Ecclesiastical Geography and Topography of the Christian World - Chapter IV

Martellus globe according to the Ptolemaic model, ca. 1490

Chapter IV 

The birth of Geography and of modern Ecclesiastical Geography: factors that they contributed to the development of Ecclesiastical Geography; Reform and Counter-reform, three major reasons for the Church's interest in geography

The birth of geography and geography modern ecclesiastical

                Throughout the High Medival cartographic and geographic studies underwent a regression about antiquity. The Geography of Tolomeo was forgotten for centuries, It was rediscovered later and remained an undisputed source until the sixteenth century: in fact, throughout the Middle Ages, not only the geography he made no progress, but were lost many of the insights of Greek scholars, including that of the spherical Earth. The decrease in contact between human groups settled in various parts of Europe and the African and Asian edges of the Mediterranean hampered the exchange of ideas and knowledge; the lack of major cultural centres prevented the rise of schools. The bustling Arab-Islamic culture stimulated editors of travel magazines, but were only suggestive of descriptive geography works. With the school, as we have seen, we revived interest in cosmographic and geographic issues and began to look at the cultural heritage of the past with a free eye, thus paving the way for major discoveries.

The accelerated development of geography, including the church, takes place in the sixteenth century. Three basic factors contributed to the development of the ecclesiastical geography and scientific geography in general:

                • Rebirth of the Ancient secular geography - the Renaissance pays special interest to antiquity and classical works in their different manifestations. Among the classical works is rediscovered the Geography of Ptolemy which is translated into several languages and printed. For example in Italy Giuseppe Rosaccio, medical and geographer (Pordenone ca 1530 - 1620 c a), published the Italian translation of the work of Ptolemy. Rosaccio is also known to have compiled geographical works of Ptolemy and cosmographic footprint, highly accurate but not very original ( primary et Celestial World, 1604, speech in which he touches on the nobility and excellence of the Earth, sd), and other works (Microcosm, 1600; Doctor, 1621) which contain observations of some interest on the relationship between man and the natural environment. He was also the author of the map.

                • Great geographical discoveries including the most famous one of Christopher Columbus in 1492 - the findings of the move worlds widened the horizons of Europeans and greatly increased the development of geography and cartography

   Farnese Palace in Caprarola Geographical Map Room

                 • The Reform Protestant and the Counter-Reformation Catholic - the controversy between Protestants and Catholics is crucial to the birth of modern ecclesiastical geography

                    The geography and cartography begin to develop energetically to short European royalty. In the sixteenth century, it became a ' habit of dynasties reigned have a geographer and cartographer of the court who drew the maps for administrative and governmental purposes. Through mapping gathered data on possessions and showed the properties of the lands of the kingdom. The cartography, both civil and ecclesiastical, developed especially in France, reaching its zenith in the seventeenth century.

                 The interest of the same houses reigned towards European geography and cartography was adopted soon by the Church, especially by the Roman Curia. The ecclesiastical geography, the maps were commissioned by the Church, as in the case of civil geography, administrative and functional purpose: to gather data on the possessions of the Church, and its hierarchy and improve the government administrative system. But in the case of the Church, there was also a service to the true objective: the ecclesiastical geography had ideological value and a great polemic potential. The maps were an effective tool to demonstrate the Church in all its glory - an ancient institution but always in force and territorial development. This aspect was very important in the growing controversy with Protestantism. At the time both denominations were trying to prove their authenticity and their apostolic origin geography and maps were very useful tools.

                    The Catholic Church publishes several maps, the maps are also painted on the walls of the palaces of the pope, the cardinals and bishops [see no Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola and the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican]. They appear in numerous publications geographically-devotional: monastic atlases, books on the apparitions, and guides on sacred sites. All this showed the power of the well-organized hierarchical structure of the Church.

                    During the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church tried to reinvigorate Catholicism through the re-consecration of the place, the tip on what was tangible, physically palpable. To do this you import the relics, mostly from the Roman catacombs, which are placed in various European churches, eg in Bavaria, to increase the pilgrimages to new sanctuaries. In this sense, the ecclesiastical geography and cartography helped to represent this re-sacralization of the places in Europe and around the world, giving directions and demonstrating the power of Catholic worship.

Sacred Geography

                                               Bernardino Amico da Gallipoli and his work

                    So the first to develop has been the so-called Sacred Geography, that is the geography of the places important for Christianity, especially those biblical linked with the life of Jesus with his apostles and then important Christian shrines scattered throughout the Christian world. Initially, it did not distinguish between ecclesiastical geography the sacred geography - they used the name sacred geography for both branches of the discipline which was very complex and rich. From Sacred Geography then evolved other disciplines, ecclesiastical geography, biblical geography (ie the biblical sites of both the Old and New Testament) and the topography of the Christian world. The Geography Sacred was initially identified with biblical geography in the sense that the Bible was her source of information and described the landscapes and places where the biblical events were held. However, between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, the term sacred geography was flexible and not precisely because it is the word Geography is sacred was applied in different ways without referring exclusively to the Bible and to biblical sites but also to sacred places connected with the lives of saints or shrines in general. The real biblical geography will appear only in the nineteenth century along with the development of biblical sciences.

                One of the first scholars of sacred geography was Bernardino Amico of Gallipoli, a Franciscan. His great merit was to have made famous the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Europe in its architectural reality. Father of  Sepulcher Guardian at the end of 1500, realized accurate drawings "according to the rules of perspective and from their true size ", printed in the most widespread Florentine reissue of 1620 illustrated with Giacomo Callot incisions. Bernardino Amico worked on plants of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulcher, as well as the history of the Holy Land. His most famous work: is the Real and the Royal City of Jerusalem as it is today.

                    Soon the Church also pays attention to the historical aspect of the ecclesiastical geography and uses it to represent the spread of Christianity in history. Catholics during the Counter-Reformation had a great interest in remembering and demonstrating different aspects of the local church for three big reasons: administration, glorification and controversy.

                Scholars and people of the Church immediately apply the same method of data collection and documentation of the same technique that was developed by the civil geography at the European courts. Especially after the Council of Trent, which emphasized and reinforced the territorial structures of the Church, ecclesiastical geography was applied to improve and professionalize the government of the Church. The bishops wanted to get precise data on land under their governance (jurisdiction) and the number of the faithful, therefore, commissioned and financed the mapping of their dioceses. So in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is greatly developed ecclesiastical geography understood as the collection of data on the present situation of the Church. The same cartographers who prepared the maps for the civil power began to develop maps for the Church ( eg Sanson de Beins in France ). The administration of the Church and the monitoring of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was an essential aspect of ecclesiastical geography at that time. The Diocese of Cards were an important instrument of the power of the bishops because they had valuable documents, and so were prepared and used. From the seventeenth century. the use of maps in the administration, both civil and ecclesiastical, becomes common. The ecclesiastical geography becomes a tool to demonstrate the geographical structure of the Church. In addition, maps of the diocese allowed the post-Tridentine bishops to learn more about their dioceses, eg Carlo Borromeo, who constantly visited his diocese commissioned maps to facilitate this task; Carlo Bascapè, bishop of Novara, commissioned the map of his diocese that was later published in 1611 under the title Novara. So the fruits of new knowledge were primarily cartographic: by the charts, without geographical grid but the more exact the old Ptolemaic maps, to various world maps, the great Flemish Mercator of the Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius.

Gerardus Mercator and his works

             Gerhard Kremer, Latinized as Gerardus Mercator (Kruibeke, 5 March 1512 - Duisburg, 2 December 1594), was a mathematician, astronomer and Flemish cartographer. He is famous for his studies in cartography and for inventing a cartographic projection system that bears his name.

Abraham Ortelius and his works

                Abraham Ortelius (also Ortels, Oertel, Orthellius, Italianized in Abraham Ortelio) (Antwerp 1528-1598), a known geographer and cartographer, founder of the Flemish Mercator cartography. He was responsible for the TheatrumOrbisTerrarum (considered the first true modern atlas), one of the first collections of the same comprehensive cartographic scale, using the collaboration of major European cartographers, twenty-five years before Mercator atlas, engraved by Franz Hogenberg (published in 42 editions until 1612 and seven different languages). Ortelius also published several historical maps, some of which were incorporated into the Theatrum. Between 1579 and 1606 it was published his Parergon Theatri Contained a reproduction of Peutinger.

Map of Italy, Corsica and Sardinia - Gallery of geographical maps - Vatican Museums. (works of Ignatius Danti. 

Ignatius (Egnatio) Danti (1536-1586), a Dominican, then bishop of Alatri.

                Another important scholar, mathematician and cartographer of the time was Ignatius (Egnatio) Danti (1536-1586), a Dominican, then bishop of Alatri. After spending some time in Florence where he worked for Cosimo I of the  Medici, he went to Rome where he worked on maps of the Vatican, called for its mathematical merits by Pope Gregory XIII, who appointed him a mathematician pontifical and made him a member of the commission for the reform of the calendar. Also placed in charge of the painters called to the Vatican by the Pope, to continue the work begun by Raphael brilliantly during the pontificate of Pope Leo X, and at the same time to draw up maps of ancient and modern Italy.

                At the same time Christian scholars, both Catholic and Protestant, also studied carefully the history and geography of the early church: its spread, structures, institutions, and material culture. The purpose of these studies was to demonstrate that they were (Protestant or Catholic) the closest to the Christian communities of the first centuries and that it was they who continued the tradition of the Church. Initially, Protestant studies regarding the approach and method were more advanced than those of Catholics. This controversy about the past was strongly influenced by the present situation, ie the inter-confessional controversy. The highlight of the discussion of the ecclesiastical geography between Protestants and Catholics took place in the period 1550-1650. Here he was born the modern ecclesiastical geography.

            Scholars started from Eusebius of Caesarea, Ruffino, Pliny, Ptolemy, the councils of the Church, agliagrimensori (Geomatics) [Surveyor among the ancient Romans was originally experienced in a private than public official, which had as its main tasks the measurement of the land, the definition of the plant to a camp, the division of agro be allocated to the settlers, but also practised, often, scientific and educational activities. Sur name gromatici veteres (ie ancient Geomatics) indicates an extensive collection of Latin texts put together during the fifth century AD, containing works by Land surveyors also referred to as Corpus agrimensorum Romanorum . The collection was published by Lachmann in the nineteenth century. In Roman society practices codified by surveyors can be interpreted not only as technical methods of land division in a theoretical sense but also as a social tool to regulate legally the prop sidiarity and collect taxes. The cards themselves are cast in bronze or carved on the stone, they were designed to make the social order more permanent, separating free men and slaves utilizing a statute based on the division of the land.] and linking various disciplines such as civil and canon law, history, archaeology, geography and cartography. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ecclesiastical geography (still not well defined) was closely related (nearly indistinguishable) from sacred history, he studied the Bible, archaeology, law, etc. patrology.

                An example of the interweaving of different disciplines in the ecclesiastical geography: is the works of Aubert Mire and the Augustin Lubin.

     

         Aubert Mire (called Miraeus, 1573-1640) was a historic, Belgian historian and biographer, nephew of the Bishop of Antwerp (Antwerp), and since 1624 vicar general of the diocese. In 1613 he published Notitiaepiscopatuumorbischristiani and in 1620 Ecclesiastical Geography. Mire used various disciplines and sources for the writing of his works including several legal documents (donations, privileges, decrees) and several Roman manuscripts.

Augustin Lubin Martyrologium Romanum illustratum sivetabulaea ecclesiastical geographietabulis et notishistoricis, Paris 1660.

            On the part of Catholics, an important contribution gave the hagiography and martyrologies compiled with great care. These works were used for the ecclesiastical geography because they represented and reflected the geographic distribution of Christians and their martyrdom in various parts of the world. An example of these works is the martyrology of Augustin Lubin Martyrologium Romanum illustratum sivetabulaea ecclesiastical geographietabulis et notishistoricis, Paris 1660. Lubin draws a linear story, a cyclical calendar and the sacred space, and against this background presents the geography ecclesiastical with particular care and rich scope. The work of Lubin presents the Church as a human institution with its geographical spread and its own story to tell as the history of kingdoms and empires. His contribution was very important: through the lives of the saints recounted the history of the Church from the chart perspective, and conformed legends of the maps that represented the details. He also gave a special meaning to sacred geography: devising, sorting and representing the space not only based on biblical texts but also by using local traditions, institutions and landscapes. (To be continued)

Reference: See. ZurShalev, Sacred Words and Worlds. Geography, Religion and Scholarship, 1500-1700, Leiden 2011. 

Fr. Nicholas Macedon OCD

Carmelite Priory, Oxford.            

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