Several format variations existed that focused interest differently, similar to how online maps today can show either roads, satellite imagery, or street views. The purpose of the maps was often schematic or instructional instead of navigable since local, regional maps would be more useful for traveling. Location sizes varied with historical and religious importance without regard to actual size or distance. Although a grid map based on latitude and longitude did not fit in medieval worldview, Roger Bacon did propose one in the thirteenth century.
Until the fourteenth century, most European maps were oriented East, not North. East is the direction of the sunrise, beginnings, and the location of the Garden of Eden, the Biblical earthly paradise. The Pillars of Hercules, the Strait of Gibraltar, regularly marked the westward edge of the map for centuries even as ships began to sail beyond them.
After the Crusades focused much of Europe's religious zeal on Jerusalem, maps began focusing the city as the center of the map, but more written descriptions of Jerusalem depict the city at the center of the world than maps.
"Overall it seems likely that that the new emphasis is spiritual rather than physical. The loss of Jerusalem was a great source of grief and guilt to Western Christendom, and the real city seems to have been transformed in the imagination into a shimmering version of heavenly perfection, now out of reach. As the mappmundi tradition began to lose its hold on the European mind, later mapmakers, trying to represent the earth in a more physically accurate mode, felt called upon to explain the displacement of Jerusalem from the center of their maps."The loss of Jerusalem in 1244 seemed to spark the imagination of cartographers who quickly began placing the city at the center of their world maps. The Hereford Map, the largest existing mappa mundi, does an excellent job of defining the typical European map of the time. It is oriented to the East, depicts Eden, Jerusalem at the center, and treats a large portion of the world as fringe lands.
Edson, Evelyn. The World Map 1300-1492: The Persistence of Tradition and Transformation. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Other depictions of the world remained significant until the European Renaissance. Several cartographic formats were used to display information to draw attention to different themes. One of these methods was altering or simplifying landmasses. The clover leaf map, a rendition of the T-O map, shows a round world split into three segments: Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Bunting Clover Leaf Map from 1581 in Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae places the world's continents around the focal point of Jerusalem. For this drawing, depictions of many Biblical stories were mapped out many of which branch out from or center upon the city Jerusalem. Referencing Ezekiel 5:5, "Thus saith the Lord God; This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her" (KJV), Bunting's work also included Europe drawn as a queen with her face to the West and feet to the East as well as Asia drawn as Pegasus, a winged horse from Greek mythology.
Focus and intent are more important than location, but the context of history is always helpful in knowing where the path leads.
Agatha Tyche
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