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Ravenna Cosmography
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Ravenna Cosmography
The Ravenna Cosmography (Latin: Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia, lit. "The Cosmography of the Unknown Ravennese") is a work describing the known world from India to Ireland, compiled by an anonymous cleric in Ravenna in around 700. It consists of five books describing Asia, Africa and Europe in prose and with lists of toponyms. Textual evidence indicates that the author may have used maps as source material.
All surviving manuscripts are late medieval copies dating from the 13th–14th centuries. The Cosmography refers to "Saint" Isidore of Seville, who was canonised upon his death in 636; the latest datable reference in the work. The Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula is however not mentioned, which Rivet & Smith (1979) suggest would normally have been within the Cosmographer's scope, therefore creating a terminus ante quem bracket of around 711. However they do also note that Saint Isidore was relatively unknown outside of Spain until Christians were forced to flee following the Moorish incursions.
Stolte, writing in 1956, argued that the cosmography was finished around 732.
There are three extant prototype manuscript copies of the Cosmography:[self-published source]
Pinder & Parthey (1860) place B (P) as the earliest recension, from which descend A (V) and then C (B).
Fitzpatrick-Matthews (2022) places the manuscripts in a stemma whereby V, P and B are all descendents of a common ancestor, X, which through the c.8th century archetype is a cousin of the Guido Geographica.
In addition to the three main manuscripts, the Vatican Library also holds a document containing excerpts from the Cosmography made by Riccobaldus Ferrariensis, and there is a copy of the Paris manuscript held in Leiden.
The Vatican manuscript presents the text in two columns, with placenames being capitalised and terminated by a stop. A small number of the words have been abbreviated. The Paris manuscript also uses two columns, capitalisation and stops, but has many more abbreviations than either of the other two. The text is divided into sections by paragraph marks. The Basle manuscript only has a single column, and is more difficult to read than the others. It has more abbreviations than the Vatican copy, but fewer than the Paris copy. There is some evidence that the author has tried to correct or clarify words which were not clear in the original, and there are no stops to separate the place names in the lists, but there are underlined headings to divide up the sections.
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Ravenna Cosmography
The Ravenna Cosmography (Latin: Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia, lit. "The Cosmography of the Unknown Ravennese") is a work describing the known world from India to Ireland, compiled by an anonymous cleric in Ravenna in around 700. It consists of five books describing Asia, Africa and Europe in prose and with lists of toponyms. Textual evidence indicates that the author may have used maps as source material.
All surviving manuscripts are late medieval copies dating from the 13th–14th centuries. The Cosmography refers to "Saint" Isidore of Seville, who was canonised upon his death in 636; the latest datable reference in the work. The Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula is however not mentioned, which Rivet & Smith (1979) suggest would normally have been within the Cosmographer's scope, therefore creating a terminus ante quem bracket of around 711. However they do also note that Saint Isidore was relatively unknown outside of Spain until Christians were forced to flee following the Moorish incursions.
Stolte, writing in 1956, argued that the cosmography was finished around 732.
There are three extant prototype manuscript copies of the Cosmography:[self-published source]
Pinder & Parthey (1860) place B (P) as the earliest recension, from which descend A (V) and then C (B).
Fitzpatrick-Matthews (2022) places the manuscripts in a stemma whereby V, P and B are all descendents of a common ancestor, X, which through the c.8th century archetype is a cousin of the Guido Geographica.
In addition to the three main manuscripts, the Vatican Library also holds a document containing excerpts from the Cosmography made by Riccobaldus Ferrariensis, and there is a copy of the Paris manuscript held in Leiden.
The Vatican manuscript presents the text in two columns, with placenames being capitalised and terminated by a stop. A small number of the words have been abbreviated. The Paris manuscript also uses two columns, capitalisation and stops, but has many more abbreviations than either of the other two. The text is divided into sections by paragraph marks. The Basle manuscript only has a single column, and is more difficult to read than the others. It has more abbreviations than the Vatican copy, but fewer than the Paris copy. There is some evidence that the author has tried to correct or clarify words which were not clear in the original, and there are no stops to separate the place names in the lists, but there are underlined headings to divide up the sections.
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