The City of the Great King: Jerusalem in Hugh of Saint Victor’s Mystic Ark

Visual Constructs of Jerusalem

© BREPOLS PUBLISHERS THIS DOCUMENT MAY BE PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE ONLY.

IT MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.

CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES

General EditorYitzhak Hen, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Editorial BoardAngelo di Berardino, Augustinianum, Rome

Nora Berend, University of Cambridge Leslie Brubaker, University of Birmingham

Christoph Cluse, Universität Trier Rob Meens, Universiteit Utrecht

James Montgomery, University of Cambridge Alan V. Murray, University of Leeds

Thomas F.X. Noble, University of Notre Dame Miri Rubin, Queen Mary, University of London

VOLUME 18

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this book.



Visual Constructs of Jerusalem

Edited by

Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt



British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Visual constructs of Jerusalem. -- (Cultural encounters in late antiquity and the Middle Ages ; 18) 1. Jerusalem--Symbolic representation. 2. Visual communication. 3. Communication in architecture. 4. Church architecture--Jerusalem. 5. Church architecture--Europe. 6. Sacred space--Jerusalem. 7. Sacred space--Europe. 8. Christian art and symbolism--Jerusalem. 9. Christian art and symbolism--Europe. 10. Palestine--Maps--Early works to 1800.

I. Series II. Kuhnel, Bianca editor. III. Noga-Banai, Galit, 1966- editor. IV. Vorholt, Hanna editor. V. Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Conference) (2010 : Jerusalem), associated with work.

704.9’499569442-dc23 ISBN-13: 9782503551043

© 2014, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,without the prior permission of the publisher.

D/2014/0095/190ISBN: 978-2-503-55104-3

e-ISBN: 978-2-503-55121-0

This volume has been produced under the auspices of the research project SPECTRUM Visual Translations of Jerusalem, based at the Hebrew Uni ver-sity of Jerusalem. Research leading to these results has received funding from the Euro pean Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Frame work Programme (FP7/2007–2013) / ERC grant agreement no. 249466.

Printed in the EU on acid-free paper



Contents

List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Colour Plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxi

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxiii

Loca sancta: Formation and Accumulation of Traditions

‘Remembering Sion’: Early Medieval Latin Recollections of the Basilica on Mount Sion and the Interplay of Relics, Tradition, and Images

THOMAS O’LOUGHLIN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Mary in Jerusalem: An Imaginary MapORA LIMOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Lavit et venit videns: The Healing of the Blind Man at the Pool of SiloamBARBARA BAERT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Patronage Contested: Archaeology and the Early Modern Struggle for Possession at the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

JORDAN PICKETT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

From Biblical to Non-Biblical Holy Places: The Shrine of Subiaco as a Construct of Jerusalem

ALESSANDRO SCAFI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Monumental Translations

How Mtskheta Turned into the Georgians’ New JerusalemTAMILA MGALOBLISHVILI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Locative Memory and the Pilgrim’s Experience of Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages

MICHELE BACCI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

New Research on the Holy Sepulchre at the ‘Jerusalem’ of San Vivaldo, ItalyRICCARDO PACCIANI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Pilgrimage Experience: Bridging Size and MediumTSAFRA SIEw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

The Baptistery of Pisa and the Rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre: A Reconsideration

NETA BODNER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95



vi contents

Strategies of TranslationFrom Sanctified Topos to Iconic and Symbolic Model:

Two Early Representations of the Holy Sepulchre in CroatiaMARINA VICELJA-MATIJAšIć . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Defending Jerusalem: Visualizations of a Christian Identity in Medieval Scandinavia

KRISTIN B. AAVITSLAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Jerusalem in Medieval Georgian ArtGEORGE GAGOSHIDzE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

A (Hi)story of Jerusalem: Memories and Images in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

LILY ARAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

The Running Girl in Mea Shearim: Gender, Nostalgia, and the Uncanny in Leora Laor’s Photography (2002–04)

MILLY HEYD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

Evocations of the TempleReconstructing Jerusalem in the Jewish Liturgical Realm:

The worms Synagogue and its LegacySARIT SHALEV-EYNI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Beyond the Veil: Roman Constructs of the New Temple in the Twelfth Century

EIVOR ANDERSEN OFTESTAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Heavenly Jerusalem in Baroque Architectural TheoryVICTOR PLAHTE TSCHUDI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

King Solomon’s Temple and Throne as Models in Islamic Visual CultureRACHEL MILSTEIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Relics, Reliquaries, and RitualHoly Places and Their Relics

BRUNO REUDENBACH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

The True Cross of Jerusalem in the Latin west: Mediterranean Connections and Institutional Agency

NIKOLAS JASPERT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

‘Living Stones’ of Jerusalem: The Triumphal Arch Mosaic of Santa Prassede in Rome

ERIK THUNø . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Strategies of Constructing Jerusalem in Medieval SerbiaJELENA ERDELJAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

The Holy Fire and Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, East and westALEXEI LIDOV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241



contents vii

Maps of Jerusalem

From Eusebius to the Crusader Maps: The Origin of the Holy Land MapsMILKA LEVY-RUBIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Heavenly and Earthly Jerusalem: The View From Twelfth-Century Flanders

JAY RUBENSTEIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Quaresmius’s Novae Ierosolymae et Locorum Circumiacentium Accurata Imago (1639): An Image of the Holy City and its Message

REHAV RUBIN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

An American Missionary’s Maps of Jerusalem: Past, Present, and FutureEVELYN EDSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

Maps of the Holy Land

Experiencing the Holy Land and Crusade in Matthew Paris’s Maps of Palestine

LAURA J. wHATLEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

‘As If You were There’: The Cultural Impact of Two Pilgrims’ Maps of the Holy Land

PNINA ARAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Mapping the History of Salvation for the ‘Mind’s Eyes’: Context and Function of the Map of the Holy Land in the Rudimentum Novitiorum of 1475

ANDREA wORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

Ottheinrich and Sandtner: Sixteenth-Century Pilgrimage Maps and an Imaginary Model of Jerusalem

HAIM GOREN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

Mappae Mundi

The City of the Great King: Jerusalem in Hugh of Saint Victor’s Mystic ArkCONRAD RUDOLPH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343

The Jerusalem Effect: Rethinking the Centre in Medieval world MapsMARCIA KUPFER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

Manuscripts and Panel Painting

Ducitur et reducitur: Passion Devotion and Mental Motion in an Illuminated Meditationes Vitae Christi Manuscript (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 410)

RENANA BARTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Virtual Pilgrimage through the Jerusalem CityscapeKATHRYN M. RUDY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381



viii contents

Pilgrimage Literature and Travelogues

Representations and Descriptions of Jerusalem in the Printed Travelogues of the Early Modern Period

MILAN PELC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

The Jerusalem of the Mind’s Eye: Imagined Pilgrimage in the Late Fifteenth Century

KATHRYNE BEEBE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409

Memory and Representations of Jerusalem in Medieval and Early Modern Pilgrimage Reports

MARIA E. DORNINGER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

Richard Pococke, or the Invention of Jerusalem for TouristsOLGA MEDVEDKOVA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

Byzantine Approaches

Visualizing the Tomb of Christ: Images, Settings, and ways of SeeingROBERT OUSTERHOUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439

‘Remembering zion’ and Simulacra: Jerusalem in the Byzantine PsalterMATI MEYER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451

Souvenirs of the Holy Land: The Production of Proskynetaria in JerusalemMAT IMMERzEEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463

Proskynetaria as Devotional Objects and Preservers of Ethnic IdentityMáRTA NAGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479



Mappae Mundi



The City of the Great King: Jerusalem in Hugh of Saint Victor’s Mystic Ark

Conrad Rudolph*University of California, Riverside

In his summa-like systematic theology De sacramen-tis (c. 1130–37), Hugh of Saint Victor presents the theological conception of the Christian history of

salvation on an epic scale. Reaching from creation to the end of the world, it is also an account that conceives of its subject almost completely in terms of time.1 However, in the image described in his text The Mystic Ark (1125–30), Hugh presents a conception of the visual setting for the history of salvation—a world map surrounded by the cosmos, first painted, I believe, at the abbey of Saint Victor in Paris at the time the text was written—that is virtually the visual equivalent of the main themes of De sacramentis but now introduces the dimension of space into this comprehensive world-view.2 While Jerusalem plays no role whatsoever in Hugh’s written conception

* I would like to express my thanks to Professor Bianca Kühnel for her kind invitation to speak at the conference ‘Visual Constructs of Jerusalem’, of which this short article represents a slightly revised version. Some passages in this article appear in my forthcoming The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), upon which my observations here have been based and which takes up the issues of the central cubit at far greater length.

1 Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis christianae fidei, ed. by Rainer Berndt (Münster: Aschendorff, 2008).

2 Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa Noe: libellus de formatione arche, ed. by Patrice Sicard, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, 176 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), pp. 119–62 [hence-forth Mystic Ark]. On The Mystic Ark, see, most recently, Grover Zinn, ‘Hugh of St Victor, Isaiah’s Vision, and De arca noe’, Studies in Church History, 28 (1992), 99–116; Patrice Sicard, Diagrammes médiévaux et exégèse visuelle: le Libellus de formatione arche de Hugues de Saint-Victor (Paris: Brepols, 1993); Patrice Sicard, ‘Introduction’, in Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa Noe, ed. by Sicard, pp. 27*–278*; Conrad Rudolph, First, I Find the Center Point: Reading the Text of Hugh of Saint Victor’s ‘The Mystic Ark’ (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2004), with full bibliography.

of the history of salvation, it plays a strikingly active role in its visual counterpart. At the same time, Hugh chose to follow one medieval tradition that saw Jerusalem as the centre of the world, the place primarily occupied by Christ in his image.3 While this tradition had a strong

3 Among other primary and secondary sources on Jerusalem as the centre of the world see Ezekiel 5. 5; Jerome, Commentariorum in Hiezechielem libri xiv, ed. by Franciscus Glorie, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 75 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964), 2:5–6, pp. 55–56; a historiographically noteworthy presentation of the sub-ject is John Kirtland Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades: A Study in the History of Medieval Science and Tradition in Western Europe (New York: American Geographical Society, 1925), pp. 259–60; more recently, Sylvia Schein, Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (1099–1187) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 141–45; and, on Jerusalem in the political thought of Hugh, Wilhelm A. Schneider, Geschichte und Geschichtsphilosophie bei Hugo von St. Victor: ein Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte des 12. Jahrhunderts (Münster: Coppenrath, 1933), pp. 98–99. On Jerusalem in medieval Christian thought in general see Thomas Renna, ‘The Idea of Jerusalem: Monastic to Scholastic’, in From Cloister to Classroom: Monastic and Scholastic Approaches to Truth, ed. by E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1986), pp. 96–110; Bianca Kühnel, From the Earthly to the Heavenly Jerusalem: Representations of the Holy City in Christian Art of the First Millennium (Rome: Herder, 1987); Joshua Prawer, ‘Christian Attitudes towards Jerusalem in the Early Middle Ages’, in The History of Jerusalem: The Early Muslim Period, 638–1099, ed. by Joshua Prawer and Haggai Ben-Shammai ( Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; New York: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 311–47; Paula Fredriksen, ‘The Holy City in Christian Thought’, in City of the Great King: Jerusalem from David to the Present, ed. by Nitza Rosovsky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 74–92; Bianca Kühnel, ‘The Use and Abuse of Jerusalem’, in The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art: Studies in Honor of Bezalel Narkiss on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. by Bianca Kühnel, Journal of Jewish Art, 23/24 ( Jerusalem: Center for Jewish Art, 1998), pp. xix–xxxvii; Ora Limor, ‘The Place of the End of Days: Eschatological Geography in Jerusalem’, in The Real and Ideal Jerusalem, pp. 13–22.

Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, ed. by Bianca Kühnel, Galit Noga-Banai, and Hanna Vorholt, CELAMA 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) pp. 343–352 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.CELAMA-EB.5.103090



344 Conrad Rudolph

literary basis in the Bible and in Jerome’s commentary on Ezekiel, only a single extant map from before The Mystic Ark is thought to represent this idea visually, a T-O map generally believed to date about 1100–10, now at St John’s College in Oxford.4 In this paper I pri-

4 Oxford, St John’s College, MS 17, fol. 6; good colour reproduction in E. Edson and E. Savage-Smith, Medieval Views of the Cosmos (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2004), p. 68. For the siting of Jerusalem in the centre of medieval world maps see Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. by J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 340–42; Anna-Dorothee von den

marily investigate the role that Jerusalem plays in regard to time and space in The Mystic Ark, a unique role that is not matched, to the best of my knowledge, in Hugh’s other writings or in other Christian texts and images but is found in this particular articulation only in The Mystic Ark. In the process, I hope that the significance of Hugh’s conception of Jerusalem as visually conceived in The Mystic Ark, however veiled, will become better recognized in the history of the cartographic theme of Jerusalem as the centre of the world.

Very briefly put, The Mystic Ark is a forty-two page description of the most complex individual work of art

Brincken, ‘Jerusalem on Medieval Mappaemundi: A Site Both Historical and Eschatological’, in The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and Their Context, ed. by P. D. A. Harvey (London: British Library, 2006), pp. 355–79; Evelyn Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their World (London: British Library, 1997), pp. 115–23, 137–43; and Ingrid Baumgärtner, ‘Die Wahrnehmung Jerusalems auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten’, in Jerusalem im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter: Konflikte und Konfliktbewältigung, Vorstellungen und Vergegenwärtigungen, ed. by Dieter Bauer, Klaus Herbers, and Nikolas Jaspert, Campus Historische Studien, 29 (Frankfurt: Campus, 2001), pp. 271–334. For a convenient list of a number of important early examples of medieval maps with Jerusalem in the centre see von den Brincken, ‘Jerusalem on Medieval Mappaemundi’, pp. 375–76.

Figure 33.1. The Mystic Ark, detail of Plate 22 with the world, including the place of the central cubit, shown as an enlargement (digital construction: Clement/Bahmer/Rivas/Rudolph).



The City of the Great King: Jerusalem in Hugh of Saint Victor’s Mystic Ark 345

of the entire Middle Ages, a painting also known as The Mystic Ark (Plate 22 and Fig. 33.1).5 The purpose of the painting was to serve as the basis of a series of brilliant lectures undertaken by Hugh, considered the leading theologian of Europe during his lifetime, at Saint Victor, a Parisian abbey of Augustinian canons, whose school, along with those of Notre-Dame and Sainte-Geneviève,

5 The image of The Mystic Ark has been constructed with vari-ous degrees of attention to form and detail by modern scholars. Diagrammatic constructions have been made by Joachim Ehlers, ‘Arca significat ecclesiam: ein theologisches Weltmodell aus der ersten Hälfte des 12. Jahrhunderts’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 6 (1972), fig. 1 and fold-out; Zinn, ‘Hugh of St Victor, Isaiah’s Vision, and De arca noe’, fig. 1; and John A. H. Lewis, ‘History and Everlastingness in Hugh of St Victor’s Figures of Noah’s Ark’, in Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. by Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riano, International Medieval Research, 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), figs 1–5. Figural constructions of the Ark have been under-taken by Danielle Lecoq, ‘La ‘Mappemonde’ du De arca Noe mystica de Hugues de Saint-Victor (1128–1129)’, in Géographie du monde au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance, ed. by Monique Pelletier (Paris: CTHS, 1989), p. 12 and figs 1–2; Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, 4 vols (New York: Crossroad, 1991– ), II (1994), fig. 1 (p. 377); and Hugh of Saint Victor, De archa Noe, ed. by Sicard, figs i–xi. On these see the sub-heading ‘The Construction of the Image of The Mystic Ark’ in the appendix to Conrad Rudolph, The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor, Art, and Thought in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

acted as the predecessor of the University of Paris. The purpose of the text was to enable others outside of Saint Victor—teachers, advanced students, scholars, monks, canons—to undertake similar discussions themselves by providing the information necessary to produce the image. Unfortunately, no construction of this image survives.6

The image described in the text of The Mystic Ark depicts the Ark of the Flood coterminous with the world, positioned in the centre of the cosmos (Fig. 33.2). All of this is enclosed by Christ with his arms, with the nine choirs of angels on either side and with the six days of creation understood as proceeding from his mouth. There are hundreds of figures, symbols, and inscrip-tions operating in this painting, so many that it would be impossible to describe all of them and their interrela-tions even briefly here, to say nothing of discussing their significance.

For the purposes of this paper, let me just say that the focal point of all this is Christ as the Lamb of God in the central cubit. This is an extremely complex Christological image within the broader context of The Mystic Ark, one that represents, among other things, Christ as the centre of time (indicated by its position at the centre of the Ark, which signifies both the church and the course of time) and the centre of space (indicated by its position at the centre of the cosmos).7 But it also represents Jerusalem, even if in a very qualified way. Using an elaborate meta-phor of the soul’s spiritual progress, the text of The Mystic Ark describes how it is to the central cubit that the Hebrews find their way from the ‘ignorance’ of ‘Egypt’ to the final enlightenment of the attainment of the Promised Land (with the last stopping-place at ‘the Plains of Moab, on the Jordan, near Jericho’) (Fig. 33.3, nos 6 and 7).8 It relates how it is from the central cubit that the Jews are led off in captivity to Babylon (Fig. 33.3, nos 9 and 10).9 But more important for this paper, it describes how it is at the central cubit that the people of the Jews

6 For my views on why no constructions survive, see the subheading ‘The afterlife of the Mystic Ark lectures: The reportatio’ in the conclusion of Rudolph, The Mystic Ark.

7 For a partial discussion of some of the issues involved see the following subheadings in the main section on the Ark of the Church in Rudolph, The Mystic Ark: ‘The central cubit and the Incarnation’, ‘The central cubit, the peoples of the Jews and the Gentiles, the River Jordan, and the Adam macro/microcosm’, ‘The central cubit and the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ’, ‘The central cubit as the center of the cosmos’, and ‘The central cubit and judgment’.

8 Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystic Ark, 9–10, pp. 155–56.9 Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystic Ark, 5, 9, pp. 148, 155; cf. 4, p. 142.

Figure 33.2. The Mystic Ark, diagram of main components (diagram: Clement/Bahmer/Rivas/ Rudolph).



346 Conrad Rudolph

and the people of the Gentiles meet in the course of time at ‘the city of the great king’ (Fig. 33.4).10 And the place where the peoples of the Jews and the Gentiles converge in The Mystic Ark is the same place that they converged historically for the first time in the ecclesiological sense: ‘the city of the great king’, Jerusalem, marked by the cross of Christ’s death and situated by the river Jordan in the image of the Ark,11 ostensibly sited in the same way that it is in so many medieval maps (Fig. 33.5). The expression ‘the city of the great king’ comes from Psalm 47. 3 (Clementine Vulgate), but the meaning given to it in The Mystic Ark comes from Augustine’s commentary on that passage. In his commentary, Augustine describes how the two peoples of the Jews and the Gentiles come from differ-

10 Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystic Ark, 4, pp. 138–39.11 Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystic Ark, 1, 9, pp. 121–22, 154.

Figure 33.3. The Mystic Ark, diagram of selected components of the Ark proper and the earth (diagram: Clement/Bahmer/Rivas/Rudolph).

Figure 33.4. The Mystic Ark, diagram of the

peoples of the Jews and the Gentiles and the city of the

great king (diagram: Clement/Bahmer/Rivas/Rudolph).




ent quarters to meet at Jerusalem, the city of the great king , the corner stone (Isaiah 28. 16–17, Jeremiah 51. 26),12 which is Christ, an idea that forms the basis of the compositional logic in The Mystic Ark of the planks of the Jews and the Gentiles meeting at the central cubit.13 The central cubit is thus both Christ and Jerusalem as a metaphor of the Church.14

But Hugh is not actually reading the history of salva-tion in this seemingly traditional and deceptively simple image: he is constructing it, constructing it as he read it according to his personal historical methodology. Hugh sees history as a series narrationis, a sequence of events in the restoration of humankind to its creator—‘the works of restoration’, he calls them—the ordo or ‘order’ of which must be studied according to a formal meth-odology he taught to his students (primarily manifested

12 On this theme see Conrad Rudolph, ‘The Architectural Metaphor in Western Medieval Artistic Culture: From the Corner Stone to The Mystic Ark’, in The Cambridge History of Religious Architecture, ed. by Stephen Murray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

13 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 47:3, ed. by Eligius Dekkers and J. Fraipont, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 38 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956), pp. 540–41. Cf. also Cassiodorus, Expositio in Psalterium 47:2 (3), in Opera omnia, Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina, 221 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–64) ed. by J.-P. Migne, 70 (1848), col. 337. Aside from The Mystic Ark, this idea is also referred to by Hugh in De sacramentis, 2:5:1, pp. 369–70.

14 For the locus classicus of Jerusalem as a metaphor of the Church see John Cassian, Conlationes xxiiii, 8, ed. by Michael Petschenig, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 13.2 (Vienna: Geroldi, 1886), pp. 404–08.

in the image of The Mystic Ark in the line of generation; Fig. 33.6).15 As an analytical system, this methodology is far from a rigid one, often changing slightly accord-ing to the needs of the moment while retaining a basic integrity. Hugh refers to this methodology in his Moral Ark (1125–30), a treatise that forms an important part of the body of Ark-related texts, so we know that the image of The Mystic Ark is informed by it. In The Moral Ark, Hugh describes this methodology as consisting of the three categories of analysis of place, time, and per-son.16 And the exposition of the works of restoration in

15 On the works of restoration (and of creation), Hugh, De sacramentis, 1: prol. (2), 1:10:(5), 1:10:(8), pp. 31, 230–31, 240, among many other places. I borrow the term ‘sequence of events’ from Marie-Dominique Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 168–69. For some definitions of history by Hugh see his Didascalicon de studio legendi, 4:1, 6:3, ed. by Charles Henry Buttimer (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1939), pp. 70, 113–14, and De sacramentis, 1: prol. (4), p. 33. For Hugh’s views on history in general see Schneider, Geschichte und Geschichtsphilosophie; Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, pp. 162–201; Joachim Ehlers, Hugo von St Viktor: Studien zum Geschichtsdenken und zur Geschichtsschreibung des 12. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1973).

16 Hugh of Saint Victor, Moral Ark, 4:3, in De archa Noe, ed. by Sicard, p. 93. For a fuller discussion of this methodology and its various forms see the subheading ‘The Ark and the world map’ in the main section on the Ark of the Church in Rudolph, The Mystic Ark; see also Conrad Rudolph, ‘Person, Time, and Place in the Construction of History in Hugh of Saint Victor’s Mystic Ark’, in Romanesque and the Past: Retrospection in the Art and Architecture of Romanesque Europe, ed. by John McNeill and Richard Plant, Journal

Figure 33.5. The Mystic Ark, detail of Plate 22 with the central cubit/city of the great king and the river Jordan (digital construction: Clement/Bahmer/Rivas/Rudolph).



348 Conrad Rudolph

the history of salvation according to place, time, and per-son is something that the world map and the Ark proper of The Mystic Ark, operating as a coordinated unit, were designed to make manifest, with these categories coin-ciding perfectly with the world map (place), the Ark

of the British Archaeological Association special issue (2013, pp. 265–82).

proper with its three periods and six ages (time), and the line of generation (person) (Figs 33.3, 33.6, and 33.7). The most obvious example of this is the intervention in the history of salvation by Christ (person) at Jerusalem (place) at the end of the period of the written law and the beginning of the period of grace (time).

But this historical methodolog y can operate in The Mystic Ark on a more complex level as well. Like a

Figure 33.6. The Mystic Ark, diagram of the line of generation (diagram: Clement/Bahmer/Rivas/ Rudolph).




modern author, Hugh uses whatever language seems best suited to the purpose at hand. In his De sacramen-tis—in one of a number of slightly different versions of this methodology found throughout his writings—he rephrases two of these terms to better match his purpose, expressing ‘person’ in a broader historical sense as ‘the succession of generations’, and instead of ‘place’ he gives ‘the dispensation of precepts’, that is, what happened in a religious sense in a given place.17 And this is precisely what is depicted in the relation of the central cubit to the schematic structure of the Ark proper that surrounds it: the dispensation of new precepts to a new spiritual gen-

17 Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis, 1:1:29, p. 58.

eration at a time of fundamental change from the period of the written law and its sacraments to the period of grace with its.

But there is more in operation here. The Ark texts are the main source of Hugh’s theory of an east-west spatial-temporal progression of events throughout his-tory, a theory that underlies all of the other means he brings to bear on his overall argument. This is the idea that the focal point of human activity has gradually migrated from Paradise, in the far east, to Jerusalem and the empires of Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia, in the near east; to Greece; to Rome, in the west; and, finally, to Europe, and the awaiting of the end of time. There are a number of precedents, both religious and ‘secular’, that resonate with this theory, ranging from Virgil to Paul to

Figure 33.7. The Mystic Ark, diagram of the three periods,

the three types of people, and the six ages (diagram: Clement/Bahmer/Rivas/Rudolph).



350 Conrad Rudolph

Augustine.18 But, to the best of my knowledge, the full manifestation of Hugh’s theory is the result of the appli-cation of his own categories of historical analysis—place, time, and person—to the ‘order’ of the works of resto-ration.19 While this theory is best known for the idea of translatio imperii (what might be called the transfer of political centrality) and, to a lesser extent, translatio stu-dii (the transfer of intellectual centrality), Hugh’s under-standing of this theory includes those two forces but is primarily concerned with what we might call translatio spiritualitatis (or the transfer of spiritual centrality) as the predominant dynamic.20

As this pertains to the image of The Mystic Ark, according to Hugh’s systematic theolog y, although cognition of the elements of faith may change with time (belief in a monotheistic God in the period of the written law, belief in the Trinity in the period of grace, and so on), the basic elements themselves (belief in the creator and saviour, who are one) remain the same throughout history.21 The sacraments of faith, however, do fundamentally change from period to period. As described in De sacramentis, the preeminent sacrament of the period of the written law, the period before the coming of Christ, was circumcision; indeed, this is so much the case that, according to Hugh, it is with God’s command to Abraham concerning circumcision that the period of the written law begins (that is, not with the giving of the written law to Moses).22 But with the com-ing of Christ and the period of grace, baptism replaced circumcision as the sacrament that unifies and distin-guishes the people of God.23 This is a complex theologi-

18 Hugh of Saint Victor, Moral Ark, 4:9, p. 111. For a detailed discussion of this idea see the subheading ‘The world map and Hugh’s theorization of an east-west spatial-temporal progres-sion of history’ in the main section on the Ark of the Church in Rudolph, The Mystic Ark. On this subject in general, Werner Goetz, Translatio Imperii: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Geschichtsdenkens und der politischen Theorien im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Tübingen: Mohr, 1958).

19 The term ‘ordo’ implies here both an order of succession and a relative status within that succession; Hugh of Saint Victor, Moral Ark, 4:9, p. 111.

20 For Hugh’s thoughts on this translatio spiritualitatis see his Moral Ark, 4:9, p. 111; and Mystic Ark, 11, p. 157.

21 Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis, 1:10:(8), p. 204.22 Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis, 1:12:(1–3), pp. 250–53.23 Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis, 1:11:(1), 1:12:(1–2),

2:6 (esp. 2:6:3), pp. 243, 250–53, 374–96; Mystic Ark, 9, p. 154. For some of the contemporary issues related to baptism see Marcia L. Colish, Peter Lombard (Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 532–48, esp. p. 535.

cal change to articulate visually. For whereas circumci-sion was not binding on those who were not descend-ants of Abraham, baptism became universally applicable for salvation for all to whom the liturgical sacrament of baptism could be made available.24 At the same time, baptism was seen as sanctified by the death of Christ at Jerusalem, a locational factor that was not the case with circumcision.25 This connection between the sanctifica-tion of the Passion and the cleansing of baptism is prom-inently stated in the image of The Mystic Ark through the Lamb standing in front of the cross (Fig. 33.1) and through the meaning invested in the purple and green borders of the cubit, about which the text of The Mystic Ark states: ‘in purple he [the Lamb] shows the blood of the Passion that sanctifies, and in the colour green the water of baptism that cleanses’.26 The text also states: ‘the river Jordan is drawn through the middle of the Ark […] in a simile of baptism, which in the holy Church is, as it were, the end of the law and the beginning of grace, and whose water of sanctification flowed from the side of Christ’27 (see Fig. 33.5).

It is this central role of baptism in the history of sal-vation that explains why the river Jordan, immediately next to the city of the great king in the image, is the only element that is meant to be understood as cutting entirely across the breadth of the Ark (besides the icons of the patriarchs and apostles, which operate differently), making it one of the most distinguishing features of The Mystic Ark.28 The breadth of the Ark represents the ‘mul-titude of peoples’, according to the text of The Mystic Ark.29 And, in the compositional logic of the image of the Ark, crossing the Ark from one long side to the other at the centre—completely bisecting the progress of time, bisecting the history of salvation at the Incarnation and the beginning of the period of grace—indicates both the primary sacramental role of baptism in that history and the belief that all humankind must pass through this river, must be baptized, since the coming of Christ, if

24 Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis, 2:6:7, pp. 385–88.25 Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramentis, 2:6:3, 2:6:8, pp.

380–81, 389.26 Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystic Ark, 1, p. 122. The central cubit is

enclosed by two borders; the outer one is purple, the inner one green.27 Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystic Ark, 9, p. 154.28 The image of the central pillar (Fig. 33.3, nos 2 and 3)

depicts two halves that are meant to be understood as projecting per-pendicularly from the base of the Ark, not extending across it; Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystic Ark, 1, pp. 124–25.

29 Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystic Ark, 2, p. 127.




they have the opportunity.30 This is why the river Jordan and the place of Jerusalem have a more intimate connec-tion in the image of The Mystic Ark than is commonly found in other medieval cartographic conceptions.31 For while the Jordan is the quintessential place (and symbol) of the sacrament of baptism, and while baptism is sanc-tified by the death of Christ at Jerusalem, it is baptism that allows entry into the Church—just as entry into the Promised Land by the Chosen People was possible only by crossing the Jordan—the Church being the mystical body of Christ, and of which Jerusalem is a metaphor.

Finally, in the compositional logic of The Mystic Ark, the cross in front of which the Lamb of God stands sig-nifies more than the Passion of Christ per se and more than Jerusalem as the place of the Crucifixion in the narrow sense, as seems to be implied in other medieval maps.32 To Hugh’s educated audience, the cross also marked Jerusalem as the umbilicus orbis, the centre of the world, and it acted as an indicator of the cosmic triumph of the Lamb through its participation in the traditional quincunx pattern (Fig. 33.2, no. 11).33

Concluding Remarks

In The Mystic Ark, Hugh constructed the most compre-hensive world-view since the City of God.34 And in the image of The Mystic Ark, we see that Jerusalem in one

30 Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystic Ark, 2, p. 127. People of faith may be saved without baptism; Hugh of Saint Victor, De sacramen-tis, 2:6:7, p. 385; and cf. De sacramentis, 1:9:(5), p. 218.

31 In De sacramentis, 2:6:8, pp. 388–90, Hugh directly connects Jerusalem and baptism. For some good reproductions of the more traditional cartographical association of Jerusalem and the River Jordan, see Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 10058, fol. 154v, in P. D. A. Harvey, Mappa Mundi: The Hereford World Map (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), p. 25; London, British Library, MS Add. 2868, fol. 9, in Birgit Hahn-Woernle, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte (Ebstorf: Kloster Ebstorf, 1993), p. 37; Hereford Map, Hereford Cathedral, in Harvey, Mappa Mundi, pp. ii, 1.

32 For cross imagery: Oxford, St John’s College, MS 17, fol. 6, in Edson and Savage-Smith, Medieval Views of the Cosmos, p. 68. For crucifixion imagery: Hereford Map, Hereford Cathedral, in Harvey, Mappa Mundi, frontispiece. For resurrection imagery: Ebstorf Map (lost), in Hahn-Woernle, Die Ebstorfer Weltkarte, p. 44.

33 On Jerusalem as the centre of the world, see notes 3 and 4 above. On the traditional quincunx pattern as an indicator of cosmic triumph see Bianca Kühnel, The End of Time in the Order of Things: Science and Eschatology in Early Medieval Art (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2003), pp. 222–25 and passim.

34 See Rudolph, The Mystic Ark, and Rudolph, ‘Person, Time, and Place’.

form or another plays an important part in that concep-tion. But as noted at the beginning of this paper, this is a part that is absent from his purely verbal De sacramen-tis, a model of contemporary systematic theology. Nor is there any indication that Jerusalem was meant to be understood as the centre of the world in Hugh’s Descriptio mappe mundi of c. 1130 to 1135, a written description of a world map.35 (I might add that Jerusalem is not at the centre of the world map that Patrick Gautier Dalché feels comes closest to the map of Hugh’s Descriptio mappe mundi, Munich, MS Clm 10058, fol. 154v).36 And so the question arises: what seems to have brought about this change in the role of Jerusalem in the transition from the verbal conception of the history of salvation, found in De sacramentis, which already existed in rough form by 1127 in the Sententie de divinitate,37 to the visual, as found in The Mystic Ark?

It seems that the distinctly greater attention given to Jerusalem in The Mystic Ark came about from translating the main themes of Hugh’s written systematic theology into visual form for use in collatio discussions at Saint Victor. In this translation from the verbal to the visual, Hugh turned to traditional School schemata for the immediate visual context of the Ark of the Flood—cos-mic, macro/microcosmic, the zodiac and months, winds, world maps—in all of which the centre is a natural focal point.38 This was something that was not in conflict

35 Cf. Hugh of Saint Victor, Descriptio mappe mundi, 10, in La ‘Descriptio mappe mundi’ de Hugues de Saint-Victor: Texte inédit avec introduction et commentaire, ed. by Patrick Gautier Dalché (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1988), pp. 142–43; for commentary, see pp. 118–19, 177 n. 60.

36 Good colour reproduction in Harvey, Mappa Mundi, p. 25. On this map, see La ‘Descriptio mappe mundi’, ed. by Gautier Dalché, pp. 11, 81–86, 101–02.

37 Hugh’s Sententie de divinitate of around 1127 is an early form of a portion of the first part of Hugh’s De sacramentis; Ambrogio M. Piazzoni, ‘Ugo di San Vittore “auctor” delle “Sententiae de divinitate”’, Studi medievali, ser. 3, 23 (1982), 862–65.

38 For example, cosmic: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 107, fol. 52r; see John E. Murdoch, Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Album of Science (New York: Scribner, 1984), p. 357. Macro/microcosmic: Byrhtferth’s Diagram, Oxford, St John’s College, MS 17, fol. 7v; good reproduction in John Gage, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London: Thames & Hudson, 1993), p. 86. More specifically, the quaternary harmony: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 210, fol. 132v; see Murdoch, Antiquity and the Middle Ages, p. 352. The zodiac and months: Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, MS Cod. Hist. 415, fol. 17v; good reproduction in Georges Duby, L’Art cistercien (Paris: Flammarion, 1998), p. 163. Winds: Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 12600, fol. 29r; see



352 Conrad Rudolph

with his purely verbal systematic theology but that did offer a somewhat different, more symbolic approach to the same subject in the construction of his own sche-matic structure of the Ark. Adding to this the traditional position of Augustine and others on the ‘movement of history’ and reshaping it in a way that seems to have reso-nated strongly with the contemporary conception of uni-versal history (in the teaching of which the world map was in general an important vehicle), Hugh theorizes the historical dynamic of divine intervention in human space, in human time, and among human beings (both individuals and peoples)—the place, time, and person of his analytical construct of the ordo of the works of resto-ration—in a way that incorporates the inherent central-ity of his supporting schemata into the very essence of his own visual image.

In this fusion of space and time, while Christ acts as the spatial centre of the cosmos, he also operates as the temporal centre of history, and so as the liminal point in the series narrationis or sequence of events in Hugh’s sacred geography of the history of salvation. This func-tion is inextricably bound with Jerusalem, the umbilicus

Murdoch, Antiquity and the Middle Ages, p. 358. World maps: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 10058, fol. 154v, in Harvey, Mappa Mundi, p. 25. For these schemata in The Mystic Ark, cf. Fig. 33.2, nos 5–9.

orbis. The liminal city of the great king is the focal point of the Old Law: of David, of Solomon, of the Temple. And it is the focal point of the New, the crucial point in space that marks the decisive point in time in the history of salvation: it is the place and time in history that (with the adjacent Jordan) circumcision was superseded by baptism,39 that the Old Law was supplanted by the New, that the saviour of humankind was sacrificed and rose from the dead, and that the four Gospels began to be spread throughout the world by the apostles, according to medieval Christian thought—all great ‘sacraments’ that are inscribed in the Ark.

In this unchanging geographical and temporal cen-trality, all salvation is shown to come at a single place ( Jerusalem), at a single time (the Crucifixion), and from a single saviour (Christ)—the place, time, and person of Hugh’s historical methodology—revealing its divine ori-gins in its essential simplicity.40 In order to convey this visually, Hugh had to create a new visual conception of Jerusalem, one that was, by necessity, more complex and articulate than those in other maps. And one result of this was one of the earliest examples, perhaps the earli-est significant example, of Jerusalem, in however veiled a form, at the centre of a medieval world map.

39 Hugh of Saint Victor, Mystic Ark, 9, p. 154.40 Hugh of Saint Victor, Moral Ark, 4:5, p. 100.



The City of the Great King: Jerusalem in Hugh of Saint Victor’s Mystic Ark

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