ABSTRACT
Recent decades have witnessed a transformation in our understanding of medieval maps and diagrams. Once viewed as interesting curiosities or the products of obscurantism, ignorance, and superstition, they are now recognized as sophisticated artifacts tackling issues of fundamental concern to medieval society, most notably concepts of time and space, interconnections between the human and the divine, and the nature of creation in all its forms. Medieval sources generally use the Latin terms mappa, carta, and descriptio for maps, and pictura and figura for diagrams.3 It is impossible to make a neat distinction between the concerns of medieval maps and diagrams. Maps were interested not only in physical and human geography but also in every branch of knowledge; a number of important map types appear in diagrammatic form.
