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ABSTRACT
Based on the theories of Otto of Freising and Hugh of Saint Victor, scholars widely accept that medieval authors conceived of history as a spatial progression of empires from Babylon in the east to Rome in the west. This article reevaluates that assumption, arguing that influential German scholars of the 1930s to 1960s inflated the perceived typicality of Otto’s writing. We see first that this has obscured the biblical exegetical basis of Hugh’s own theory. Surveying contemporary material from hagiographies of Thomas Becket to eschatological ideas among the ‘School of Chartres’, the article argues that it is these exegetical tropes and metaphors of the sun’s rising and setting that underlie twelfth-century discussions of east and west, not the translatio imperii. This underscores not only the novelty and achievement of Otto and Hugh, but also more clearly contextualises their work within their intellectual environment.
Acknowledgements
This paper was written with the support of funding from the Leverhulme Trust as part of a project on ‘The Idea of the West in the Long Twelfth Century’. I would like to thank Professor Ingrid Baumgärtner and Dr Elizabeth Biggs for their helpful comments on late drafts of this article.
Notes
1 The following abbreviations are used in this article: MGH: Monumenta Germaniae Historica; PL: Patrologia cursus completus, series Latina; CCCM: Corpus Christianorum, continuatio mediaevalis; CCSL: Corpus Christianorum series Latina; CSEL: Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum.
Otto of Freising, Chronica siue historia de duabus civitatibus 1.prol, ed. Adolf Hofmeister. MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 45 (Hannover: Hahn, 1912), 8; trans. Charles Christopher Mierow, The Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 A. D. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1928; repr. 2002), 95. All translations are the author’s unless otherwise noted. Mierow’s use of ‘orient’ has in every case been replaced with ‘east’ and to avoid confusion, all cardinal direction terms in quotations have been written in lower case.
2 On Otto see Hans-Werner Goetz, Das Geschichtsbild Ottos von Freising. Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 19 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1984); Elisabeth Mégier, ‘Tamquam lux post tenebras, oder: Ottos von Freising Weg von der Chronik zu den Gesta Friderici’, Mediaevistik 3 (1990): 131–267; Joachim Ehlers, Otto von Freising: Ein Intellektueller im Mittelalter (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2013).
3 Authoritative still on the translatio imperii is Werner Goez, Translatio Imperii: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Geschichtsdenkens und der politischen Theorien im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: Mohr, 1958). The fundamental responses to Goez’s presentation of the translatio studii are Adriaan Gerard Jongkees, ‘Translatio Studii: Les avatars d’un thème médiéval’, in Miscellanea in memoriam Jan Frederick Niermeyer, ed. Dirk Peter Blok (Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1967), 41–51 and Franz Josef Worstbrock, ‘Translatio artium: Über die Herkunft und Entwicklung einer kulturhistorischen Theorie’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 47, no. 1 (1965): 1–22. For a recent treatment of both, see Enrico Fenzi, ‘Translatio studii e translatio imperii: Appunti per un percorso’, Interfaces 1 (2015): 170–208.
4 Goez, Translatio Imperii, 121–2; Goetz, Geschichtsbild, 316.
5 Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen, ‘History, Tragedy and Fortune in Twelfth-Century Historiography with Special Reference to Otto of Freising’s Chronica’, in Historia: The Concept and Genres in the Middle Ages, eds. Tuomas M.S. Lehtonen and Paivi Maria Mehtonen (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2000), 29–49 (32–33); Mégier, ‘Tamquam lux’, 131, 237 n. 5; Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 107.
6 Suzanne Conklin Akbari, ‘From Due East to True North: Orientalism and Orientation’, in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 19–34 (19–20); Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Oriet 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 2–3, 20–66; Kim M. Phillips, Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245–1510 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 18–22, 60–64.
7 Akbari, Idols in the East, 20–66; Ingrid Baumgärtner, ‘Winds and Continents: Concepts for Structuring the World and Its Parts’, in Mapping Narrations – Narrating Maps: Concepts of the World in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, eds. Daniel Gneckow, Anna Hollenbach and Phillip Landgrebe. Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture 34 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2022), 23–72; Nathalie Bouloux, ‘Ordering and Reading the World: The Maps in Lambert of Saint-Omer’s “Liber Floridus”’, in Geography and Religious Knowledge in the Middle Ages, ed. Christoph Mauntel. Das Mittelalter, Beihefte 14 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021), 85–108 (97–99). On the three ‘continents’, see now especially Christoph Mauntel, Die Erdteile in der Weltordnung des Mittelalters: Asien – Europa – Afrika. Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 71 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 2023).
8 Two notable exceptions are Stephen McKenzie, ‘The Westward Progression of History on Medieval Mappaemundi: An Investigation of the Evidence’, in The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and Their Context, ed. P.D.A. Harvey (London: British Library, 2006), 335–44 and David Louis Gassman, ‘Translatio Studii: A Study of Intellectual History in the Thirteenth Century’ (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1973).
9 Andrew B. Perrin and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, eds., Four Kingdom Motifs before and beyond the Book of Daniel. Themes in Biblical Narrative 28 (Leiden: Brill, 2021); M. L. West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiactic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 312–19; Joseph Ward Swain, ‘The Theory of the Four Monarchies Opposition History under the Roman Empire’, Classical Philology 35, no. 1 (1940): 1–21.
10 Jerome, Commentarii In Danielem libri III 1.2, ed. Franciscus Glorie. CCSL 75A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964), 794; cf. Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 4.7, 20.23, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb. CCSL 47–48. 2 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 1:103–04, 2:742.
11 Paulus Orosius, Historiarum adversum paganos libri VII 2.1.5, ed. Karl Zangemeister (Leipzig: Teubner, 1889), 35. On a possible basis in Daniel 7:2, see Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 48–49 and Andrew Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series 64 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 53.
12 So Goez, Translatio imperii, 104–11. For a recent reevaluation of this relationship between translatio and renovatio from the eleventh century, see Claudia Wittig, ‘Political Didacticism in the Twelfth Century: The Middle-High German Kaiserchronik’, in Universal Chronicles in the High Middle Ages, eds. Michele Campopiano and Henry Bainton. Writing History in the Middle Ages 4 (York: York Medieval Press, 2017), 95–119 and Uta Goerlitz, Literarische Konstruktion (vor-)nationaler Identität seit dem Annolied: Analysen und Interpretationen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters (11.-16. Jahrhundert). Quellen und Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte 45 [279] (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 173–77.
13 Joseph Schmidlin, Die geschichtsphilosophische und kirchenpolitische Weltanschauung Ottos von Freising: Ein Beitrag zur mittelalterlichen Geistesgeschichte. Studien und Darstellungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte 4/2–3 (Freiburg: Herder, 1906), 35; John Kirtland Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades. American Geographical Society Research Series 15 (New York: American Geographical Society, 1925), 233–35; M.-D. Chenu, Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West, trans. Jerome Taylor and Lester K. Little (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), 186–88; Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkley: University of California Press, 1967), 276–78. Recent examples include: Jay Rubenstein, Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream: The Crusades, Apocalyptic Prophecy, and the End of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 31; Richard K. Emmerson, ‘Apocalypse and/as History’, in Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500, eds. Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner, and Elizabeth M. Tyler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 54; Ehlers, Otto von Freising, 192; Elizabeth Lapina, Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), 122–75; Natalia I. Petrovskaia, Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient. Cursor Mundi 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 1–47.
14 Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 162–201; Goez, Translatio, 105–06; R. W. Southern, ‘Hugh of St Victor and the Idea of Historical Development’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 21 (1971): 159–79; Peter Classen, ‘Res Gestae, Universal History, Apocalypse: Visions of Past and Future’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, eds. Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 403–04; cf. Wright, Geographical Lore, 233–35.
15 Wright, Geographical Lore, 235. Wright provides no citation, but the quotation is originally from George Berkeley’s ‘Verses on America’ (The Works of George Berkeley Bishop of Cloyne, eds. Arthur Aston Luce and Thomas Edmund Jessop, vol. 7 (London: Nelson, 1955), 373, l. 21). As cited it may also refer to the title, likewise drawn from Berkeley, inscribed on an 1861 mural by Emanuel Leutze that decorates the United States House of Representatives. Cf. Ernst Benz, ‘Ost und West in der christlichen Geschichtsanschauung’, Die Welt als Geschichte 1 (1935): 488–513 (503–13), who similarly links Hugh and Otto with the work of Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (d. 1817).
16 Roger D. Ray, ‘Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century: Problems and Progress of Research’, Viator 5 (1974): 33–59 (33–5); Hans-Werner Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewußtsein im hohen Mittelalter, 2nd ed. Orbis mediaevalis 1 (Berlin: Akademie, 2008), 32–34.
17 Herbert Grundmann, Geschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter: Gattungen – Epochen – Eigenart, 3rd ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 21–22, cf. 73. See also Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), 237–8; Goez, Translatio Imperii, 107; Horst Dieter Rauh, Das Bild des Antichrist im Mittelalter: Von Tychonius zum deutschen Symbolismus, 2nd ed. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge 9 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1979), 305. Cf. the more recent qualifications by Goetz, Geschichtsbild, 315–27 and Lehtonen, ‘History, Tragedy and Fortune’, 33.
18 Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 169; Southern, ‘Hugh of Saint Victor’, 165–67; cf. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), 89–90.
19 Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 186.
20 A.J. Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. G. L. Campbell (London: Routledge, 1985), 131; Goetz, Geschichtsbild, 158 n. 132.
21 ‘Ordo autem loci et ordo temporis fere per omnia secundum rerum gestarum seriem concurrere uidentur. Et ita per diuinam prouidentiam uidetur esse dispositum, ut que in principio temporum gerebantur, in oriente – quasi in principio mundi – gererentur, ac deinde ad finem profluente tempore usque ad occidentem rerum summa descenderet, ut ex hoc ipso agnoscamus appropinquare finem seculi, quia rerum cursus iam attigit finem mundi. Ideo primus homo in oriente in hortis Eden conditus collocatur ut ab illo principio propago posteritatis in orbem terrarum proflueret. Item post diluuium principium regnorum et caput mundi in Assyriis et Chaldeis et Medis in partibus orientis fuit, deinde ad Grecos uenit; postremo circa finem seculi ad Romanos in occidente – quasi in fine mundi habitantes – potestas summa descendit.’ Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa Noe 4.9, ed. Patrice Sicard. CCCM 176 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 111–12. On the coordinate use of mundus and saeculum, see Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 170 n. 19.
22 On their contemplative function, see Paul Rorem, Hugh of Saint Victor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 130–43. Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.9, ed. Sicard, 111–13; Hugh of Saint Victor, Libellus de formatione arche 11, ed. Patrice Sicard. CCCM 176A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 157; Hugh of Saint Victor, De uantitate rerum mundanarum 2, ed. Cédric Giraud. CCCM 269 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 168.
23 On the Chronica see Goez, Translatio, 120–21 and Joachim Ehlers, Hugo von St. Viktor: Studien zum Geschichtsdenken und zur Geschichtsschreibung des 12 Jahrhunderts. Frankfurter historische Abhandlungen 7 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1973), 128. On the Descriptio, see Nathalie Bouloux, ‘The Munich Map (c. 1130): Description, Meanings and Uses’, in A Critical Companion to English Mappae Mundi of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, eds. Dan Terkla and Nick Millea. Boydell Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture 17 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019), 104–5.
24 Boyd Taylor Coolman, The Theology of Hugh of St. Victor: An Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 163–91; Conrad Rudolph, The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 62–63, 191–203.
25 Hugh of Saint Victor, De uanitate 2, ed. Giraud, 168: ‘Incipientibus ergo nobis ab origine rerum omnium et per opera restaurationis secundum longitudinem archae decurrentibus ad finem et consummationem uniuersorum … (My emphasis.)’. See also Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.9, ed. Sicard, 111. On the technical meaning of ‘opera restaurationis’: Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis Christianae fidei 1.prol.2–3, ed. J.-P. Migne. PL 176 (Paris: Garnier, 1880), 185–86 and Hugh of Saint Victor, De scripturis et Scriptoribus sacris 2, ed. J.-P. Migne. PL 175 (Paris: Garnier, 1879), 11; see Coolman, Theology, 12–13, 126–27.
26 Otto of Freising, Chronica 1.prol., ed. Hofmeister, 7–8, trans. Mierow, 94; Mégier, ‘Tamquam lux’, 145–46; Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘Entzeiterwartung und Endzeitvorstellung im Rahmen des Geschichtsbildes des früheren 12. Jahrhunderts’, in The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, eds. Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst and Andries Welkenhuysen. Mediaevalia Lovaniensia 15 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988), 306–32 (330 n. 134).
27 Otto of Freising, Chronica 1.prol., cf. 5.36, ed. Hofmeister, 8, 260, trans. Mierow, 95, 358. On the theme of mutabilitas, see Goetz, Geschichtsbild, 86–94, 122–4.
28 Otto of Freising, Chronica 5.prol., ed. Hofmeister, 227–8, trans. Mierow, 323.
29 Cf. Bede, Chronica 68–71, ed. Theodor Mommsen. MGH Auctores antiquissimi 13 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1898), 322–27; Classen, ‘Res Gestae’, 403.
30 Classen, ‘Res Gestae’, 402; Goetz, Geschichtsscreibung, 190–92; Goez, Translatio, 121.
31 Orosius, Historiae 6.21.19–21.
32 Otto of Freising, Chronica 3.4, ed. Hofmeister, 140, trans. Mierow, 228.
33 Otto of Freising, Chronica 7.32, ed. Hofmeister, 360–63, trans. Mierow, 441–42.
34 Goetz, Geschichtsbild, 160–61; Mégier, ‘Tamquam lux’, 150; Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.8–9, ed. Sicard, 105–17; Otto of Freising, Chronica 1.prol., ed. Hofmeister, 8.
35 While some scholars remain circumspect about Otto’s dependence on Hugh (e.g. Goetz, Geschichtsbild, 158 n. 132), most take it for granted (e.g. Rauh, Antichrist, 342 and Rudolph, Mystic Ark, 203).
36 Ehlers, Otto von Freising, 39–40, 67–83; Goetz, Geschichtsbild, 39–40. On dating the Ark tracts: Rudolph, Mystic Ark, 43; Dan Terkla, ‘Hugh of St Victor (1096–1141) and Anglo-French Cartography’, Imago Mundi 65, no. 2 (2013): 163, 172–3 n. 18.
37 Ehlers, Otto von Freising, 147.
38 Urkunden des Cistercienser-Stiftes Heiligenkreuz im Wiener Walde, ed. Johann Nepomuk Weis. Fontes rerum Austriacarum 11. 2 vols. (Vienne: Kaiserlich-Königlichen Hof- und Staatsdruckeri, 1856), 1:1.
39 Heiligenkreuz, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 105 and Cod. 205, fol. IIr; Theodor Gottlieb, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Österreichs, vol. 1, Niederösterreich (Vienne: Holzhausen, 1915), 21. On the dating of Otto’s Chronica: Hofmeister, Preface to Otto of Freising, Chronica, XII–XVI and Ehlers, Otto von Freising, 166–68.
40 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 15692. The entire Austro-Bavarian branch is interlinked with Morimond through its daughter houses: Sicard, Preface to Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa Noe; Libellas de formatione arche, 115* n. 11.
41 Ehlers, Otto von Freising, 15–21.
42 As in Rudolph, Mystical Ark, 203; Ehlers, Hugo von St. Viktor, 134–35 and Goez, Translatio, 120.
43 Besides Orosius, suggestions include: Fulcher of Chartres (Akbari, Idols in the East, 35); Gerald of Wales (Lapina, Warfare, 126–27); Honorius Augustodunensis (Hans-Werner Goetz, ‘The Concept of Time in the Historiography of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography, eds. Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried and Patrick J. Geary. Publications of the German Historical Institute (Washington: German Historical Institute, 2002), 139–66 (154)); Joachim of Fiore (Benz, ‘Ost und West’, 502); Jordanes (Goez, Translatio, 117); Lambert of Saint-Omer (Rubenstein, Nebuchadnezzar, 31, 128–29); Notker the Stammerer (Friedrich Ohly, ‘Typologische Figuren aus Natur und Mythus’, in Formen und Funktionen der Allegorie: Symposion Wolfenbüttel 1978, ed. Walter Haug (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1979), 126–66 (128)) and Severian of Jabala (Wright, Geographic Lore, 234).
44 On the very different role of east and west in Augustine’s idea of Rome and Babylon, see Andrew Scheil, Babylon under Western Eyes: A Study of Allusion and Myth (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 60–64; Johannes van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study into Augustine’s City of God and the Sources of his Doctrine of the Two Cities. Vigiliae Christianae, Supplements 14 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 168–69; and in Orosius: Van Nuffelen, Orosius, 49–51; Kempshall, Rhetoric, 70.
45 Barbara Maurmann, Die Himmelsrichtungen im Weltbild des Mittelalters: Hildegard von Bingen, Honorius Augustodunensis und andere Autoren. Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 33 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1976) remains the most systematic study of the cardinal directions as exegetical categories. Cf. Barbara Obrist, ‘Wind Diagrams and Medieval Cosmology’, Speculum 72, no. 1 (1997): 33–84.
46 Wright, Geographical Lore, 234; Chenu, Nature, Man and Society, 186; Alessandro Scafi, ‘Defining Mappaemundi’, in The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and Their Context, ed. P. D. A. Harvey (London: British Library, 2006), 345–54 (347). Cf. Classen, ‘Res Gestae’, 406–7; Southern, ‘Hugh of Saint Victor’, 163–72; Bernard Guenée, Histoire et culture historique dans l'Occident médiéval (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1980), 30–32.
47 Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis 1.prol.2, PL 176, 183A–C, trans. Roy J. Deferarri, Hugh of Saint Victor On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1951), 3–4. Cf. Hugh’s characterisations in De archa 4.3–9, ed. Sicard, 92–117; De vanitate 2, ed. Sicard 152–69 and De sacramentis 1.28–29, PL 176, 203D–204D.
48 ‘De operibus conditionis per opera restaurationis ad conditionis et restaurationis auctorem ascendunt.’ Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.6, ed. Sicard, 102; see also Hugh of Saint Victor, Commentaria in Hierarchiam coelestem S. Dionysii Areopagitae 1.1, ed. J.-P. Migne. PL 175 (Paris: Garnier, 1879), 926–28 and Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon 2.1, ed. J.-P. Migne. PL 176 (Paris: Garnier, 1880), 751C; Rorem, Hugh, 139–40 and Rudolph, Mystic Ark, 269–71.
49 Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon 5.3, PL 176, 790C–791A; Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis 1.prol.5, PL 176, 185A–B. Cf. Hugh’s qualification in the Descriptio mappe mundi that he will discuss ‘significationes, non quas res ipse significant, sed quibus significantur’ (Hugh of Saint Victor, Descriptio mappe mundi prol., in La 'Descriptio mappe mundi' de Hugues de Saint-Victor: Texte inédit avec introduction et commentaire, ed. Patrick Gautier Dalché (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1988), 133) and Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Hic mappa mundi consideranda est: lecture de la mappemonde au Moyen Age’, in Iterari del testo per Stefano Pittalugo, ed. Cristina Cocco, Clara Fossati, Attilio Grisafi, Francesco Mosetti Casaretto and Giada Boiani (Genoa: Ledizioni, 2018), 512–13.
50 Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.9, ed. Sicard, 112; Hugh of Saint Victor, Libellus 11, ed. Sicard, 160; Hugh of Saint Victor, De vanitate 2, ed. Giraud, 168. See further Rudolph, Mystic Ark, 156–57, 497–98 n. 425.
51 Hugh of Saint Victor, De scripturis 16, PL 175, 23B–D; on this work see Rorem, Hugh, 17–21.
52 Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.9, ed. Sicard, 112. In De scripturis they are north and south of the desert of Jesus’s temptation (Matt. 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13) and in the Libellus they are simply north and south.
53 Orosius, Historiae 1.21; this placement is evident, e.g., on the Cotton Map (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B.v, fol. 56v), the Tournai map of Palestine (London, British Library, Add. MS 10049, fol. 64v) and the Sawley Map (Cambridge, Corpus Christi, MS 66, p. 2). On the Cotton map, see Peter Barber, ‘Medieval Maps of the World’, in Hereford World Map, ed. Harvey, 4–8; on the Tournai maps: P.D.A. Harvey, Medieval Maps of the Holy Land (London: British Library, 2012), 40–59; and on the Sawley map: Alfred Hiatt, ‘The Sawley Map (c. 1190)’, in Companion to English Mappae Mundi, ed. Terkla and Millea, 112–26.
54 Hugh of Saint Victor, Descriptio mappe mundi 10, ed. Gautier Dalché, 141–42; Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10058, fol. 154v. On the Munich map, see Bouloux, ‘The Munich Map’, 92–111.
55 On this point I follow Patrick Gautier-Dalché, ‘“Réalité” et “symbole” dans la géographie de Hugues de Saint-Victor’, in Ugo di San Vittore. Atti del XLVII Convegno storico internazionale (Todi, 10–12 ottobre 2010) (Spoleto: Fondazione CISAM, 2011), 359–81. For Hugh, ‘biblical’ potentially encompasses the entire patristic tradition (Didascalicon 4.2, PL 176, 779B–C; cf. De sacramentis 1.prol.7, PL 176, 186D). Despite Jerome’s immense influence on geographies of the Holy Land (Harvey, Maps of the Holy Land, 6), Hugh seems to be drawing entirely on Augustine here.
56 The reference to Babylon is made explicit at 25:9 and the fall of Jerusalem occurs in ch. 39. This passage was also closely linked with Isa. 14:13, e.g. in the Glossa ordinaria (ed. Adolf Rusch, Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria, 4 vols. (Strasbourg, 1480/81), 3:85v).
57 On Egypt: e.g. Augustine, Ennarrationes in Psalmos 77.28, in Ennarrationes in Psalmos LI-C, eds. Eligius Dekkers and Iohannes Fraipont. CCSL 39 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956), 1088. On Babylon: e.g. Jerome, In Isaiam 6.13.1, in Commentariorum in Esaiam libri I-XI, ed. M. Adriaen. CCSL 73 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1963), 223–24. On Babylon: Rudolph (Mystic Ark, 535 n. 678) suggests Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 16.4 and 17.16 as Hugh’s source. In further support of an Augustinian source, we may note that Hugh alludes to a vetus version of Isa. 14:13 found primarily in Augustine’s Ennarationes (‘ponam sedem meam ad aquilonem’) in both De scripturis 16, PL 175, 23C and De archa 4.9, ed. Sicard, 112. Hugh, however, likely made use of an intermediary source, since Bernard of Clairvaux links this same etymology to the same quotation from Job 10:22 in his Apologia ad Guillelmum 10 (in Bernardi Opera, eds. J. Leclercq and H. M. Rochais, vol. 3 (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1963), 90), just a few years earlier. (On the dating of the Apologia to around 1125 see Conrad Rudolph, The ‘Things of Greater Importance’: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 203–26.)
58 ‘[mundum] in … calore carnalis concupiscentie positum’; ‘infernum, ubi … sempiternus horror inhabitans.’ Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.9, ed. Sicard, 112. On the association of hell with cold and the north, see Vegard Skånland, ‘Calor fidei’, Symbolae Osloenses 32, no. 1 (1956): 86–104 and Alfred L. Kellogg, ‘Satan, Langland, and the North’, Speculum 24, no. 3 (1949): 413–14.
59 Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 117–28; see also Skånland, ‘Calor fidei’, 87 and Kellogg, ‘Satan’, 413.
60 Maurman, Himmelsrichtungen, 123 n. 27; Bede, In Cantica canticorum libri VI 3.4, in Opera exegetica, vol. 2B, ed. D. Hurst. CCSL 119B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983), 270–1.
61 E.g. Origen, In Numeros homilia 27.2, in Origenes Werke, vol. 7/2, Homilien zum Hexateuch in Rufins Übersetzungen, ed. Wilhelm Adolf Baehrens (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1921), 259; Rudolph, Mystic Ark, 535 n. 678
62 ‘in oriente – quasi in principio mundi’. Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.9, ed. Sicard, 111 and Hugh of Saint Victor, De vanitate 2 ed. Giraud, 168; see also Hugh of Saint Victor, Libellus, ed. Sicard, 157.
63 See Augustine, De doctrina Christiana 3.36.52, ed. Joseph Martin. CCSL 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962), 112 and De Genesi ad litteram 6.3, ed. Joseph Zycha. CSEL 28/1 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1894), 173. These two readings reflect the difference between the Hebrew text, followed in the Vulgate, and the Septuagint, followed in the vetus text.
64 Bede, In Genesis 1.2.8, in Opera Exegetica, vol. 1, ed. Ch. W. Jones. CCSL 118A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967), 46; Glossa Ordinaria, ed. Rusch, 1:11r; Andrew of Saint Victor, Expositio super heptateuchum, In Genesim 2.8, eds. Charles Lohr and Rainer Brendt. CCCM 53 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), 29; Peter Lombard, Sententiae in iu libris dinstinctae 2.17.5.4, ed. PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 2 vols. (Grottaferrata: Colegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971–81), 1/2:414. See Lesley Smith, The Glossa Ordinaria: The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary. Commentaria 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 149–53, 200–04, 208–09.
65 Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.9, ed. Sicard, 112 and De vanitate 2, ed. Giraud, 168.
66 Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 201.
67 ‘Cum autem iam sol erat ad occasum, flamma facta est, et ecce fornax fumabunda et lampades ignis … ’Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 14.24, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 2:528.
68 ‘Sicut enim adflictio ciuitatis Dei … sub antichristo … significatur tenebroso timore Abrahae circa solis occasum, id est propinquante iam fine saeculi: sic ad solis occasum, id est ad ipsum iam finem, significatur isto igne dies iudicii’. (My emphasis.) Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 14.24, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 2:528; I have adapted the translation of R. W. Dyson, The City of God against the Pagans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 734. Cf. Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.9, ed. Sicard, 111: ‘ad finem profluente tempore usque ad occidentem rerum summa descenderet, ut ex hoc ipso agnoscamus appropinquare finem seculi’. (My emphasis.)
69 See above n. 43.
70 Wright, Geographical Lore, 234. This argument is adopted by Glacken, Traces, 277 and Lapina, Warfare, 128.
71 Severian of Gabala, Homilies on Creation and Fall 5, trans. Robert C. Hill, in Commentaries on Genesis 1–3: Severian of Gabala and Bede the Venerable, ed. Michael Glerup (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press 2010), 67; cf. Wright, Geographical Lore, 234.
72 Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 153–4.
73 Severian of Gabala, On Creation 5, trans. Hill, 67.
74 Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 135–82. For an extra-exegetical application of this idea see Bernardus Silvestris(?), Commentum in Martianum 3, in The Commentary on Martianus Capella’s De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii Attributed to Bernardus Silvestris, ed. Haijo Jan Westra. Studies and Texts 80 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986), 58.
75 Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 153 and Jürgen Fischer, Oriens–Occidens–Europa: Begriff und Gedanke ‘Europa’ in der späten Antike und im frühen Mittelalter. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für europäische Geschichte Mainz Abteilung Universalgeschichte 15 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1957), 73.
76 ‘Christus enim pleno maiestatis suae lumine reuelabitur et, sicut fulgur exit ab oriente et toto lumen suum usque in occidentem orbe diffundit, sic et filius cum suis angelis ueniens inluminabit hunc mundum, ut credat omnis homo et salua fiat omnis caro.’ Ambrose, Explanatio Psalmorum XII Ps. 43.7, in Sancti Ambrosii Opera, vol. 6, ed. M. Petschenig. CSEL 64 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1919), 264; cf. Matt. 24:22–27. The link to the sol iustitiae is made explicit in the preceding chapter (ed. Petschenig, 263–64). See also Maurmann, Himmselsrichtungen, 157.’
77 ‘Aeternus sol longe clarius matutino sole a uestro oriente nostri occidentis tenebras illustrauit’. Peter the Venerable, Epistula 83, in The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 1:202.
78 Lapina, Warfare, 131–32.
79 Fischer, Oriens–Occidens, 73–74.
80 Sigebert of Gembloux, Vita altera sancti Lamberti 3.31, ed. J.-P. Migne. PL 160 (Paris: Garnier, 1880), 795B–C; on the Vitae sancti Lamberti, see Mireille Chazan, L’Empire et l’histoire universelle: De Sigebert de Gambloux à Jean de Saint-Victor (XIIe-XIVe siècle). Etudes d'histoire médiévale 3 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999), 75–80.
81 See Klaus Oschema, Bilder von Europa im Mittelalter. Mittelalter-Forschungen 43 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2013), 186–91.
82 ‘Quasi radius ab occidente emergens orbem universum illustravit’. Benedict of Peterborough, Miracula sancti Thomae Cantuariensis 6.4, in Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. James Craigie Robertson. Rolls Series 67. 7 vols. (London: Longman, 1875–1885), 2:268, discussed by Oschema, Bilder, 189.
83 William FitzStephen, Vita sancti Thomae 158, in History of Thomas Becket, ed. Robertson, 3:154; see Katherine L. Hodges-Kluck, ‘Canterbury and Jerusalem, England and the Holy Land, c. 1150–1220’, Viator 49, no. 1 (2018): 153–77 (158–59) and Oschema, Bilder, 190.
84 Oschema, Bilder, 191.
85 On prophecy in Gerald, see Victoria Flood, Prophecy Politics and Place in Medieval England: From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Thomas of Erceldoune (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016), 43–58; on the Prophecies of Merlin Silvester see Victoria Flood, ‘Prophecy as History: A New Study of the Prophecies of Merlin Silvester’, Neophilologus 102, no. 4 (2018): 543–59.
86 Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hibernica 1, in Expugnatio Hibernica: The Conquest of Ireland, ed. and trans. A. B. Scott and F. X. Martin. New History of Ireland 3 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1978), 74–5.
87 Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales: A Voice of the Middle Ages (Stroud: Tempus, 2006), 32.
88 ‘Quem naturarum dispositor deus, qui quarta die mundanae creationis solem ab oriente produxit, in sexta aetate seculi nouum solem ab occidente ad inluminationem totius orbis direxit.’ Notker Balbulus, Notatio de illustribus uiris, ed. Erwin Rauner, ‘Notkers des Stammlers “Notatio de illustribus uiris”: Teil I: Kritische Edition’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 21 (1986): 34–69 (60).
89 As Rudolph (Mystic Ark, 201) rightly argues.
90 For recent surveys on Honorius’s life see Karl Kinsella, ‘Edifice and Education: Thought in Twelfth-Century Europe’, 2 vols. (PhD diss., University of Oxford, 2016), 1:214–18 and Fabian Schwarzbauer, Geschichtszeit: Über Zeitvorstellungen in den Universalchroniken Frutolfs von Michelsberg, Honorius’ Augustodunensis und Ottos von Freising. Orbis mediaevalis 6 (Berlin: Akademie, 2005), 40–42.
91 ‘Veluti si funis ab oriente in occidentem extenderetur qui cottidie plicando collectus, tandem totus absumeretur.’ Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi 2.3, ed. Valerie Flint, ‘Honorius Augustodunensis Imago Mundi’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 57 (1982): 7–153 (92).
92 Kinsella, ‘Edifice and Education’, 1:227–28; Honorius Augustodunensis, Speculum ecclesiae, ed. J.-P. Migne. PL 172 (Paris: Garnier, 1895), 964C.
93 Christian Gellinek, ‘Daniel’s Vision of Four Beasts in Twelfth-Century German Literature’, Germanic Review 41, no. 1 (1966): 5–26 (21 n. 68); Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias 3.11.7, ed. Adelgundis Führkötter and Angela Carlevaris. CCSM 43–43A. 2 vols. (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978), 2:580.
94 ‘Haec caduca tempora cum occidente sole cadunt.’ Hildegard, Scivias 3.11.6, ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris, 2:580; see Maurmann, Himmelsrichtungen, 86–87.
95 Schwarzbauer, Geschichtszeit, 53.
96 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 3.42.2, 13.1.4.
97 Munich Computus 1, in The Munich Computus: Irish Computistics between Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede and its Reception in Carolingian Times, ed. and trans. Immo Warntjes. Sudhoffs Archiv 59 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010), 2–3. Flint also highlights the Munich Computus (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14456) as a source for Imago mundi 2.3 (Flint, ‘Imago mundi’, 92 n. 3).
98 Flint, ‘Imago Mundi’, 35–41; Schwarzbauer, Geschichtszeit, 46.
99 As Schwarzbauer rightly suggests (Geschichtszeit, 53 n. 5).
100 Charles Burnett, Hermann of Carinthia De Essentiis: A Critical Edition with Translation and Commentary. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 15 (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 3–10 and Charles Burnett, ‘Arabic into Latin in Twelfth Century Spain: The Works of Hermann of Carinthia’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 13 (1978): 100–34.
101 Hermann, De essentiis 2, 78vB–C, ed. and trans. Burnett, 222–23; cf. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 14.6.8. Hermann’s association of Paradise with the west is unusual, though not unheard of. The most influential example for the Middle Ages was the Voyage of Saint Brendan. (Navigatio sancti Brendani 1.14, ed. Giovanni Orlandi and Rossana E. Guglielmetti. Per Verba 30 (Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2014), 4.) See Loren Baritz, ‘The Idea of the West’, The American Historical Review 66, no. 3 (1961): 618–40 (621–24) and Katja Weidner, Navigatio sancti Brendani: Die Seereise des heiligen Brendan. Fontes Christiani 94 (Freiburg: Herder, 2022), 30–32.
102 ‘rerum seriem ab oriente … orsam, paulatim in orbem progressam’ (My emphasis.). Hermann, De essentiis 2, 78vD–E, ed. and trans. Burnett, 224–25.
103 Burnett, Hermann of Carinthia, 338, citing Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, 168–69, 185–88; cf. Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa 4.9, ed. Sicard, 112: ‘ita serie rerum ab oriente in occidente recta linea decurrente’. (My emphasis.)
104 Worstbrock, ‘Translatio artium’, 1–15, on Hugh: 14–15, though Hugh does not describe it as ‘eastern’ (Hugh of Saint Victor, Didascalicon 3.2, PL 176, 765–67).
105 On the ‘School of Chartres’, see most recently Édouard Jeauneau, Rethinking the School of Chartres, trans. Claude Paul Desmarais (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 17–27. Bernardus Silvestris dedicates the Cosmographia to Thierry of Chartres. On Hermann’s connections see Burnett, Hermann of Carinthia, 20–25.
106 Jeauneau, School of Chartres, 43–55.
107 On the Dragmaticon, see Kathrin Müller, Visuelle Weltaneignung: Astronomische und kosmologische Diagramme in Handschriften des Mittelalters. Historische Semantik 11 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 93–181.
108 ‘Ex quodam uero limo, in quo qualitates elementorum aequaliter conuenerant, hominis corpus in orientali regione est factum: est enim ceteris regionibus temperatior.’ William of Conches, Dragmaticon philosophiae 3.4.3–4, ed. I. Ronca. CCCM 152 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 66; the limus is of Gen. 2:7, cf. Hermann, De essentiis 2, 78vF, ed. and trans. Burnett, 224–25.
109 ‘magni … anni’; ‘Vnde credimus finem mundi instare, quia quantitates corporum imminutas, uitas abbreuiatas uidemus … Et quemadmodum incipiente nouo anno uidemus ea quae mortua sunt reuiuiscere, sic in principio sequentis saeculi qui mortui sunt reuiuiscere poterunt’. William of Conches, Dragmaticon 3.4.6–7, ed. Ronca, 67. On the idea of the magnus annus see Macrobius, Commentarii in somnio Scipionis 2.11, ed. Jacob Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1994), 127–30.
110 William of Conches, Dragmaticon 3.4.8–10, ed. Ronca, 68–69.
111 On Bernardus’s account of creation and its link with William of Conches, I follow Mark Kauntze, Authority and Imitation: A Study of the “Cosmographia” of Bernard Silvestris. Mittellateinische Studien und Texte 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 106–19.
112 Winthrop Wetherbee, ed. and trans., Bernardus Silvestris: Poetic Works. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 38 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), VII–XII.
113 Bernardus Silvestris, Cosmographia micr.9.3, cf. meg.3.337–8, ed. and trans. Wetherbee, 132–33, 54–55. See generally Brian Stock, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Bernard Silvester (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 187–226.
114 Bernardus, Cosmographia micr.9.3, ed. and trans. Wetherbee, 132–3: ‘haec ver habet perpetuum’. See Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. William R. Trask (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), 183–202.
115 Bernardus, Cosmographia meg.3.319–20, ed. and trans. Wetherbee, 52–53.
116 See Wetherbee’s note on meg.3.317–36 in Poetic Works, 281 and Stock, Myth and Science, 191.
117 Bernardus, Cosmographia meg.3.335–36, ed. and trans. Wetherbee, 52–53; see also Stock, Myth and Science, 136–37.
118 Bernardus, Cosmographia micr.11.9, ed. and trans. Wetherbee, 148–49.
119 Rudolph, Mystic Ark, 201; Mégier, ‘Tamquam lux’, 131.
120 Akbari emphasises the twelfth century as the point of change in representations of the east (Idols in the East, 15, 20–66).
121 Lapina, Warfare, 122–42. For a salient caution against overstating the significance of Islam in the Latin consciousness, see Nicholas Morton, Encountering Islam on the First Crusade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 234–69.
122 Akbari, Idols in the East, 35–50; Baumgärtner, ‘Winds and Continents’, 23–72.
123 Gassman, ‘Translatio Studii’, 762–63, 168–71, 415–27; so also Fenzi, ‘Translatio Studii’, 194–98.
124 J.H. Elliot, Spain, Europe and the Wider World, 1500–1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 135–37; Baritz, ‘Idea of the West’, 637–40; Georgios Varouxakis, ‘The Godfather of “Occidentality”: Auguste Comte and the Idea of “The West”’, Modern Intellectual History 16, no. 2 (2019): 411–41 (418–19); Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 105–06; Alastair Bonnett, The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 24.
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Eric Wolever
Eric Wolever has most recently been a post-doctoral researcher in medieval history at the University of Kassel, where he recently completed a project about ‘Ideas of the West in the Long Twelfth Century’, funded by the Leverhulme trust.