Mappamundi of Lambert of St. Omer
description: Description of the Liber Floridus mappamundi: There are three existing manuscripts of the Liber Floridus: the original in Ghent that was made before 1125 (1120 is generally agreed upon) and likely written by Lambert himself, and the Wolfenbüttel and Paris copies. Only the Ghent copy does not contain a full mappamundi; the Wolfenbüttel and Paris copies both have a mappamundi but they differ slightly from each other. This Omeka entry (and description) is on the Wolfenbüttel mappamundi. Very little is known about the author Lambert, except that he was a Benedictine monk in the early 12th century in what is now Norhter France, he was selected to be the Canon of St. Omer, and that he created the Liber Floridus. The mappamundi is a 30cm x 43cm circle map, oriented with East on top and taking up almost a full spread of the Liber Floridus manuscript. It features four colors: turquoise/ocean green (water), white (land), light red (mountains and borders), and black (outlines and place labels). An encircling ocean surrounds the entire map in turquoise, which in turn is surrounded by a red line, suggesting an unpassable barrier. The map is divided into two sections by the equator (along the manuscript gutter), with a red line from top left to bottom right marking the sun’s ecliptic. When looking at an open manuscript or book, the verso is the left page (or back of the previous page) and the recto is the right page (or front of the next page). This mappamundi is considered a zone map, although the verso taken alone resembles a T-O map: the bottom half is bisected by the vertical Mediterranean which leads upwards to a horizontal body of water which is a combination of the Black, Aegean, and Red seas. Asia is the upper half of the verso, while Africa is the bottom right quadrant, and Europe is the bottom left. The verso is full of small rivers and mountains, but some bodies of water like the Nile and the Tyrrhenian Sea are emphasized. The southern half of the map (on the recto) is…
creator: Lambert of St. Omer
source: Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 1 Gud. Lat, 144-145. f.69v-70r
publisher: Lambert. Der “Liber floridus” in Wolfenbüttel : eine Prachthandschrift über Himmel und Erde. Edited by Patrizia Carmassi and Christian Heitzmann. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2014.
date: ca. 1120
contributor: Special Collections, Carleton College, Northfield, MN
rights: Rights for maps held by individual publishers and institutions. Thumbnails displayed constitute fair use. Full image of map is usable in public domain: "Image digitizations of Herzog August Library holdings are published as public domain." (https://diglib.hab.de/nutzungshinweise.html).
relation: Digital online manuscript of Wolfenbüttel Liber Floridus
format: Map in manuscript
language: Latin
type: World map
identifier: Special Collections (Folio) ; AE2 .L363 2014