Master’s Degree
in Language
Sciences
Final Thesis
Mapping
Otherness
A Case Study: The
Marvels of the East in
the Cotton Tiberius
Manuscript
Supervisor
Ch. Prof. Marina Buzzoni
Assistant supervisor
Ch. Prof. Øyvind Eide
Graduand
Giulia Romei
Matriculation number 847752
Mapping Otherness
A Case Study: The Marvels of the East in the
Cotton Tiberius Manuscript
INDEX
Introduction
1. Theoretical Framework
1.1 Introduction to the Marvels of the East
1.2. Application of the approach to philological studies - Digital mapping for medieval texts
1.3. Categorization of place types in the Marvels
1.4. Mapping and transmedia editions in the digital environment
2. Conceptualization and Modeling: Methodology and Tools
2.1. The method: conceptualization of the Marvels
2.3. Analysis for the annotation of the Marvels
2.4. The interactive map
3. Final outcome
3.1. Reading the map
3.2. Centre - periphery relations
3.3. Conceptual organization of space
3.4. Possible developments: TEI and Synchronized Visualization Software
Conclusions
Appendix
A.1. Translation of the Marvels
Introduction
This work has a threefold aim, on a first level its purpose is to develop a method for the analysis of the spatial dimension of texts, more specifically of medieval texts, connecting them to interactive maps. Conceived as an interface between textual analysis and spatial and digital humanities, the above mentioned method will be applied to the study of a specific work, namely the Marvels of the East, in the version of the Cotton Tiberius manuscript, a bilingual medieval prose text that dates back to the 11th century, written in Latin and Old English, describing a bizarre variety of Eastern lands and their inhabitants. On a second level then, the purpose of this work is that of creating an experimental digital edition of this text, that will leverage the peculiarities of different media so as to give a new and fuller account of the textual universe. The edition, that I will here define as transmedia
edition, will connect the text to an interactive map, allowing
users to explore different ways to access and navigate its content. Finally, the last purpose is to show how we can combine different models of conceptualization and annotation so as to automize the method used for the analysis of the Marvels
of the East. In this respect, this text is particularly
interesting not only in respect to its subject matter, but also because of its peculiar structure: a sequence of different marvels organized in distinct chapters, all of them provided both in their Latin and Old English versions, that will allow me to show how the outlined method could be applicable not only to single texts, but also to corpus-based studies and potentially deal with a larger quantity of data.
The first notable trait that should be taken into consideration is the complex representation of spatial relations in the Middle Ages, that combines together various concepts and dichotomies overlapping across space: physical space becomes a means of expression of the real and the imaginary, the marvelous and the monstrous, the foreign and the familiar, the natural and the artificial, the Christian and the pagan, as the result of a complex centre - periphery organization system. In the first part of this work then, I will deal with this issue and with the categorization and mapping of place-types and other elements that affect, and are affected by, the spatial dimension of medieval texts, also addressing spatial issues that are specific to the Marvels . This text in fact includes a 1
wide variety of eastern places, some of which are historical places, others are fantastic and mythical places, and some are mentioned but their names are not specified; these places refer to different geographical and geopolitical entities and need hierarchical organization, moreover, not all places have a definite geolocation, for some of them we can only make conjectures. The resulting categorization will be relevant for the subsequent creation of the interactive map, and of conceptualization models, which is to say representations of entities and concepts and the relationships that define them, based on a XML TEI compliant annotation of the text. The conceptualization models eventually serve as basis for the theorization of a software able to transpose data from the text into the map and transmedia edition: the map here becomes both an instrument for the spatial representation of a text and a m e a n s o f a n a l y s i s t h a t c a n p r o v i d e a n e w a n g l e o f
Throughout this work the denomination “Marvels”, in italic and with 1
capital M, will be used to refer to the Cotton Tiberius version of the Marvels of the East.
interpretation; just like a textual edition, and as part of the transmedia edition, the map should be considered as a work hypothesis, that will highlight and analyze certain aspects of the text and blur others, with different possible outcomes depending on the editor’s choices. Finally, in this chapter I will explore the potential correspondences between medieval and digital map-making, and how the latter can convey and enhance several peculiarities of medieval texts like the Marvels, making this transmediation method particularly suitable to revive and analyze them.
The method is not only aimed at transferring data from one medium into another, but also at connecting the text to the map, so as to combine the analysis of space to its linguistic and literary analysis, looking at the ways the Marvels relate the physical and geographical characteristics of the places they mention to other textual elements and linguistic features. The second chapter of this work will then deal with textual analysis and with the issue of how to locate the mentioned places on the map and graphically represent the relevant data.
The bizarre creatures of The Marvels of the East have been studied extensively and have been explained as representations of otherness, of what is foreign and at the same time weirdly familiar. The richness and variety of the description of these creatures has somewhat overshadowed the analysis of the equally interesting spaces that the text creates. The colorful descriptions of such places, uncanny in the real Freudian sense of the word just like their inhabitants, are to be ascribed to a rich medieval tradition of European texts that would create an image of the East as location of wonders, as opposite and at the same time complementary to their home countries. As the
previous literature has pointed out, the text conveys a deep sense of confusion and shapes a fantastic geography, so as to disorientate and marvel the reader, but I also believe that its obsessive insistence on very precise details regarding the places it describes, directions and the measurements of its lands, along with the wide variety of spaces that it describes, deserve a deeper analysis and can contribute to the interpretation of the text. The final digital edition, of which an analysis will be provided in the last chapter, will combine i n f o r m a t i o n r e t r i e v e d f r o m t h e t e x t w i t h c o n t e x t u a l information, in order to answer the following research questions: firstly, the previously theorized method should help to understand how the complex centre-periphery relation is hidden in and problematized by both the Latin and the Old English versions of the text, and the presence of both Christian and pagan elements, allowing to simultaneously explore movement, locations and linguistic features. In other words, this work will explore the relationship between the two languages and how they define the role of Anglo-Saxon England in respect to the rest of the world and how they define
otherness, relationship that is also entangled with the tension
between the new Christian faith and the old pagan beliefs; a deep analysis of these elements in the text combined with the mapping not only of locations, but of concepts, should help shed light on how these ideas contribute to the creation of different areas and different places that function as cultural projections, rather than external entities that should be described objectively. The second research question concerns the relationship between, and the spatial organization of, the concepts of marvel and uncanniness, and wildness and civilization, entangled with natural or artificial elements and properties, and the recourse to either vagueness or specificity
in the descriptions of places. Again, the analysis will look at the way these dichotomies are linked to different locations and place-types and combined with one another. Finally, this work will show the links between the results of the two research questions and determine whether there are specific spatial patterns in the organization of the above mentioned variables in the text.
1. Theoretical Framework
1.1. Introduction to the Marvels of the East
The Marvels, also known as Wonders of the East, can be described as a bestiary, “a type of book that gathered together descriptions of animals, ranging from ordinary creatures such as goats and bees to fantastical beasts including griffins, mermaids and unicorns” (Bovey, 2015), a type of literary work that founded its success on a more ancient tradition culminating in Pliny the Elder’s account of extraordinary races from Eastern regions written in the first century CE, “Pliny was himself repeating ancient authorities, and his account of these marvellous races was in turn influential throughout the Middle Ages, during which antique monster lore became part of a Christian framework” (Bovey, 2015). At the same time the
Marvels can be read as a geographical treaty on foreign lands,
geographical treaty that, as we will see, is more preoccupied with the conceptual and cultural, rather than scientific, organization of space. The Latin text of the Marvels derives from a group of letters addressed to Adriano or Traiano, preserved in several versions, supposedly translated from a Greek version dating back to the second century AD . As 2
explained by Lendinara one of the Latin versions of these letters should have arrived to England around the end of the VII century, based on the evidence provided by the Liber
Monstrorum, of which some passages derive from the letters. The
Anglo-Saxon tradition of the Marvels of the East derives from
Patrizia Lendinara explains that judging from the use of the text by 2
Isidoro of Seville in his Etymologies the translation have been carried out between the fourth and the beginning of the seventh century AD. (Lendinara, 2011).
this Latin version of the letters (Lendinara, 2011). The Anglo-Saxon text is preserved in three different versions : the one 3
that has been studied the most up to now is part of the famous Nowell Codex, which is to say the Cotton MS Vitellius A XV. Along with Beowulf the version of the Marvels of the East here in Old English belongs to the second part of the manuscript, copied during the 4th quarter of the 10th century . This version 4
shares a common ancestor with another version, that of the Cotton Tiberius, but one version does not derive from the other (Lendinara, 2011). A Latin version of the text is preserved in the MS Bodl. 614 dating back to the mid 12th century, from the Bodleian Library, believed to derive from a prototype of the 11th century, probably the Cotton Tiberius BV, even though in ff. 36r-48r it contains twelve additional marvels that are not present in the other versions of the text, two of which derive directly from Isidore’s Etymologiae (Orchard, 2003). Finally, 5
the bilingual version of the Marvels of the East, object of study of this work, is contained in the Cotton MS Tiberius BV, that like the Nowell Codex forms part of the British Library’s collection. The Tiberius manuscript dates back to the mid-11th century, it was possibly copied in Canterbury and can be described as a miscellany containing computistical, historical and astronomical texts . The text is contained in ff. 78v–86v 6
For a complete account of the differences between the three versions see 3
Orchard 2013, pp. 18-22.
The Nowell Codex is now part of the collection of the British Library and 4
has been digitized and made available on the British Library website: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_vitellius_a_xv.
The twelve additional marvels are of particular interest according to 5
Orchard because “they demonstrate that the compiler was ready to augment his text not simply from the learned Latin tradition, but also from popular tradition, and in at least one case (∫ 41) from native Germanic lore” (Orchard, 2003).
For a complete account of the contents of this manuscript see the 6
digitized version of the Cotton Tiberius BV/1 available at: http:// www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Tiberius_B_V/1
and organized in two columns, with miniatures illustrating the marvels. The version contained in the Tiberius manuscript is slightly fuller than that of the Vitellius manuscript, and includes five marvels (the last five) that are not to be found i n t h e V i t e l l i u s t e x t . T h e f a c t t h a t t h i s v e r s i o n simultaneously provides both the Latin and the Old English texts is what makes it more relevant to the current study in respect to the other versions: the presence of the two languages in fact pushes even further the question of the center-periphery organization of space, and its link to the appropriation and exploitation of language. Part of this work then, will be dedicated to the differences between the Old English and the Latin texts, also in terms of word choice and linguistic variation in the description of different spaces.
1.2. Application of digital spatial analysis to philological studies
In this chapter I will now proceed to further analyze the representation of space from the point of view of Anglo-Saxon England, and its consequence on medieval map-making practices. Back in the Middle Ages the lack of the required technology to pursue an accurate and complete knowledge of geography, contributed to create a distorted idea of space and especially of foreign lands, mainly known by the relatively fantastical accounts of travelers. Geography at the time was not an exact science aimed at providing a realistic account of the world, but rather a subjective discipline, that would produce different outcomes depending on the point of view of those exercising it, who would project their own ideologies and
characteristics to the external world. Foreign lands and peoples were an opportunity to shape the reality and attribute to it imaginary traits. The characteristics attributed to foreign lands were the result of textual traditions that dated back for centuries, that relied on the authority of the written word during the Middle Ages. In his Of Other Spaces: Utopias
and Heterotopias, Michel Foucault gives an account of the
history of the Western idea of space, defining space in the Middle Ages as space of emplacement, a hierarchy of intersected and opposed spaces, organized in conceptual dichotomies, such as sacred and profane, protected and exposed, and so on . All 7
these concepts were further problematized in different countries depending on specific geopolitical and historical circumstances, that would create center-periphery dynamics that were peculiar to single cases. In this scenario, Anglo-Saxons were placed on earth in relation to their identity of converted Christians, and so located in the periphery in respect to Rome, both center of Western Christendom and historical capital city, but also central in respect to more peripheral areas such as the ancient territories of the Germanic tribes and Asia . This 8
entanglement of dichotomies shaping the definition of space in the Middle Ages and in particular in Anglo-Saxon England contributed to the production of a large quantity of texts that, just like the Marvels of the East, would express this complex set of ideas associated to space.
“In the Middle Ages there was a hierarchic ensemble of places: sacred 7
places and profane places: protected places and open, exposed places: urban places and rural places (all these concern the real life of men). In cosmological theory, there were the supercelestial places as opposed to the celestial, and the celestial place was in its turn opposed to the terrestrial place. There were places where things had been put because they had been violently displaced, and then on the contrary places where things found their natural ground and stability” (Foucault, 1984).
For a more detailed discussion about this issue see “Rome as the capital 8
The fact that the organization of space in the Middle Ages was arguably more conceptual rather than topographical had practical implications on medieval map-making, as Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim explain in their Inconceivable beasts
- The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript, the
understanding and purpose of medieval mappamundi was substantially different from the way we conceive maps today:
mappamundi were not concerned with providing directions to
travelers , but rather with representing the space of Christian 9
history and cosmology (Mittman, Kim, 2013). This becomes evident when observing the Cotton World Map , that just like 10
the Marvels forms part of the Cotton Tiberius B/V 1, and will be used as basis for the mapping of the Marvels, representing the closest idea of the world to the one in the text. As common in early maps, the Cotton World Map has East at the top, we can easily recognize Jerusalem, significantly located at its center, that contrasts with the location of the British Isles in the lower left-periphery. In spite of their peripheral placement, the British Isles are relatively big and accurately drawn. Rome occupies the center of Italy, whose dimensions are
This is generally true but we must acknowledge that it is not only a 9
prerogative of medieval mappamundi, the same mechanisms have been attributed to early modern and modern mapping. Moreover, there are a few exceptions to the merely conceptual focus of medieval mapmaking, an example would be late medieval Italian coastal charts.
For the study of the Cotton World Map I used the Virtual Mappa Project on 10
DM, Digital Mappa, a platform for the annotation of maps that allows to link images and texts and generate searchable content. The Virtual Mappa Project, developed by the Schoenberg Institute for manuscript studies in collaboration with the British Library, includes a selection of annotated medieval mappamundi, namely the Cotton World Map (BL Cotton Tiberius BV, f. 56v), the Cotton Zonal Map (BL Cotton MS Tiberius BV, f.29r), the Hereford Map (Hereford Cathedral), the Higden Map (BL Royal 14.C IX, ff. 1v-2r and 2v/ CCCC MS 21, f. 9r), the Peterborough Map (BL Harley 3667, f.8v), the Psalter World Map (BL Add MS 28681, f. 9r), the Psalter List Map (BL Add. 28681, f- 9v), the Sawley Map (CCCC 66, Parker Library, p.2), the Thorney Map (OSJC 17, f. 6r), the Tournai Map of Asia (BL add. MS 10049, f.64r) and an Unfinished Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi (CCCC 265, p.210). The database is available at http://sims.digitalmappa.org/workspace/#965fe731.
exaggerated. As in modern maps, the use of icons and colors helps the reader to distinguish between different geographical elements like cities, countries, mountains, and other entities. The focus is especially on famous cities (represented by castles and fortifications) mountains (mostly colored in green) and rivers and seas (amongst which the Nile stands out, colored in red and extremely exaggerated), but we also find other elements that look rather arbitrary: a disproportionally big lion for example is located at the upper-left corner, all the way East, along with the explanation Hic abundant leones, not far from there an image of a boat represents Noah’s Ark. All the way West, at the bottom of the map, not far from England, we find the Pillars of Hercules, marking the edge of the known world. Coherently with the rest of the manuscript the map is bilingual, most place names and inscriptions are actually in Latin, but we can also find some Old English words and letters. Nicholas Howe, in Writing the map of Anglo-Saxon England, defines this representation as a spiritual geography, that we have to understand by looking at it “as part of a large manuscript containing an extraordinary range of information about geography of this world and beyond” (Howe, 2008).
In his work, Howe proceeds to analyze the factors that contributed to the creation of a peculiar Anglo-Saxon sense of space, explaining how it doesn’t only depend on a first-hand experience on topography, but also on a sense of the past; moreover, the Anglo-Saxon sense of place did not only depend on the geography of the island, but extended beyond its limits to the larger world, awareness acquired through migratory experiences as well as through the textual tradition. Howe explains that their sense of place had its roots in the Roman vision of the world, resulting in a sacralization and
historicization of places based on a religious and cultural interpretation, as evident in Pliny’s Natural History, and internalized by the Anglo-Saxons through Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History. Being based on a re-elaboration of Roman writers, the
idea of the world that Bede’s work conveyed acknowledged the centrality of Rome. In a sense then, as Howe argues, Rome functioned as capital of Anglo-Saxon England, in an ecclesiastical and spiritual way, different from the way it was the imperial capital of the province of Britannia in the past, and yet also reminiscent of it, a sort of cultural rather than political capital. This role of Rome as capital tough, does not erase the traces of the ancestral Germanic culture, that were still alive in the language, history, and to some extent in religious beliefs; what became deeply Roman were the categories and ideologies that would determine the vision of the world and the place of England in it and within Christendom, conceived as a territory of common beliefs and practices. Howe analyses how the Marvels, especially if observed in the larger context of the Tiberius B v, fall within this mechanism: they make up a sort of archive of place materials, a book of elsewhere that expresses a strong fascination for distant places and acknowledges the spiritual and political role of Rome, emphasized by the presence of its lists of rulers, bishops, and important sites, all underlying a hierarchy that would place Rome above England. Rome itself is in a way a place of
elsewhere, but a place that unlike the more distant regions of
the East could be known by the Anglo-Saxons. In this context the Marvels result not only as a text trying to deal with the cultural Other, but also, as proposed by Howe, as expressing the tension between here and elsewhere, textual and visual,
vernacular language and learned language and familiar and exotic. The tension between the vernacular and the learned
language, which is to say between Old English and Latin, is one of the most evident features, with Latin occupying a more prestigious position in respect to Old English . The recurse to 11
both languages was not only an expedient to reach a wider audience, but also another trait indicating the preeminence of Rome, of the centre that needed to be translated into the language of the periphery, and at the same time a way to internalize and understand through the translation something that used to be foreign. The Tiberius B v and for extension the
Marvels are both about here and elsewhere, in an attempt to try
to understand both and the dynamics that characterize them (Howe, 2008).
In light of these considerations, I will here create a list of dichotomies, or values that will be associated to places and other entities in the text, aimed at investigating the sense of space behind the Marvels. All of them will be analyzed through their textual, spatial and linguistic expressions, so as to u n d e r s t a n d h o w a n d h o w o f t e n t h e y a r e u s e d i n t h e categorization of places, and how they are connected to one another and to different areas and place types, also taking into consideration the linguistic variation between Latin and the vernacular translation. The following values will have to be taken into consideration in the second chapter and integrated within the annotation models:
a. Christian - Sinful b. Marvelous - Uncanny
The prioritization of the Latin text has already been dismissed by other 11
critics like Mittman and Kim as an illusion: the Old English translation appears to be richer and presents a number of differences and additions in respect to the Latin original version, that betray a resistance of the Old English version and at the same time an attempt to interiorize otherness through the act of translating (Mittman, Kim, 2013).
c. Natural - Artificial d. Specific - Vague e. Wild - Civilized
a. Christian - Sinful:
As explained above, geography and religion were strictly interconnected in the Middle Ages, mapping the world, or writing about it, also meant interpreting it through categories that were essentially Christian, and delineating the boundaries of Christendom. To those areas that were perceived as distant, different and not Christian were often attributed fantastical properties, aimed at representing sin and immorality, as opposed to what was familiar and Christian. Writers and illustrators would often employ the monstrous to physically represent sin . As we will see in the analysis of the Marvels 12
though, the division between these elements is not always that clear, but problematized by the fact that the Other, is opposed but also complementary to the Self, distant regions were categorized as different on a more superficial level, but actually retained traits that were uncannily internalized by the Self. This work will analyze the patterns of embodiment of these two properties throughout space, as especially entangled with the dichotomy wild - civilized.
A previous study of this subject has been carried out by Nicole Guenther Dicenza in Inhabited Spaces - Anglo-Saxon Construcions
In the words of the medievalist Alixe Bovey: “Monsters were often used to 12
define boundaries and to express a distinction between morality and sin – or conformity and nonconformity. Those perceived as sinful were often portrayed as physically deformed. This tactic was used to demonise perceived enemies of Christendom, such as Jews, Muslims and Tartars, to whom inhuman practices (such as cannibalism) were sometimes attributed. Medieval artists often gave non-Christians exaggerated or deformed features, believing that their immorality could be expressed visually through monstrosity” (Bovey, 2015).
of Place, where cities are analyzed under this perspective as
described in Anglo-Saxon literary works. Being constructed by people as a result of civilization, cities fascinate the Anglo-Saxons, who would often use the same words for ancient metropolises like Rome and Jerusalem as for their own more modest cities, but their attitude towards them is highly ambivalent: not only do they represent an achievement for civilized people, but they also symbolize the ultimate failure of human order, and are connected to sin, fall and death. The only non-ambivalent cities can be found in Heaven and Hell, yet described as earthly cities (G. Dicenza, 2017). We will see if and how this analysis applies to the Mervels, and how it extends to other place types and spatial elements described in the text.
b. Marvelous - Uncanny
The title later assigned to the Marvels itself suggests that the text should be read as a catalogue of marvels, of wonderful things confined to the distant regions of the East. Yet, the creatures and lands encountered by the reader are not only fascinating but also frightening and inhospitable. A distinction should be made between those elements of the text that are perceived as marvelous, and those that in turn are perceived as uncanny, two categories that are strongly connected to the subcategories of the exotic versus the monstrous and frightening. I will here proceed to clarify what I mean by marvelous and by uncanny.
The definition of marvel that I conform to is the definition of
mirabilia provided by Michelle Karnes in Marvels in the Medieval Imagination, as something resisting explanation that
comes to be defined by the marvelous effect that this resitance produces . Moreover, Karnes also explains how marvels were 13
associated to a different degree of reality in respect to how we could perceive them today: in the Middle Ages the real and the imaginary were not necessarily opposed, existence did not necessarily equate with physicality. Karnes examines this gap starting from the etymology of the word real, that derives from
res, meaning thing: imagination in the Middle Ages doesn’t
imply a lack of reality as in the modern sense of the word, but simply indicates something that lacks physical experience and
remains within the soul, but that can still exercise influence
over the external world. Imagined objects are still different from the bodies we perceive, still, imagination can attribute to it the status of perceptions and produce the same effects generated by real objects. It’s the realness that makes marvels unsettling and allows them to blur the distinction between the imagined and the physical. In Karnes’ account, assisted by imagination, marvels are fundamentally mysterious, they confuse judgement and resist containment (Karnes, 2015). In the Marvels
of the East, the marvelous is mostly associated to a sense of
the exotic, and has a more positive connotation than the uncanny.
The marvelous then shouldn’t be confused with the more disturbing effect of the uncanny, to be interpreted in its Freudian sense of the word, as theorized by the psychoanalyst in 1919 and described as a subclass of the terrifying, an effect produced by retrieving something that used to be known
“The Latin term mirabilia, typically translated as “marvels” or “wonders”, 13
encompasses a great variety of unusual events that resist explanation. Among them are products of magic, like illusions and transmutations, as well as special properties of natural things, like curative herbs and unusual stones. They are defined in part by the wonder they create” (Karnes, 2015).
and familiar. We can immediately notice how this is problematic if we stick with the interpretation of the Marvels merely as a book about the Other, the foreign and the distant. The Freudian definition of uncanny shows how the boundaries between the Other and the self are in fact blurred, and helps us to better understand the Anglo-Saxon vision of the East. Uncanny is the translation of the German word unheimlich, deriving from and opposed to heimelich and heimisch, that can translate into English as familiar, native, belonging to the home. It would then seem logical to translate unheimlich with unfamiliar, but t h i s d e f i n i t i o n b e c o m e s i n c o m p l e t e i f w e t a k e i n t o consideration all the shades of meaning of heimlich, which in some cases can also translate as concealed, hidden, secret, and so come to coincide with its own opposite. Analyzing various instances of uncanniness Freud eventually argues that
unhiemlich can be considered as a sub-category of heimlich,
which is to say as an effect produced by something old and familiar and should have remained concealed after undergoing a process of repression but has somehow come back (Freud, 1919). We will see how this idea of uncanniness applies to the
Marvels, in particular in the instances where it arouses from
doubling, from death, from old and discarded beliefs, from the effacement of the distinction between imagination and reality and from sexual references. Freud illustrated how doubling, dividing the self that comes to share something with the Other, is something dating back to a very ancient mental state, once associated to the instinct of self preservation and then become a terrifying herald of death. The ancestral fear of death itself has always been present in the mind of men, but as a consequence of the changing attitude towards death, shift also attested by the Marvels in the tension between pre-Christian and Christian beliefs, the older ambivalent and dubious
attitude towards death has been repressed to give way to a simpler and more reverent attitude, that makes manifestations of death uncanny; more generally then, the occurrence of something that is reminiscent of old and now discarded beliefs generates an uncanny feeling. Interesting for the analysis of the Marvels is also the idea that the feeling of the uncanny can be produced by the realization or occurrence of something that was previously regarded as imaginary, idea further problematized by the different understanding of reality in the Middle Ages, topic already introduced above with the definition of the marvelous. Finally, as outlined by Freud, sexual content and in particular genital organs can be perceived as uncanny, and we will see how this is relevant in the Marvels.
c. Natural - Artificial
The setting of the Marvels alternates between places that are governed by Nature, wild and hostile spaces, some of them almost impossible to reach and to control, and places where it’s from artificiality that wonder originates. Suffice to think of the various medieval accounts of the adventures of Alexander the Great in the East, where the work of men and their skillful constructions are one of the main causes of amazement. It was common to imagine the Eastern regions as a hub of surprisingly advanced inventions and skills, not yet available in Europe at the time. Moreover, artificiality often produces a feeling of the marvelous when connected to luxury: another commonplace of medieval European literature was in fact that of thinking of the East as a place where one could find unimaginable treasures. On the other hand, Nature plays an equally relevant role in characterizing the East both as a marvelous and uncanny space: this becomes strikingly evident
when reading the descriptions of the various animals and imaginary creatures that inhabit the lands described in the
Marvels. The text abounds with natural landscapes, where
conditions are brought to the extremes and highly exaggerated, which contributes to shape the idea of the East as a place of
elsewhere.
d. Specific - Vague
The Marvels alternate between descriptions full of very specific, almost obsessive details, and rather vague and confusing descriptions . The text is on the edge between what 14
language can and can’t describe, it presents itself as an aspiring scientific treaty on foreign lands and races, but its language and its inability to even name some of the things it describes reveals a failure to understand and to know them, and so to interiorize them. This work will explore how this develops in the description of space.
e. Wild - Civilized
This last dichotomy is tightly linked to the concepts of Natural - Artificial described above. The peoples described in the text show different degrees of civilization and wildness, 15
the former being particularly connected to violence, this work
Both specificity should be interpreted as a rhetorical tool: precision and 14
specific description give the illusion of reality. Similarly vagueness is a device used to confuse and disorientate the reader.
When talking about civilization we have to bear in mind that back in the 15
Middle Ages European peoples had different customs, traditions, ideas about what was acceptable in society and different values and models to pursue compared to today. Things that may seem unacceptable now might have been perfectly normal back then, like for example the recourse to violence in certain situations, or likewise other characteristics like physical strength, honor or lineage had a much heavier weight.
will analyze how this is influenced by the landscape and by imagination in the Marvels. The term civilized must be interpreted from an Anglo-Saxon perspective.
1.3. Categorization of place-types in the Marvels 16
In order to create a map of the Marvels we firstly have to understand how different place-types are organized, meaning what are the geopolitical and natural spaces that the text describes and how they are connected to one another, so as to determine how to graphically show such categorization in the map. Finally, understanding whether there is a pattern in the traits associated to different place types according to the list of dichotomies sketched in 1.1 will help us answer the previously outlined research questions. The categorization of place types follows on a first level the use of different Old English and Latin words linked to places in the text. For each category I will here determine which places are given a proper name versus the ones that are left unnamed and which ones we can precisely locate on the map recurring to information given by the text and contextual information.
From the first categorization level we can divide the place-types of the Marvels into eleven different groups. The first five groups are defined in geopolitical terms, meaning that they are described as spaces circumscribed by political boundaries whose inhabitants are organized into different
Throughout this passage citations from the text are associated to the 16
corresponding Marvel-number, following the same numeration associated to each Marvel in 2.3.
societies. Amongst these we find kingdoms, cities, islands, lands (whose boundaries are less clear, but that are usually inhabited by a specific group of people and are often given a proper name)and colonies. Then we have other groups that are defined in terms of their natural properties, namely seas, rivers, lakes and mountains; one more group includes areas that are mentioned in a vague and undefined way, with no definite boundaries and no name. Finally, the last passage of the
Marvels adds a new spatial entity to the equation, the kingdom
of Hell. I will now proceed to examine each group more in detail and discuss the location of all the mentioned places.
(i) Kingdoms and countries:
Kingdoms and countries are the largest spatial entities described in the text, the most frequent words used to describe them are regio in Latin and rice in Old English, word 17
indicating an area over which power is exercised, meaning a
kingdom, realm, a diocese, it could also indicate the people
inhabiting such area . There are a few exceptions to this, one 18
of them being Egypt, called only by its name in Latin (Aegypto) and with a more general attribute in Old English, Aegiptna
landes, the term land(es) could generally describe a land, country, region, district, province, and is usually used in the
text to describe smaller places whose political nature is left unspecified. Finally, the Marvels also mention India and
Gallia, with no attribute describing them, but we can list them
amongst the kingdoms with recourse to other textual and contextual information. Out of seven kingdoms, three are left
For all definitions of Latin words throughout this work I abide by the 17
Oxford Latin Dictionary (Glare, P.G.W. 1985).
As stated by the Bosworth and Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Accessed 18
unnamed, the text provides some pieces of information about their location, that remains vague. The remaining four, of which we know the name, are Egypt, India, the old reign of the Medes, these three we can easily locate, and Gallia. As for the latter, we can only assume that it is a state or at least a larger area in respect to cities and smaller entities, because we know that it contains a land called Liconia, neither Gallia nor Liconia have been found in accounts and maps from that period, so we can only make assumptions regarding their location. Judging from the fact that both the previous and the following marvels are located in the area of the rivers Brixontes and Nile, and so in the proximity of Egypt, we can assume that Gallia should be somewhere near those places . As 19
for the three unnamed kingdoms, the text provides us with spatial information that can help us understand where they should be located, even though it is not enough to identify their exact corresponding spot on the map: we are told that one of them (described in Marvel 18), home of the Homodubii, is in 20
the proximity of another land, the text indicates the proximity connecting the two places with post hunc locum alia est regio in Latin and Fram þisse stowe is oðer rice in Old English, meaning from this place is another kingdom. This other island, previously mentioned in the Marvels, is South of the Brixontes River, from the location of the Brixontes then, that I will discuss later in (vii), we can try to locate the first unnamed
The tricolored people inhabiting it have already been described in other 19
medieval texts about the East, namely the Liber Monstrorum and several versions of the Letter of Fermes (or Feramus, Feramen) to Emperor Hadrian, both sources of the Marvels (Orchard, 2003), but their exact location has never been identified.
“Marvel” will be used in this work to refer to single passages of the text 20
describing different marvels, the numeration follows the division into paragraphs of the manuscript, paragraphs are clearly recognizable given that they all alternate between the Latin version and the Old English translation. This denomination should not be confused with Marvels, in italics, that refers to the text of the Marvels of the East as a whole.
kingdom. Moreover, the text also informs us that this kingdom is in oceano dexteriore parte, or on ða suð halfe þæs
garsecges, meaning on the South side of the Ocean, as we will
discuss later in the dedicated section (vi), I propose that the ocean should be identified as the Ethiopic Ocean. The second unnamed kingdom (Marvel 26) is in the area of Babylon (in terra
Babiloniae/ on Babilonia landum), and hosts the highest of all
mountains, that we can fairly easily locate thanks to the indication that is is between the mountains of Media and of Armenia . Finally, the last unnamed kingdom (from Marvel 29 to 21
Marvel 33) is located in an area by the ocean (secus oceanum/
Be Þam garsecge), we are told that one of the peoples that
inhabit such area are the Ethiopians. The use of the term
kingdom in this case is less clear than in other instances, the
five passages in question in fact seem to describe a large area, populated by different peoples, it is not clear whether this area is still to be intended as a unified geopolitical entity or if the passages are simply describing the kingdom its surroundings. The location of these five Marvels is probably the most controversial: f the fact that this unnamed kingdom is populated by Ethiopians seems to support my proposal that the ocean in the text should be identified as the Ethiopic Ocean, it is problematized by the fact that in Marvel 30 we are told that this kingdom is on the left-hand side (in sinistra parte/
on þam wynstran dæle), which is why Mittman and Kim locate this
kingdom North from the Red Sea, intead of South, in the proximity of the Ethiopic Ocean . Building on Mittman and Kim’s 22
choice, the ocean in this case may refer to the Indian Ocean,
The mountains of Armenia are visible in the Cotton Map and accompanied by 21
the inscription “Montes Armenie”, “Associated with the green icons of two mountain peaks and a valley in between, which holds Noah's Ark” (Virtual Mappa).
In medieval maps oriented towards the East, left equals North. 22
hypothesis that also seems to be more coherent with the preceding passsages that are located in the area around Babylon, whereas placing this kingdom in the area of the Ethiopic Ocean would mean moving abruptly from that rather central area and going back to another one already explored before in the text. Again, this wouldn’t be too unlikely considering that Marvel 29 is one of the instances where the text does not continue the narration linking it with directional information to the passage before, interruption that usually indicates a change of area. The assertion that this kingdom is on the left-hand side remains to be explained, considering though that the description of such kingdom includes a large area, we may assume that on the left-hand side should be interpreted relatively to that area, meaning on the left-hand side of that specific area. Moreover, it is unlikely that the location of renowned people such as the Ethiopians, clearly associated to that particular area, could be dislocated, especially for no apparent and significant reason. Already in Pliny the Elder’s account of Ethiopia in his
Naturalis Historiae we find many elements that coincide with
the description in the Marvels: Marvel 30 informs us that there
syndan manege cyningas, sunt reges conplures, meaning that
there are many kings, as also stated by Pliny. Other common element is the association of this area to fire, the name
Ethiopia itself as explained by Pliny derives from Æthiops, son of Vulcan, in the Marvels in fact these Marvels are near and
linked to the description of a mountain that is all aflame, that we’ll see more in detail in (ix) . 23
(ii) Cities:
The Marvels feature three main cities: Babylon, Archemedon and the city of Persia. Babylon is frequently mentioned in the text and put in relation to other places, whose location is often specified in terms of distance from it. Its frequent occurrence is highly symbolic if we consider the city’s prominent role in the Bible, along with and as opposed to Jerusalem. This idea of Babylon as essentially evil was interiorized from the Anglo-Saxons, an example of this process is Ælfric associating Heaven to Jerusalem and Hell to Babylon in his Catholic Homilies (G. Dicenza, 2017). We can easily find Babylon in the Cotton Map, where it is drawn as one of the biggest Eastern cities in a central position. Babylon is the only city in the text that is not accompanied by an apposition specifying its geopolitical nature, which is understandable considering the extent of its fame; the other two cities are introduced by the apposition
ciuitatem in Latin and burh in Old English, respectively
Archemedon is defined as Medorum ciuitatem and Meda burh, and the city of Persia as Persiam ciuitatem and Persiam þa burh. The term ciuitatem, from the Latin civitas can describe both a city and at times a state or nation (LAD), which in the case of Persia may be unclear but is disambiguated by the Old English apposition burh, that was originally used to describe a castle
Pliny writes: “The kings of Æthiopia are said even at the present day to 23
be forty-five in number.(30.) The whole of this country has successively had the names of Ætheria,18 Atlantia, and last of all, Æthiopia, from Æthiops, the son of Vulcan. It is not at all surprising that towards the extremity of this region the men and animals assume a monstrous form, when we consider the changeableness and volubility of fire, the heat of which is the great agent in imparting various forms and shapes to bodies”. Pliny the Elder, (1st century CE), Natural History, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text? doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D35#note3.
or a fortress, whose use was that of protecting the inhabitants of cities and towns, and so eventually came to mean city,
town , used in Old English both to talk about relatively large 24
Anglo-Saxon urban spaces that would not be called cities in the modern sense of the word, and proper cities like Rome (G. Dicenza, 2017). Archemedon is the first city described by the text, it is located in the island of Antimolima, we are immediately informed of its relevance in Marvel 2, where we are told that it is the biggest city after Babylon and that in the city there are monuments commissioned by Alexander the Great. Neither Archemedon nor Antimolima have been found in medieval maps, Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim leave them amongst the places with no identifiable location in their recreation of the map of the Marvels according to the Cotton Vitellius (Mittman, Kim, 2013). The only pieces of information about their location in the text are their distance from Babylon and their measurements, that as we will discuss later in this chapter are not reliable. R.D. Fulk suggested that Antimolima may be “a corruption, probably a conflation of Antiocha with the island
Oliva or Olinum mentioned in some recensions of the Latin
material” (Fulk, 2010). Antiocha is not present in the Cotton Map but can be found in the Herford Map, the most complete
mappamundi from the Middle Ages, where it is associated with a
large architectural icon. In the first passages the text starts from Antimolima and Archemedon and moves towards the Red Sea and then West towards Babylon, naming a number of other lands on the way, we can assume then that Antimolima and Archemedon should be somewhere East from Babylon going towards the Red Sea, location that may coincide with the reign of Media, that we can find in the Cotton Map, which makes sense if we remember
As stated by the Bosworth and Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Accessed 24
that Archemedon is called the City of the Medes. The only incongruence at this point is that Media in the Cotton Map is not an island, but notwithstanding the confusion created by the text, all the above mentioned observations point to the same, even if vague, area. As for the city of Persia, Mittman and Kim list it amongst the cities with no definite location as well. Both the Cotton Map and the Herford Map somehow put Persia and Media in relation to one another, placed in the same area, moreover they are both mentioned in Orosius amongst the regions between the Indus and Tigris Rivers . In Marvel 6, where the 25
City of Persia is introduced, the narration of the previous passages where all the places where presented as linked to one another, connected by the directions from one place to the next, is interrupted, the text moves to another area without connecting it to the previous one, but only to Babylon, stating that Persia is in the Southern part of Babylon (in dextera
parte a Babilonia / on ða suð healfe fram Babilonia). 26
(iii) Islands:
The spaces of the Marvels include five different islands. Islands are not clearly defined in geopolitical terms, meaning that the text does not specify if they are proper and independent kingdoms or part of other kingdoms, from their description though we can assume that they are characterized by a certain degree of independence, considering that they all host different species, organized in definite societies. All of them are described with the appositions insula in the Latin text and ealand in the Old English one. The first island that
(Orosius, 1.2.17), as indicated by the Virtual Mappa Project. 25
The Latin text stated that Persia is in the right part of Babylon, if we 26
consider that medieval mappamundi had the East at the top, on the right we find the South, so saying that Persia is in the right of Babylon equals saying that it is in the southern part of Babylon.
we come across in the text is Antimolima, introduced above in relation to the city of Archemedon, so the question of its location has already been discussed. We can see how Antimolima is the most relevant island in the Marvels, the one described more in detail and coherently the only one that is given a proper name if not a definite location. From the information regarding its measures as compared to other measurements provided by the text, in spite of the fact that measures in the
Marvels are not reliable nor accurate, we can assume that its
dimensions are consistent. We are told that Antimolima is populated by a colony of merchants, indicative of its level of civilization together with the fact that it contains the biggest city after Babylon, and by a great number of sheep and extremely big rams. The other four islands are left unnamed, but for all of them we are given enough information to determine if not the exact location at least the area in which they are placed. The first one, introduced in Marvel 16, is south of the river Brixontes, that will be analyzed more in detail in section (vii). This island is the land of headless men with eyes and mouth in their chests, also described by the
Liber Monstroturm, where they are called Epifugi (Orchard,
2003), and drawn on the Herford Map where they are located in Ethiopia next to the Nile, with the name Blemee (Virtual Mappa); in contrast to Antimolima, this land is made inhospitable by the presence of dragons . The remaining three 27
islands seem to be placed in an area that gravitates around the Red Sea, even though they are described in a later group of passages in the text where directions become more and more vague. For the one of Marvel 21, home of the Donestre, the text
Interestingly, both the Cotton and the Herford Maps indicate another place 27
as the home of dragons, which is to say the Mons Aureus, the Golden Mountain (Virtual Mappa).
clearly states that it is in the Red Sea, somewhere relativly west, considering that from there we start to move East in Marvel 22. The last two islands are found in Marvel 23 and 24, both passages start vaguely with Est et alia insula and Ðonne
is sum ealand; the island in Marvel 23 is also described in the Liber Monstrorum, where we are told that it is placed in the eastern parts of the lands of the world (Orchard, 2003). The
island in Marvel 24 hosts two temples, one of Jove, or Belus, and one of the sun. The myth of king Belus, often associated to Jupiter, has several variants, sometimes identified as king of Egypt and sometimes as king of Babylon. Herodotus describes the temple of Jove and locates it in Babylon, as explained by George Rawlinson analyzing the genealogies containing the name of Belus, they “serve more definitely to connect the Babylonians with the Cushites of the Nile”, originated in ancient Greek, the myth of Belus is also the result of a geographical confusion about Eastern regions (Rawlinson, 2018). Pliny the Elder mentions the Temple of Jupiter and locates it in an island, the island of Meroë, in the proximity of the river Nile, once dominated by the Ethiopians . On the other 28
hand, the second temple may refer to the famous temple of the sun of Heliopolis, ancient centre of the Egyptian sun-cult, and
“They reported also that the city of Meroë stands at a distance of seventy 28
miles from the first entrance of the island of Meroë, and that close to it is another island, Tadu by name, which forms a harbour facing those who enter the right hand channel of the river. The buildings in the city, they said, were but few in number, and they stated that a female, whose name was Candace, ruled over the district, that name having passed from queen to queen for many years. They related also that there was a temple of Jupiter Hammon there, held in great veneration, besides smaller shrines erected in honour of him throughout all the country” (Pliny the Elder, Natural Histori, 1 s t C e n t u r y C E , h t t p : / / w w w . p e r s e u s . t u f t s . e d u / h o p p e r / t e x t ? doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0137%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D35#note3.
also once considered as model for large temple complexes . All 29
the contrasting pieces of information seem to point to places that are not historically islands, both in the Marvels and in the Letter of Fermes, Heliopolis is somehow confused with the Palace of the Sun that we find in the Odyssey and so turned into an island (Lendinara, 2009), change that also seems to underline how the text of the Marvels may use islands as symbolic agglomerates.
(iv) General places / lands:
The Marvels abound with places whose boundaries are even less clear than those of the places analyzed up to now. Many spaces described in the text refer to general areas, usually accompanied by appositions like locus or regione in Latin, and
lande or stow in Old English. Land(e) can be used to talk about
earth, as opposed to water or air, but also to talk about general areas, like “a land, country, region, district, province”. Stów in Old English is used to describe a place, it “remains either alone or in composition in place-names” . 30
Approximately half of them are given a proper name, the rest are left unnamed. In Marvel 3 we have a description of Lentibelsinea, a magical place between Archemedon and the Red Sea; then in Marvel 5 we find Hascellentia, accompanied by an apposition only in the Old English version of the text (land), we can try to locate it knowing that it is on the way to Babylon and is subject to the kingdom of the Medes, discussed above. In Marvel 7 we find the first unnamed land, which
For a more detailed account of the Temple of Heliopolis see Ashmavy, 29
Aiman, Dietrich Raue, Thomas Herbich, and Morgan De Dapper. 2015. “The Temple of Heliopolis: Excavations 2012-14.” Egyptian Archeology 46. http:// w w w . h e l i o p o l i s p r o j e c t . o r g / w p - c o n t e n t / u p l o a d s / 2 0 1 7 / 0 7 / EgArch-46_2015_AshmawyRaueDeDapperHerbich_Heliopolis.pdf.
As stated by the Bosworth and Toller Anglo Saxon Dictionary. Accessed 30
surrounds the City of Persia, whose location has been described in (ii). In Marvel 9 then, we find the description of another land, we are only told that this land hosts the Homodubii, but no information whatsoever is provided regarding its location, which we can only try to guess considering that the passage is amongst the ones describing Egypt and the lands around the Nile. Its description continues in the following Marvel, describing a place (locus, stowe)where a river named Capi flows, the name of this place is called Gorgoneus, name that in the Old English version of the text the translator expands with
Wælcyrginc, connecting this place to the Valkyries and so 31
making it closer to the Anglo-Saxons in a process of cultural translation. Mittman and Kim leave the river Capi and the Gorgoneus amongst the unidentified places. In the Letter of
Fermes we find a description of the same gold-digging ants
inhabiting this land, already described by Herodotus, Megasthenes and Aelianus, and located in the Letter in Egypt (Lendinara, 2009). Amongst the general lands we can also list Liconia, accompanied by the Old English apposition land, the text informs us that it is in Gallia, whose location has already been discussed. Finally, we have another three unnamed lands, starting from Marvel 19: we have no information regarding the location of the first one, but we are told that in this land one can find the sun and the moon’s lakes, and laurel and olive trees, we will see later in (viii) how this is relevant in trying to understand where to put this land on the map. The text informs us that the unnamed place of Marvel 22, home of the Panoti, is East from the island in the Red Sea where the Donestre live, knowing that the Panoti inhabit this area though is not really helpful in understanding its
Valkyries are associated to the Gorgons for their connection to the 31
location . Finally, Marvel 34 describes a land where one can 32
find a couch of ivory, interestingly, the Old English version of the text adds another element to the description, telling us that in this land there are also many vineyards. Vineyards and the fascination with artificial vegetation made of precious materials is another typical trait associated to the East in the Middle Ages. Again, this is not indicative of the land’s location, so we may try to find it by looking at the surrounding passages: the description of the land in Marvel 33 comes right after, and is coherent with, the description of the country of the Catini and the Ethiopians, and right before that of the Mons Adamans, so we can assume that this land with its vineyards and couch of ivory should be somewhere between these two places.
(v) Colonies:
A particular spatial entity that we find in the Marvels is the colony, described by the appositions colonia in Latin and
londbunes in Old English, word that stands for settlement or district . Colonies are not to be thought of as proper place-33
types, but rather as societies or peoples living in the same area, this is also confirmed by the fact that in one instance in the Latin text, Marvel number 11, dedicated to the description of Locotheo, the word colonia is glossed and disambiguated with the term habitatio. Given that they are characterized by distinct settlements with a specific location they should be included in the mapping of the text. The first
the Panoti in fact are mentioned in several earlier sources, but are often 32
associated to different areas: in his Naturalis Historia for example, Plinius describes them as people from the North (Meraglino, 2012), and Mittman and Kim recognize a resemblance to creatures described in ancient Chinese works (Mittman, Kim, 2013).
Old English Corpus - add reference. 33
one is described at the very beginning of the text, and is the colony of merchants in Antimolima; the second colony is given a proper name, the colony of Locotheo described in Marvel 11. The name Locotheo is not present in any map from that period, as far as I have been able to determine, but the colony is also present both in the Liber Monstrorum and several redactions of the letter of Fermes (Orchard, 2003), and is situated between the Nile and the Brixontes that will be discussed in (vii). Moreover, the Marvels also say that the people from there travel in ships to India to give birth.
(vi) Seas:
Water seems to play a relevant role in the characterization of places in the Marvels, in fact the text alternates between places in the hinterland and places characterized by the proximity to seas and rivers. The sea that features most prominently in the text is the Red Sea, functioning as landmark for the places that gravitate around it. Wether this proximity to the Red Sea is not only a geographic feature but also indicative of some particular traits shared by the places in such area will be discussed in the final part of this work. In addition to the Red Sea the text also mentions the ocean by the common nouns oceanus in Latin and garsecg in Old English. The ocean is mentioned in Marvel 18 in relation to the country of the Homodubii, which Mittman and Kim placed in the southern part of the Red Sea. Considering though that this would be one of the few times that the text calls the Red Sea by another name, that the area described in the previous passages is not the one of the Red Sea but the one around the rivers Nile and Brixontes and that the proximity to this area of the place described in Marvel 17 is indicated by the opening Post hunc
that Marvel 18 is located on what at that time was called Ethiopic Ocean, which is to say the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, also mentioned in the Letter of Alexander to
Aristotele and much closer in the map to the area in question 34
and also mentioned in the Herford Map (Virtual Mappa). Moreover, in support of this option the ocean is mentioned again in Marvel 29 and 30, dedicated to the description of of the kingdom inhabited by the Ethiopians, on the Cotton Map, between the Nile and the Ethiopic Ocean we read Hic Ethiopes (Virtual Mappa).
(vii) Rivers:
The Marvels talk about three different rivers, the Capi, the Nile and the Brixontes. The Capi flows in the Gorgoneus, whose location has been discussed above. The Nile is called in the text Archoboleta, meaning great river . As we have assessed, 35
the Brixontes, or Brison(e), too, play an important role in the geography of the Marvels, where several different places are gathered around its banks. The Brixontes is a fictitious river, whose name is not mentioned in maps from the Middle Ages, but it is mentioned in other texts including the Liber Monstrorum and several recensions of the Letter of Fermes (Orchard, 2003), especially in connection to the Blemmyes. From the area where we assume it is located given the information provided by the text and the location of the Blemmyes in the Herford Map (Virtual Mappa) we can assume that the Brixontes should be considered as a fictitious branch of the Nile. In the Cotton Map in fact, the Nile is divided into two sections, its real
The reference text can be found in Orchard’s Pride and Prodigies, 2003. 34
The perception of the Nile as the greatest and most prominent river in the 35
East is also reflected by its exaggerated dimensions in the Cotton World Map.
