The Peutinger Map remains the sole medieval survivor of an imperial world-mapping tradition. It depicts most of the inhabited world as it was known to the ancients, from Britain's southern coastline to the farthest reaches of Alexander's conquests in India, showing rivers, lakes, islands, and mountains while also naming regions and the peoples who once claimed the landscape. Onto this panorama, the mapmaker has plotted the ancient Roman road network, with hundreds of images along the route and distances marked from point to point. This book challenges the artifact's self-presentation as a Roman map by examining its medieval contexts of crusade, imperial ambitions, and competition between the German-Roman Empire and the papacy.
- Examines the changing concepts of space from Greco-Roman antiquity into the Middle Ages
- Considers the evolving tradition of mapping the world, placing this map in the context of rival mappaemundi
- Explores imperial ambitions of Church and State - and the images that they employed to claim superior authority