A CARTOGRAFIA MEDIEVAL NO LIBER FLORIDUS DO LAMBERT DE SAINT-OMER

Abstract

This article aims to explain the concept of globality in medieval cartography based on the encyclopedia entitled Liber floridus [Books of Flowers]. Lambert, Canon of Saint-Omer, was a French Benedictine monk (ca. 1061-1150) who studied theology, grammar and music and became known as a man of great erudition. He was chosen Canon of Saint-Omer, the name by which he is known today. The whole constitutes a very significant cartographic encyclopedia, completed around 1120 and made up of excerpts from around 192 different works, all the more so as it is one of the most important mappamundi and one of the most complete, representing a very useful link between ancient maps (Ptolemy, Capella) and the first maps of Isidore. In this treatise Lambert compiled a chronicle or history that goes back to the year 1119; contains several maps, including a mappamundi, which originally, like the text, has a date at least before 1125. Finally, the article proposes an analysis of the manuscripts that have survived to contemporary times: the manuscripts from Ghent, Wolfenbüttel and Paris. As a methodology, the idea of globality in medieval studies of the History of Global Art is used.