Hereford Mappa News Today

Bernard of Clairvaux and the European Christians of the Middle Ages lived in a paradox: they were on the edges of the physical world, but at the center of the spiritual one they imagined. By their geographic distance from the centers of the faith, they might have considered themselves aligned with the fantastic creatures and monsters at the other edges of the map. Instead, however, they rewrote the world and story of scripture to put themselves at the center: to make themselves the people aligne...

Satellite image of the island of Madagascar. Photo Credit: Pinterest via Nikhil Advani Marco Polo, the Venetian, is often held up as the most wholesome descriptor for a curious explorer and traveler because the man who bore the name continues to be revered as one whose travelogue and insights are unrivaled by any since the Middle Ages. We have previously submitted that Polo’s allure seems to remain a result of the uncritical appreciation of the 14th-century Berber explorer Ibn Battuta who tr...