# Tournai maps

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thumb|Tournai map of Asia
The
'''Tournai maps''', often known as the '''Jerome maps''', are a pair of maps with [Latin](/source/Latin) labels found in a single late 12th-century [manuscript](/source/manuscript) copy of [Jerome](/source/Jerome)'s Latin translation of [Eusebius's ''Onomasticon''](/source/Onomasticon_(Eusebius)). One map [depicts the Holy Land](/source/Cartography_of_Palestine) (Palestine) while the other [depicts Asia](/source/Cartography_of_Asia). Although the preface of the ''Onomasticon'' refers to a map of the Holy Land, the 12th-century map cannot be a faithful copy of the original map.<ref name=SW>Susan Weingarten, ''The Saint's Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome'' (Brill, 2005), pp. 207–208.</ref>

==Description==
There are 278 labels on the Asian map and 195 on the Palestinian map. The Asian map includes Greece and the eastern Mediterranean.<ref name=EE>Evelyn Edson, ''Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their World'' (The British Library, 1997), pp. 26–30.</ref> It extends as far east as [Sri Lanka](/source/Sri_Lanka) (Taprotane). It is in portrait format with east at the top. Asia Minor takes up an inordinate amount of space in the middle. The Palestinian map is also oriented east up, but is in landscape format. It covers an area stretching from the [Nile](/source/Nile) to the [Ganges](/source/Ganges).<ref name=PDAH>P. D. A. Harvey, [https://archive.org/details/medievalmapsofho0000harv/ ''Medieval Maps of the Holy Land''] (The British Library, 2012), pp. 40–59.</ref>

There are few pictorial elements. Most cities are shown with generic towers, mountains with humps. The [Trees of the Sun and Moon](/source/Trees_of_the_Sun_and_Moon) and the [Pillars of Hercules](/source/Pillars_of_Hercules) are among the few "illustrative flights".<ref name=EE/> The [Hyrcanian forest](/source/Hyrcanian_forest) is illustrated by trees.<ref name=PDAH/> [Noah's ark](/source/Noah's_ark) is shown on the map of Asia but only labelled on that of Palestine.<ref name=EE/><ref name=PDAH/>

The maps were intended as a supplement to the text. The labelling of the maps mainly reflects [late Roman](/source/late_Roman) terminology rather than that of the 12th century. There is only one later name: [Bulgaria](/source/Bulgaria). It is equated with [Moesia](/source/Moesia), where the Bulgars only settled in 678.<ref name=EE/><ref name=PDAH/> There are mythological elements, such as an island of [Gorgons](/source/Gorgons) in the Red Sea. Rivers are always shown rising in mountains or springs in accordance with classical geography and the [Garden of Eden](/source/Garden_of_Eden) is not depicted.<ref name=EE/>

A natural hole in the [parchment](/source/parchment) was patched before the maps were drawn. The mapmaker used the hole to represent the island of [Crete](/source/Crete) on the Asian map and the [Caucasus](/source/Caucasus) on the Palestinian map.<ref name=PDAH/>

==History==
thumb|upright=1.4375|Tournai map of Palestine
The manuscript is now number 10049 of the [Additional manuscripts](/source/Additional_manuscripts) in the [British Library](/source/British_Library) in London. The maps are found on the recto and verso (front and back) of the last [folio](/source/folio), number 64. It was produced at [Saint Martin's Abbey in Tournai](/source/Saint-Martin_Abbey%2C_Tournai) for the abbey's own library. The book of "Jerome on the Hebrew names in one volume" that is mentioned in the library catalogue for 1159 may be this work.<ref name=PDAH/>

The current maps are not the original drawings but are [palimpsest](/source/palimpsest)s. Before the end of the 12th century, an earlier map of Palestine on the recto was erased to make room for the map of Asia. Likewise, a map of Palestine on the verso was partially erased and redrawn to produce the current (third) map of Palestine. It cannot be determined which of the earlier two maps of Palestine was drawn first, but the parchment patch was added after the first map on the recto was drawn. Both erased maps were drawn before the map of Asia. All the maps were the work of a single mapmaker, as the consistent handwriting attests. There are, across both maps, only eight labels that were added over subsequent centuries.<ref name=PDAH/>

The Tournai maps are extracts from a [world map](/source/Mappa_mundi), but the erased maps and the final maps were based on different source maps.<ref name=PDAH/> The model for the final maps is lost but a description of a related map survives in a 12th-century north Italian manuscript, now Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, IV.D.21. This description itself was written at the [abbey of Bobbio](/source/abbey_of_Bobbio) in the 11th century and the map described is listed in a catalogue of the library of Bobbio from 1461. The map was "in the Irish style" and in "Lombard script", indicating that it was of great age. It may be the "book of cosmography" recorded in a 9th-century library catalogue. The lost map of Bobbio and the model for the Tournai maps both go back to a map created at the [abbey of Iona](/source/Iona_Abbey) between the 6th and 8th centuries, itself based on a continental world map, tentatively linked to [Eucherius of Lyon](/source/Eucherius_of_Lyon).<ref name=PDAH/><ref name=PGD>Patrick Gautier-Dalché, [https://doi.org/10.1484%2FJ.VIATOR.1.100724 "Eucher de Lyon, Iona, Bobbio: le destin d'une ''mappa mundi'' de l'antiquité tardive"], ''Viator'' '''41''' (2010): 1–22.</ref>

The manuscript remained at the abbey until its dissolution in 1796, after which it passed through the hands of [Amans-Alexis Monteil](/source/Amans-Alexis_Monteil) before being acquired by the British Library in 1836. The first study of the maps was published by {{ill|Konrad Miller|de}} in 1895, arguing that they were copies of Jerome's original maps, themselves based on Eusebius' maps. There is no evidence, however, that either Jerome or Eusebius produced maps of Palestine or Asia.<ref name=PDAH/>

==References==
{{reflist}}

Category:12th-century maps
Category:Maps of Palestine (region)

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Tournai maps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournai_maps) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournai_maps?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.