon times; the other generally holy in medieval times), a construction of tough red sandstone, and, among other more traditional memorials, a shrine to the SAS, whose “home” town is the city. (the SAS even get their own modern stained-glass window.) I suppose the SAS monument is in the long tradition of military church memorials, especially those of armoured medieval knights whose effigies rest in repose. The Cathedral is surrounded by beautiful gardens.

 

The Cathedral’s unique treasures include one of the original copies of the Magna Carta. It is the second edition of 1217 (the first effort of 1215 was quickly withdrawn). In this more durable version, the provision relied on by extreme Covid deniers (allegedly permitting refusal of the King’s Law) had been dropped (see blog of 18^th March 2021).

 

There is the Chained Library, a collection of books both sacred and profane that are chained to their shelves. I was expecting the books to be broadly “medieval”, but their dates go up to relatively recent times – the end of the C18.

 

The chaining aspect was, or is, a pragmatic forerunner of the modern scanners employed in non-lending libraries (like the British Library). The chains affixed to volumes or manuscripts prevented any absent-minded wandering off with something tucked under your arm or in your satchel. But there are always those equipped with a surreptitious knife or razor, in order to remove some finely illustrated page or parchment (this happened to the Cathedral’s oldest illuminated bible).

 

Whatever the effectiveness of the restraints, there’s something distinctly unsettling about a chained book. A metaphor for censorship is suggested, and such an implication would have been justified, in terms of religious intolerance, for much, if not most, of the Cathedral’s history. Hopefully that is no longer true; and there are no volumes of modern origin in chains.

 

There’s the Hereford Mappa Mundi. This is an initially very incomprehensible, schematic “map” of “the world” from the C13. In no way can an untutored modern eye make sense of it.

 

You have to disabuse yourself of several preconceptions. This is not a map to guide mariners or other wayfarers (there would have been plenty of contemporary ones). Nor is it an attempt to survey borders of kingdoms, or regions or cities.

 

The Mappa Mundi is a picture of a concept – the Medieval Christian conception of the inhabited Earth in relation to the cosmos, and to Heaven and Hell.

 

So… the “inhabited Earth” consists of Europe, Asia and Africa – but only, roughly speaking, the Northern Hemisphere. Southwards, all was uninhabitable and to be ignored. Also the extreme North – forget the Arctic. 

 

The perspective of the Mappa is therefore a bird’s eye view of the truncated World, as if from the non-existent North Pole. The known lands are spread in in a plane, encircled by the Cosmos. (This conception is consistent with an understanding of the Earth as a sphere, rather than flat.)

Here's an overview

 And here's 2 halves, in better close up

On the Mappa, the East, Asia, is at the top, the West, Europe, at the bottom left, and Africa at bottom right. Places are marked, such as London, Paris, and, indeed, Hereford. The latter is rather indistinct. It is thought that excited fingers, over the centuries, too closely pointed out their City and wore away the image.

 

The Mappa being the schema of a worldview, religious imagery is most prominent. At the centre of the Mappa is the Holy City, Jerusalem; at the top, in eastern Asia, are images of the Earthly Paradise and the expulsion of Adam and Eve. Immediately above those, in the Cosmic sphere, are scenes from the Last Judgment- the blessed clothed in glory; the wicked led naked to the mouth of Hell.

 

The maker of the Mappa does not confine the non- geographic detail to the religious. Mythological, historical and contemporary wonders are illustrated – Jason and the golden fleece, for example, and marvellous creatures such as elephants, rhinoceroses and unicorns.

 

The maker of the Mappa must have been proud of his artistic achievement, and proud that his work was displayed in the great Cathedral. One wonders what he would think to learn that the best way for the modern visitor to continue contemplation of, and learning about, the Mappa, is to buy a couple of tea towels.

 

One tea towel has a facsimile of that part of the Mappa that contains England, and Hereford.

The other is a sort of translation of the Mappa into modern English. It is a truthful outline of the whole, with the main images included, but not in close facsimile. Other details are placed as numbers, which correspond to those on a crib sheet that explains what was depicted in the original.

One tea towel may be thought of as a Shroud of the Mappa; the other as a codification of its Articles of fact and faith.

 

June 2021