Beatus of Liébana's world map
Mapamundi del Beato de Liébana
- Date
- 776 (obra); copias de los siglos X-XIII · confidence medium
- Place
- Liébana, Cantabria, Spain
- Credited to
- Beatus of Liébana (copyists of the 10th-13th centuries)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A world map included in the Commentary on the Apocalypse that divides the earth among the apostles and gathers the geography of the medieval Christian world. The illuminated copies, such as those of Girona or Burgo de Osma, are the richest Hispanic medieval maps.
The Commentary was written around 776 and revised in 784 and 786; the original does not survive, only copies from the 10th century, so the exact form of the first Beatus map is unknown.
What it led to
- a tradition of T-O world maps with strong theological content
- a visual source for the image of the world in the early medieval Peninsula