Hereford Map, Jerusalem again as centre and the Translatio Imperii – Centrici

We have seen Bunting’s Map in a precedent post, a renaissance map where the world is centred on Jerusalem in a symbolic way, that is, the space of the world is constructed around the Holy City. Now Hereford Map is analysed: the difference here is that Hereford’s is not meant to be only symbolic, but it was made to represent what was considered to be “real” in the XIIIth Century: Jerusalem was taken as a real, physical and geometrical centre of the world. We said that the “centre of the world” is a notion which always stems from social construction, from human perception and not from a physical reality. In this regard we do know, today, that Jerusalem is not a physical centre of our Planet; unless we followed the idea that all points of the Planet are its centre: so Jerusalem would be one out of an infinity. But Hereford Map, one of many maedieval T and O maps, shows that Jerusalem is at the physical centre of the world. We shall see how what we call “physical reality”, is, after all, b

saved by

• Osher Lerner