ABSTRACT
Distance is a geographical as well as a mental notion. To the very first crusaders in the early 12th century, the centre was France. Thus the countries around France mentally occupied the periphery, far away, at the edge of the ocean. The same image was used by successive Popes in both the 12th and 13th centuries; they designated both Denmark and Portugal as being placed by “the outermost edge of the world.” This, however, reflects a mental geography centred on Rome in a Christian continent surrounded with water. It is a written tracing of the graphical image of the whole world, as it is known from circular maps or T maps.1 One of the most famous is the Hereford mappa mundi from the middle of the 12th century, which shows Jerusalem as the centre of the world and the three parts of the inhabitable world, the continents Europa, Asia and Africa. This image is in turn a magnification, an extension of the image of the Holy City, the heavenly but also the earthly Jerusalem, which is circular and separated into four parts by a cross that consists of the four great roads from the four city gates. The Holy Sepulchre and Golgotha are at the centre of Jerusalem, and thereby the centre of the whole world. A beautiful rendering of this Jerusalem is from an illustration for an early copy – from the middle of 12th century – of Robert the Monk’s crusading history and of the anonymous Gesta Francorum, which has been in Danish ownership and is now kept at the University Library at Uppsala.2
