ABSTRACT
The Middle Ages, in the original sense of the term, are the interval of time between the ancient and the modern world, that is, "between two periods of more or less rational order". The characteristic cartographic works which illustrated the Christian world-view were made throughout this period, and indeed from somewhat earlier, beginning in the 6th and 7th centuries. The mediaeval Church, as heir of the Roman Empire, found nothing to condemn in its cartographic practice. From the 6th century, the maps of Roman character were supplemented by world maps from the Topographia Christiana of Cosmas Indicopleustes, whose influence made itself felt for almost the next thousand years of Church cartography. The theory of zones, or climates, held sway longer than any other, passing from Hipparchus and Eratosthenes, through Marinos of Tyre, Ptolemy, Pliny and Isidore, and into the Christian monasteries, first as a direct influence, and later indirectly through the Arab geographers, whose works also reflect it.
