Welcome to
. This is the first edition of Manūscriptum — a new series where we’ll take a look back at some of history’s most beautiful documents. For the full map of Cosmographia posts, see here.Today is Earth Day, so I thought we could mark the occasion by looking back to a time when the Earth still lay at the centre of the universe.
In astronomy, geocentrism refers to systems and cosmologies that place the Earth at the centre of the cosmos. Geocentric models varied in their precise structure, but they tended to assume that the celestial objects — the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars — orbited around the Earth, which remained in a fixed position.
Later this week, I’ll be sharing a history of geocentrism with paid subscribers. We’ll be looking at how ancient astronomers in Babylon, Greece, China, India, and Mesoamerica made sense of their place in the cosmos, and how European Christendom adapted these ideas into its theology.
But for now, enjoy the beauty of these centuries-old illuminated manuscripts.
As above, so below.
1. Earth at the Centre of the Spheres, from Goussin de Metz’s L’Image du Monde (c. 13th century)
2. Hermes Trismegistus (paraphrased), from Emerald Tablet (c. 200-800 AD)
By looking down, I see upward. By looking up, I see downward.
3. Earthly Paradise, from Nicolas de Lyre’s Postilles sur l'Ancien et le Nouveau Testament (1460)
4. Tycho Brahe, from an astrological lecture given in Copenhagen (1574)
Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist.
5. Cosmological Diagram from Goussin de Metz’s Image du Monde (c. 14th century)
6. Marcus Aurelius, from Meditations (c. 161-180 AD)
These hells, and hundreds and thousands of others, are the places in which sinners pay the penalty of their crimes. As numerous as are the offences that men commit, so many are the hells in which they are punished.
7. The Spheres between Heaven and Hell, with the Fallen Angels becoming Devils, from The Neville of Hornby Book of Hours (c. 1440)
8. ‘Divisions of Naraka’, The Vishnu Purana (c. 400-900 AD)
The sun, the sister of the moon, from the south Her right hand cast over heaven's rim; No knowledge she had where her home should be, The moon knew not what might was his, The stars knew not where their stations were.
9. The celestial sphere over the Earth, from Les Echecs Amoureux (Amorous Chess) manuscript made for Louise of Savoy (c. 15th century)
10. Völuspá, from Poetic Edda (c. 10th century)
Everything goes, everything comes back; the wheel of being rolls eternally. Everything dies, everything blossoms again.
11. Universal Correspondence, from Robert Fludd’s Utriusque Cosmi Historia (1617)
12. Friedrich Nietzsche, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)
The Sun is the past, the Earth is the present, the Moon is the future. From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.
13. Struktur des Makrokosmos, from Robert Fludd’s Utriusque Cosmi Historia (1617)
14. Nikola Tesla, ‘The Problem of Increasing Human Energy’ (1900)
We are no other than a moving row Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go Round with the Sun-illuminated Lantern held In Midnight by the Master of the Show.
15. Cosmological Diagram of the Spheres Surrounded by Angels, from Matfre Ermengaud’s Breviary d’Amor (c. 1375-1440)
16. Omar Khayyam, from The Rubaiyat (1120)
If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.
17. Book of Heaven and East, from Nicole Oresme’s Livre du Ciel et du Monde (1377)
18. Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
In my hut this spring, There is nothing- There is everything!
19. Cosmographical diagram of the Earth surround by the elements, the spheres, the signs of the zodiac and phases of the moon with the four seasons in the corners, from The Catalan Atlas (14th century)
20. Yamaguchi Sodo, a haiku (c. 17th century)
Angels, living light most glorious! Beneath the Godhead in burning desire in the darkness and mystery of creation you look on the eye of your God never taking your fill: What glorious pleasures take shape within you!
21. Ptolemaic Planisphere, from Andreas Cellarius’ Harmonia Macrocosmica (1660)
22. Hildegard von Bingen, from Symphonia (c. 1151-58)
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.
23. The double Janus looking at the four parts of the world, from La Cité de Dieu (Vol I), by Augustine (c. 1475)
24. William Blake, from ‘Auguries of Innocence’ (1863)
The skin is like the sky, the flesh is like the earth, bones like the mountains, and veins like rivers, blood in the body like the water of the sea, a belly like the ocean, hair like plants, and breath drawn in and out as the wind.
25. Ptolemaic orbits forming an armillary sphere, from Andreas Cellarius’ Harmonia Macrocosmica, (1661)
26. From Bundahishn, a Zoroastrian cosmological text (1540)
Every thing that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, is penetrated with connectedness, is penetrated with relatedness.
27. Cosmological diagram from Gossuin de Metz’s Image du Monde (c. 14th century)
28. Hildegard von Bingen, from Symphonia (c. 1151-58)
Mighty Atlas who holds aloft on his shoulders the heavenly firmament. Atlas who props the starry sky.
Incredible connection! Heliocentrism is such a fascinating concept, having famously caused ostracism for Galileo and Copernicus, death for Bruno, and endless persecution at the hands of the religious authorities. I've written about this a great deal, and it is endlessly fascinating to see all these old "maps."
(I know this is a bit of a pivot to documents, but they're still maps!)
This is great! I’ve been researching the flat-earth movement for a novel, so I particularly like how even some of the oldest ones show the Earth depicted as a globe. Although #21 looks like it might be the flat Earth surrounded by the ice wall.
Do you have a sense of how often old maps and depictions show Earth as flat rather than as a globe? My guess is that there would be few of these, since the idea of a flat Earth is relatively new.