Departments & Disciplines – Medieval Studies Research Blog: Meet us at the Crossroads of Everything

January 21, 2026January 22, 2026

Reading the Medieval Landscape through Archaeological Maps of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

There are few things I like to do more than pouring over an old map. For those working on the Maeander River Valley (modern Büyük Menderes in western Türkiye), we are spoiled by old maps from archaeological surveys and excavations from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unlike earlier maps, these maps surveyed and composed for archaeological purposes were more detailed and often more accurate in their spatial representation. In this blog, I want to introduce two fascinating maps.

First, is the Lyncker map, named for the military officer Karl Lyncker who carried out the bulk of the investigations around 1908 and 1909. The map was produced for the archaeological exploration and excavations conducted in the valley by Theodor Wiegand. This map is best understood as a composite map, including the map of Lake Bafa by the military officer Walther von Marées in 1906 (Fig. 1) and the map of the Milesian peninsula by the mine surveyor Paul Wilski in 1900 (Fig. 2). Alfred Philippson, a geologist, would conduct his own surveys and produce his own map in 1910 (Fig. 3). Later, Philippson would compile all the earlier maps and publish them as a composite map in 1936 in the series of volumes of the Miletus excavation.^[1]

**Figure 1: A Map of Mount Latmos and Lake Bafa produced by Walther von Marées in 1906.**

**Figure 2: A Map of the Milesian Peninsula produced by Paul Wilski in 1900.**

**Figure 3: A Map of Western Asia Minor produced by Alfred Philippson in 1910.**

The second map accompanied the archeological work of Olivier Rayet and Albert Thomas and was composed in 1874 (Figs. 4, 5, and 6).^[2] While Wiegand outsourced his cartography to professional geodesists, Rayet drew the map himself.

**Figure 4: A Map of the Maeander River Valley produced by Olivier Rayet in 1874.**

**Figure 5: Close Up of the Area Around Miletus (*Balat ou Palatia*) in the Rayet Map.**

**Figure 6: Close Up of the Area Around the Turkish Town of Söke (*Sokhia*) in the Rayet Map.**

These maps are an important source of ancient and medieval ruins that have since disappeared. However, I have always marveled at what these maps reveal unintentionally: the landscape of the late Ottoman Maeander Valley before a series of changes that would occur in the twentieth century.

Before the Population Exchange of 1923

In 1923, the Greek populations living the Maeander were exchanged with Turkish populations living in Greece. These maps include many Greek toponyms that are no longer used. Didyma is known by its Byzantine name of Hieron (Jeronda), while the town on the southern coast of Lake Bafa was known as Mersinet, a survival of the Byzantine Myrsinos (Fig. 1). The toponym of Patniolik (Figs. 2, 3, and 5), which became the modern Batmaz Tepe (the hill that cannot sink), makes clear that the origin is not Turkish, but Byzantine; this was a village owned by the monastery of Saint John the Theologian on the island of Patmos. On the southern face of Mount Mykale, the ancient site of Priene is still known by its Byzantine name of Samson (Samsoun) on the Rayet map (Fig. 5), while the village of Domatia (Figs. 3 and 5) is likely the survival of the Byzantine toponym Stomata, which references the mouth of the Maeander River.

The town of Bağarasi (Gjaur – Bagharassi on the Lyncker map) missed out having its old Greek name, Mandica, as it was renamed after the Greek War of Independence (1829). Still, not all Greek toponyms imply a direct Byzantine survival. The Greek communities of the late Ottoman period are idiomatic to their time and are not simply the fossils of another era; some immigrated from the islands after the plagues of the seventeenth century, while others moved to the area to work for local Turkish lords (like the Cihanoğlu family in the Turkish town of Koçarlı – there is no reason to assume that the church in Koçarlı in the Lyncker map required a Byzantine predecessor).

Before the Draining of the Büyük Menderes

Beginning in the late 1920’s, a series of drainage canals fundamentally transformed the hydrological realities of the Maeander Valley. Before the construction of this system of canals, the Maeander valley flooded every winter and remained inundated until spring. This could wreak havoc on transportation across the valley and rendered many places in the plain isolated throughout the winter. A rather frustrated Gertrude Bell – a Byzantinist in her own right – who visited the Maeander Valley around the same time as Lyncker, remarked:

“This sort of travelling is far more difficult and less pleasant than my Syrian journeys. There one simply gets onto a horse and rides off, carrying one’s house with one. Here there are so many arrangements to be made and one has to depend on other people’s hospitality which is always a bore. It’s worth doing however and while I am about it, I will see as much of the country as I can so that I need not come back.”^[3]

The draining of the valley was not just the construction of individual canals, but the construction of a system of canals that included the entire valley, where the canals, parallel to the river, provided drainage for the entire valley. Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans all had drainage of some type in the Maeander, but I have seen no evidence of a valley-wide attempt to drain until the early years of the Turkish Republic.^[4] One of the clearest representation of these canals as a system is found in a map from a British Naval Intelligence Division geographical handbook from 1943, when this process was well underway but far from finished.^[5]

Despite the difficulties of living in the open plain in this period, the Lyncker map shows considerable number of settlements, from the series of houses along the river between Priene and Miletus, to the villages east of the town of Söke (Fig. 3). While the Rayet map is less detailed in showing the late Ottoman settlement pattern, it does often show where the major fields were located (Terres labourées), such as the northeastern extreme of the Milesian peninsula, those directly south of Priene (Fig. 5), and the plain between Söke and Burunköy (Bouroun Keui, Fig. 6). Because marshes are dynamic and seasonal in the Maeander, that these two maps do not show the same regions as swamp makes sense. The Lyncker map is oriented more towards the summer and fall, mapping the lakes found at the center of a swamp, while Rayet shows the much wider area that likely saw itself underwater during the winter and spring. Near Miletus (Balat ou Palatia), Rayet designates “lands flooded during the winter” (Landes inondées pendant tout l’hiber). In fact, this is a consistent problem when examining maps, even into the second half of the twentieth century. What can appear as an invented lake – a “paper lake,” if you will – is instead a cartographer mistaking what is permanent for what is seasonal.

For western Türkiye, the twentieth century introduced a series of fundamental changes to the landscape. Being able to see what the landscape looked like before that can provide important insights about the medieval landscape. But, if I am honest, pouring over these maps is simply just a great way to pass an afternoon!

Tyler Wolford, PhD
Byzantine Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

[1] Alfred Philippson. Das südliche Jonien. Milet III.5. Berlin and Leipzig, 1936.

[2] Olivier Rayet and Albert Thomas. Milet et le Golfe Latmique, Tralles, Magnésie du Méandre, Priène, Milet, Didymes, Héraclée du Latmos: Fouilles et explorations archéologiques. Paris, 1877. This map can be viewed online at http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/rayet1877a/0002.

[3] https://gertrudebell.ncl.ac.uk/l/gb-1-1-1-1-17-19

[4] Süha Göney. Büyük Menderes Bölgesi. Istanbul, 1975, 245-256.

[5] Naval Intelligence Division. Turkey. Volume II. Geographical Handbook Series. 1943, 159.

December 10, 2025January 20, 2026

Facts and Fiction: Rewriting the First Crusade with Dr. Thomas Smith

A few weeks ago, Ben and Will sat down with Dr. Thomas Smith, a leading expert on the Crusades, having authored several books on the subject, including, most recently, Rewriting the First Crusade: Epistolary Culture in the Middle Ages (Boydell Press, 2024) and The Egyptian Crusade: Holy War on the Nile, forthcoming with Yale University Press in 2026. Dr. Smith holds the position of Keeper of the Scholars and Head of Oxbridge at Rugby School, one of the UK’s most historic private boarding schools, founded in 1567. He is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society.

Ben and Will chat with Dr. Smith about how letter-writing was approached in the medieval world and the role it played during the Crusades. Today, letters are typically written—if they are written at all—by a sole author to be read by a sole addressee, in private. However, while we have discrete channels for public and private communication, in the medieval world—where geography placed real limitations on the sharing of information—the two would often intertwine. And so, letters were more communal, even when addressed by a singular author to a singular addressee. For example, a letter sent by a crusade leader to his wife back home would, first of all, likely be written not just by the husband in isolation but dialogically with his scribes, and, second, would be intended to be read not just by the wife in private but aloud to the entire community, to be copied down and shared widely.

The participatory character of the production and reception of letters not only points to an ambiguity between the private and the public, but also between fact and fiction, as the truth of something emerges in its dynamic narration and re-narration across time and space. Dr. Smith thinks that these ambiguities, when taken seriously, challenge certain modern assumptions we hold about the Crusades and the medieval world in general. For example, we are sometimes inclined to imagine the average medieval person as simpler and more credulous than the average modern person. But what if these ambiguities that infuse the medieval world were owing not to a lack of sophistication but, rather, a different kind of sophistication? Dr. Smith thinks that we have every reason to believe the latter, that the medieval person is just as critical and curious about the world around her as the modern person, but is so through different lenses—theological rather than empirical-scientific, for example. That the medieval person was less inclined to divide fact from fiction is thus not owing to a failure of conviction or capacity for truth—quite the opposite.

In addition to discussing his research, Ben and Will also chat with Dr. Smith about the way he balances a heavy teaching load at the Rugby School with his writing and research, of which he is able to accomplish a great deal, even with his limited time. The conversation concludes with a refreshing note on the importance of self-care in academia.

Thanks for listening, and be sure to stay tuned for more!

Transcript – Smith Download

December 5, 2025December 7, 2025

Laycus of Amalfi on the Azymes

As a continuation of sorts to my last post, on Peter Damiani’s reaction to the events of 1054, I’ve decided to take a look at another churchman writing on the same topic a few years later, a certain Laycus of Amalfi, who undertook to compose a defense of the use of unleavened bread (azymes) in the Eucharist around the year 1070 [1]. His work took the form of a letter, addressed to Sergius, a Latin-rite abbot living in Constantinople. According to the text, Laycus had been motivated to write by reports from his correspondent and from other Latins that they had been completely surrounded by those who were trying to persuade them to abandon the Latin liturgical usage in favor of the Greek [2].

Other than his name, virtually nothing else is known about the author of the text. The sole surviving manuscript witness (Brussels, Bibliothèque royale 1360 / 9706-25, 116v-119r) gives only the identification “a letter of Laycus, cleric” (“epistola layci clerici”), a seeming contradiction in terms that leaves us with the assumption that “Laycus” is a given name. Anton Michel, who edited the text in 1939, notes further that monastics of the time tended to identify themselves as such: the absence of a word like “frater” in self-reference suggests that the author was not in monastic orders [3]. Even the origins of the author in the city of Amalfi are conjectural, and they are based more on his presumed links to Abbot Sergius, who was likely the leader of the monastery of St. Mary of the Amalfitans in Constantinople, an establishment attested by Peter Damiani around the same time[4].

The famous bronze doors of the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Amalfi, manufactured in Constantinople around the year 1060. Photo credits Berthold Werner, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The manuscript that preserves this text is also one of the few early copies of the work of Humbert, Cardinal of Silva Candida, and, as it happens, it is from Humbert’s writings that our Laycus drew most of his arguments in favor of the azymes. The core argument, in Laycus as in Humbert, was an appeal to the example set by Christ at the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper. According to the argument, Christ, who came to fulfill the Law of Moses, would have used unleavened bread at the Last Supper since the synoptic Gospel accounts place the event on the first day of the celebration of Pascha (Pesach), when leavened bread was prohibited in observant Jewish households. This act of institution was reinforced during the supper at Emmaus, which likewise occurred during the days of Pascha and is regarded in the text as a celebration of the Eucharist [5]. This practice was preserved by the Roman Church, according to Laycus, who cited Popes Anacletus, Clemens, and Sylvester as uniquely instrumental in this effort [6].

Especially for the period of the pre-Gregorian Reform, the tone of the text is fairly mild. The introductory paragraphs make reference to the “most pious, holy, and wise fathers and doctors [of the Greeks]” who themselves used leavened bread in the Eucharist (but who didn’t, though, attack the Latin use) [7]. And the letter of Laycus appears all the more gentle in comparison with the source material: gone is the spirited, “listen up, stupid” (“audi, stulte”) style of invective found in Cardinal Humbert [8]. Instead, we find almost a plea to avoid rending the garment of Christ by provoking division between the two rites, coupled with an emphatic statement that the one faith could contain various customs within the churches [9].

Does the work of Laycus of Amalfi change our understanding of the azyme debate or the conflict between the Eastern and Western churches more broadly? In terms of theological content, to put it bluntly, not really. The arguments advanced by Laycus were the same as those put forward by Humbert some fifteen years prior, and, while the text written by Laycus was itself copied by Bruno of Segni in another epistle in the early twelfth century, this branch of the post-Humbertine literary tradition does not leave any substantial mark in the theological framework of the Latin church. On the other hand, the very existence of this letter, along with the fact that a Greek prelate took the time to respond to it, does indeed broaden our insight into the East-West conflict more generally [10]. It emphasizes, first of all, that the Humbertine legation in 1054 was not a one-off attempt to open lines of communication between the two churches. Rather, communication was happening, even without the intervention of popes and patriarchs, and it was based on pre-existing and well-established ties connecting East and West. A Latin-rite monastery in Constantinople, staffed by Amalfitans, would naturally be in contact with friends, relatives, and fellow clerics back home.

Second, to return to a point that I’ve made before, this letter makes clear that there was no general sense of schism between East and West in the aftermath of the 1054 legation. Indeed, as noted above, the tone of this letter is notably more civil than the polemics of Humbert. Although Laycus was certainly more of an azyme partisan than was Peter Damiani, the work and its date of composition points to an extended window in which ecumenical dialogue, in the sense that both sides still saw each other as part of the same community, was still possible.

Nick Kamas
PhD in Medieval Studies
University of Notre Dame

Anton Michel has published the only substantial scholarly treatment of the material and the only edition of the text. Amalfi und Jerusalem im Griechischen Kirchenstreit (1054–1090): Kardinal Humbert, Laycus von Amalfi, Niketas Stethatos, Symeon II. von Jerusalem und Bruno von Segni über die Azymen (Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1939. See also a short summary in Jonathan Shepard, “Knowledge of the West in Byzantine Sources, c.900–c.1200” in A Companion to Byzantium and the West, 900-1204, ed. Nicolas Drocourt and Sebastian Kolditz (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 67.
Laycus of Amalfi, c. 1, Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 35.
Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 21.
Peter Damani, Letter 131, trans. Owen J. Blum, The Letters of Peter Damian Peter Damian, Vol. 5, Letters 121–150, The Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation 6, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 55. For an assessment on why this monastic house in particular, see Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 18–19.
Laycus of Amalfi, c. 5–11, Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 37–42.
Laycus of Amalfi, c. 14–15, Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 44–45.
Laycus of Amalfi, c. 2, Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 36. “Licet illorum [Graecorum] religiosissimi, sanctissimi atque sapientissimi patres ac doctores fuerint et studuerint ex fermentato pane omnipotenti domino sacrificium offerre, tamen numquam invenimus illos nostram oblationem evacuantes aut deridentes […].”
Humbert, Cardinal of Silva Candida, Responsio sive Contradictio adversus Nicetae Pectorati Libellum, cap. 13, edited in Cornelius Will, Acta et Scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae graecae et latinae saeculo undecimo composita extant (Leipzig: N. G. Elwert, 1861), 141.
Laycus of Amalfi, c. 3, Michel, 36–37. “Numquid divisus est dominus in corpore suo, ut alius sit Ihesus Christus in Romano sacrificio, alius in Constantinopolitano? Quis hoc orthodoxus dixerit nisi ille, qui dominicam non veretur scindere vestem? Nos veraciter tenemus, immo firmiter credimus, quia, quamvis diversi mores ęcclesiarum, una est tamen fides […].”
Probably Symeon II of Jerusalem. Michel, Amalfi und Jerusalem, 25–28.