The Medieval Peutinger Map

The Peutinger map, named from its sixteenth-century custodian, the Augsburg humanist Konrad Peutinger, is a Roman road-map of strikingly antique appearance, probably made in south-western Germany in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. It has long attracted interest for the light which it promises to shed upon the relationship between antique and medieval forms of geographical knowledge. It is from this perspective that Emily Albu, too, approaches it. But she also brings to bear other, potentially promising, questions concerning the construction specifically of imagined ‘imperial’ space by adherents of the ancient and medieval western Roman empires. Albu’s contention here, that the map should be understood as an artefact of late Hohenstaufen imperialism, has much to recommend it. As she argues, its pronounced Mediterranean focus would match well with late-Staufer political and cultural horizons. And it may be that, as she also suggests, the apparent emphasis given by the map-maker to specific locations, such as the islands of Cyprus and Sicily or the city of Antioch, was intended to chart and affirm Hohenstaufen crusading ambitions. As an artefact of itinerant high-medieval western emperorship, a far-reaching road map potentially makes much sense. Moreover, the interest of the Staufer and their servants in Mediterranean geography, understood as a palimpsest of ancient and contemporary imperialisms, is attested by other sources too, beyond those considered by Albu. Even the map’s convincing imitation of Roman visual styles would suit well an origin close to the late Staufer court, where artists and scholars displayed a sometimes astonishing facility in assimilating ancient techniques and reproducing Roman models

Ancient history · Antique · Archaeology · Art · Empire · German · Literature · Politics · Roman Empire · Byzantine Studies and History · Classics · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Law