Map of Jerusalem

The city of Jerusalem is represented on this map in a lozenge shape, enclosed by a wall with five gates. Numerous annotations in Latin give the names of the gates and various buildings, depicted in a very detailed manner. Information is also given relating to recent historical events, for example, to the north of the wall besides a red Templars cross, is written ‘here the city was taken by the French’; this refers to a breach in the wall through which the French armies invaded the city in 1099.

This vellum map belongs to a series of fourteen maps of JerusalemHoly City was the site of Christ’s sepulchre and the principal destination of Christian pilgrimages and Crusades in the Middle Ages; the numerous representations of the city reflect its symbolic status as the cradle of Christianity. Jerusalem remained under Roman domination until the beginning of the seventh century; in 325-326, at the command of the Emperor Constantine, the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre was erected to contain the tomb of Christ together with other churches on sites connected to the life of Christ. From this period, religious pilgrimages intensified and representations of the city were realised[1]. After the conquest by the Sasanian, Khrosrow II, in 614, it remained for a short period under Byzantine rule before being conquered by the Arabs in 638 following a three-year siege. executed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The

The conflicts which arose on the Levantine coasts from the eleventh century between Muslims and Christians naturally centred on the struggle for control of the Holy City.

Cartography is a scientific study of the world which dates back to Antiquity. The Greeks, Pythagoras and Aristotle, made important discoveries in this discipline. Scientific research in this domain regressed rapidly in the Middle Ages: dogmatic considerations imposed by a religious conception of the universe dominated the sciences. Thus, eleven of the fourteen maps of Jerusalem realised between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were based on the scheme known as ‘O-T’, or ‘orbis terrarum’ (‘the disc of the world’)[2].

The map held in the Médiathèque in Cambrai appears to move away from this religious vision which generally characterised representations of Jerusalem in the Middle Ages. The lozenge shape delimited by the city walls reflects the shape of the old city. The map is oriented to the north, unlike round maps which are oriented to the east. The inscriptions, detailing the names of sacred buildings and also the history of the sites, as well as giving topographical information (for example, the representation of a mountain to the right) confer on this work a real sense of documentary realism. The notable absence of Islamic buildings, however, must qualify this observation.

Cambrai in the twelfth century was a small ecclesiastical principality officially independent from the Holy Roman Empire. From 1054, bishop Liébert undertook a pilgrimage to the holy sites of Jerusalem. Together with 3000 diocesans who accompanied him, he was forced to remain in Cyprus for some time. On his return, concluding that the topography of Cambrai resembled that of Jerusalem[3] (a river runs to the east of both towns at the foot of a wooded hill), he undertook the construction of a Benedictine monastery and an Abbey which resembles in its plan the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, of which no vestige remain today. Roger de Wavrin, bishop of Cambrai (1179-1191), undertook the third Crusade (1189-1192) during which he died of the plague. The map was probably realised by a follower of one of these bishops, during a pilgrimage or a Crusade.

[2] Map of Jerusalem from Historia Hierosolymitana of Robertus Monachus, C13th, Uppsala Library, Sweden, inv ms C.523. See also map of Jerusalem, C12th, in the Royal Library, the Hague.

[3] In Jerusalem, the wooded hill at Gethsemane at the foot of which is the brook of Cedron; in Cambrai, the hill of Mont-des-Bœufs, with the orchard of the Abbey of St-Géry.