Where Is the Heart of the World

My next chapter is devoted to the location of Jerusalem on European medieval mind maps.

This is the second part (out of four) of Unit 2, titled The Saga of All My Sons, from my book, "The Enchanting Encounter with the East".

The site of Jerusalem on the sixth century Madaba Map

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madaba_Map

The T-O maps, whose function we cleared up in the previous discussion, centered Jerusalem amid the circle of lands.

Image 1: Jerusalem, the Holy City from the sixth century Madaba map mosaic (1)

They did it, following in the footsteps of the Hebrew Bible, which draws a convincing picture of the Holy City located at the heart of the world. Ezekiel, the prophet and the enthusiastic creator of this vision, copies the Lord’s very words, announcing: “This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her”. (2)

The idea of the centrality of Jerusalem was deeply implanted into the Jewish thought. The Book of Jubilees promotes the three holy places, including Mount Zion, defining it as “the center of the navel of the earth”. (3)

The Rabbinic Judaism zooms on the middle point of the earth, visualizing it as a series of concentric circles of holiness; each inner ring is endowed with diminishing spatial value against its increasing spiritual worth. The Midrash Tanhuma Qedoshim argues that the Land of Israel focuses on Jerusalem, the latter on the Jewish Temple, which in turn shrinks to the Holy of Holies, the Ark, and eventually to the Foundation Stone, which is the kernel of the world’s creation. (4)  

There was nothing unusual in favoring one’s homeland as the center of the world and determining its most sacred site as the midpoint.   The Greek geographer Agathemerus ascribes the same trend to his countrymen: "the ancients drew the inhabited earth as round, with Hellas in the middle, and Delphi in the middle of Hellas, since it holds the navel of the earth." (5)

Western clerics carried on this concept even further, linking it to the construct of the three landmasses. St. Jerome’s “Commentary on Ezekiel” defines the City of Peace as “the navel of the earth”, that is perceived both as the center of the lands and the focal point of its habitable premises: "from the eastern parts it is surrounded by… Asia, from the western parts, by… Europe; from the south… Africa; from the north… by all the nations of the Black Sea. It is therefore situated in the midst of the peoples.” (6)

In his speech at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II refers to Jerusalem as the cradle of the Christian faith and the focus of the Christian mission, hailing it the "navel of the world" and the "paradise of delights". The bishop of Rome matches the city’s contemporary low profile under the canopy of the Muslim rule with the tribulations of Jesus:  "This spot the Redeemer of mankind has made illustrious by His advent, has beautified by His sojourn, has consecrated by His Passion, has redeemed by His death, has glorified by His burial. (7) According to the papal interpretation, the life of Jesus had added a new dimension to the Holy City, upgrading it from the middle point on the globe to its spiritual center. 

The Trefoil of the World

My next chapter, titled "The Trefoil of the World", elaborates on the conventional geographical construct of the three continents forming the habitable world. This image, linked to the scholastic ideas of ancient Greeks and to the Christian philosophy, had further developments throughout the Middle Ages, culminating in detailed "world maps".

Image: Noah’s sons observing their estates from Jean Mansel's illustration to "La Fleur des Histoires" https://www.pinterest.com/dekockmarijke/noah/?lp=true 

"Mappamundi, that is to say, image of the world and of the regions which are on the earth and of the various kinds of peoples which inhabit it."-The Catalan Atlas (2)

The cosmographers who contemplated the mysteries of the Earth would employ two distinct approaches. On the one hand, they mulled over dry land as an orphan island, whose patchy outlines almost merged with the turbulent waves of the boundless Ocean.  On the other hand, they zoomed in on the trefoil of continents divorced from each other by overwhelming water bodies.

These conventional diagrams,  dubbed T-O maps [Latin: orbis terrarium or “the circle of lands”], reflected the basic medieval outlook on the inhabited world. The phrase borrowed from Isaiah applies to the Lord King sitting “enthroned above the circle of the earth”. (3)

T-O graphs, featuring the “T” inscribed within the “O”, displayed the circle of lands girdled by a narrow ocean belt. The Mediterranean Sea served the upright pole of the capital “T”, while the Don River in Russia and the Nile shared the crossbar. The former “Roman Lake” separated Europe from Africa. The Don cut the former away from Asia, while the Nile disconnected it from the Dark Continent. The geographical imagination blew up those water passages to marine proportions.

          Not everybody shared this view. The “father of history” found the tripartite division artificial, ridiculing the superficial titles attached to the inhabited areas. He argued that the given names were designated to honor some down-to-earth women, hopefully of noble origin, rather than glorify heroic men. The Greek historian denounced the continental construct with its arbitrary boundaries: “I cannot conceive why three names, and women’s names especially, should ever have been given to a tract which is in reality one.” (4)

Nevertheless, the image of the three parts held currency among European scholars.  Already for Orosius, an outstanding Christian historian who lived at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries, this outlook was time-honored and respectable: “Our ancestors fixed a threefold division of the whole world surrounded by a periphery of the Ocean”. (5) A devout author pays tribute to both classical authors and the fathers of the Church as his recognized elders.