Category: Art History

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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.

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An Italian Itinerary for Understanding Dante’s Divine Comedy: Trajan’s Column in Rome

Long shot of a row of white statues AI-generated content may be incorrect.Visitors to the Museum of Civilization in Rome can see plaster casts of the entirety of Trajan’s column. Photo by Notafly – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4634304

I consider Italian art to be indispensable when teaching Dante. One way to think about the Divine Comedy is as a piece of Late Gothic/Early Renaissance art in poetry. Unfortunately for a classroom teacher, many of the pieces of art that can be most relevant for understanding him ought to be experienced in person because they are as spatial, and they are visual. These works of art do not fit neatly on a screen or piece of paper, and while a video can sometime be helpful in seeing details that are difficult to see in person, it cannot replicate the encompassing nature of the type of art produced in Italy during this time. So, grab a cappuccino (only if it is morning…if it is not, shame on you, espresso is the correct choice!), and plan your Dante-lover trip to Italy. While there are many guides to Italian travel, over the next few posts, I would like to focus here upon some specific pieces of art that Dante lovers ought to pay attention to. 

Most visits to Italy begin in Rome, and there are few things more indispensable to reading Dante than an appreciation for his love of the Roman Empire. The first stop is Trajan’s Column in Rome.

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Trajan’s Column in Rome, Italy. Photo by Livioandronico2013. Creative Commons.

The emperor Trajan appears twice in the Commedia, once as a carved example of humility in the cornice of the Proud in Purgatorio 10.73-99 and again as one of the six chiefs of Justice in the Circle of Jupiter in Paradiso 20. While reading the Commedia the tendency is to think about Trajan as he is depicted in Voragine’s Golden Legend, as a man saved from hell by the prayers of Gregory the Great:

In the time that Trajan the emperor reigned, and on a time as he went toward a battle out of Rome, it happed that in his way as he should ride, a woman, a widow, came to him weeping and said I pray thee, sire, that thou avenge the death of one my son which innocently and without cause hath been slain. The emperor answered: If I come again from the battle whole and sound then I shall do justice for the death of thy son. Then said the widow: Sire, and if thou die in the battle who shall then avenge his death? And the emperor said: He that shall come after me. And the widow said: Is it not better that thou do to me justice and have the merit thereof of God than another have it for thee? Then had Trajan pity and descended from his horse and did justice in avenging the death of her son. On a time S. Gregory went by the market of Rome which is called the market of Trajan, and then he remembered of the justice and other good deeds of Trajan, and how he had been piteous and debonair, and was much sorrowful that he had been a paynim, and he turned to the church of S. Peter wailing for the horror of the miscreance of Trajan. Then answered a voice from God saying: I have now heard thy prayer, and have spared Trajan from the pain perpetual. By this, as some say, the pain perpetual due to Trajan as a miscreant was some deal taken away, but for all that was not he quit from the prison of hell, for the soul may well be in hell and feel there no pain by the mercy of God. 

The visitor to Trajan’s column, which stands in the forum (or market) of Trajan, may have a slightly different perspective. In Roman Art, Donald Strong points out that this column “sets out…to provide an epic version of the [Dacian] wars, with the Roman army under its great leader in the role of hero” (151). In other words, this column shows viewers what Trajan thought was important about his life, the wars he fought and the battles he won.

This monument to the glories of Trajan’s empire does not include the act of kindness remembered by Gregory when he visits the marketplace. To find an artistic engraving of these events of eternal importance, one has to look to the epic poetry of Dante himself:

At that I turned my face
And, looking beyond Mary, saw,
On the same side as he prompted me,
Another story set into the rock.
I went past Virgil and drew near so that my eyes might better take it in.
There, carved into the marble…
Depicted there was the glorious act
Of the Roman prince whose worth
Urged Gregory on to his great victory—
I speak of the emperor Trajan,
With the poor widow at his bridle, weeping,
Revealed in her state of grief
The soil all trampled by the thronging knights.
Above, the eagles fixed in gold
Seemed to flutter in the wind.
In their midst, one could almost hear the plea 
of that unhappy creature: ‘My lord, avenge
My murdered son for me. It is for him I grieve,’
And his answer: ‘Wait till I return,’
And she: ‘My lord,’ like one whose grief is urgent,
‘and if you don’t return?’ and his answer: 
‘He who will take my place will do it,’
And she: ‘What use to you is another’s goodness
If you are unmindful of your own?’
And he then: ‘Now take comfort, for I must discharge
My debt to you before I go to war.
Justice wills it and compassion bids me stay.’
He in whose sight nothing can be new
Wrought this speech made visible,
New to us because it is not found on the earth. (Purgatorio X.49-96; transl. Hollander)

Now, consider this: one of the iconic features of epic poetry is a figure of description known as ekphrasis, whereby a poet describes a work of art, like a painting or a statuary, in a way that competes with physical craftsman and shows that poetry is capable of doing more than a physical craft. For example, the shield of Achilles is described by Homer so that it has features that would be impossible in real life. (Think Harry Potter paintings.) Ekphrasis was one way that epic poets demonstrated that their craft had superior capabilities to that of other craftsmen.

A close-up of a book AI-generated content may be incorrect.

MS Holkam, Misc. 48, p.75, Bodleian Library University of Oxford. https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/10974934-30a5-4495-857e-255760e5c5ff/surfaces/ef18134f-8c01-4509-89e5-3f82de5ae6f2/

With this perspective in mind, it becomes clearer that Dante’s depictions of Trajan re-write the epic history that Trajan “wrote” for himself in Trajan’s column. In other words, Dante’s poetry competes with a physical piece of art by showing where Trajan’s true glory lay. Dante has imaged for us a “speech made visible” of Trajan’s act of true justice, carved by the divine artisan. Just as Jesus saw the poor woman give a mite to the temple when others marveled at the great riches donated by the wealthy, so Dante imagines the divine artist immortalizing an act that Trajan did not realize would be his most important. As you look at Trajan’s column in Rome, consider what it would take to make a better monument, so realistic that the figures move and make sound, on a subject matter that was higher than Trajan himself could imagine.

Lesley-Anne Dyer Williams is a Professor for Memoria College’s Masters of Arts in Great Books program and graduated with her doctorate from the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute in 2012. She was also the founding director Liberal Arts Guild at LeTourneau University. Her research focuses upon twelfth-century Platonism and poetry, especially Thierry of Chartres and Bernard Silvestris.

Lesley-Anne Dyer Williams
Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame


Further Reading
Strong, Donald. Roman Art. Yale University Press, 1995.

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Mathematical “Small Things” and the Quadrivium

What did early mathematical education look like in the Middle Ages? As is commonly known, the ideal Liberal Arts curriculum of the Middle Ages featured both the Trivium (dedicated to the study of words) and Quadrivium (dedicated to the study of nature in the form of mathematical arts). The Trivium included Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric. The Quadrivium consisted of Music, Astronomy, Geometry, and Arithmetic. These seven ways (viae) of liberal arts learning prepared students who studied them diligently to “comprehend everything that they read, elevat[ing] their understanding to all things and empower[ing] them to cut through the knots of all problems possible of solution” (John of Salisbury, Metalogicon I.12). Even today, the concept of a Liberal Arts education that prepares a student for life and whatever (foreseen and unforeseen) challenges lay aheadremains. And yet, for anyone who has educated a child, the idea of delaying mathematical education until the early teen years (which is when the formal Quadrivium was taught) seems completely impractical and misguided.

Unknown Miniaturist, French (active 1190s Paris). Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 409 (Oxford Manuscript ) f.3v.

Did medieval educators really wait until students had a full understanding of the Trivium before introducing mathematics? The difficulty here comes in part from the lack of extensive knowledge of the curriculum of early childhood medieval education, including mathematical instruction. The institutions for learning changed over time and even geographic region. Early childhood education could take place in a home, in a monastery, or at a local cathedral school. Another difficulty may also be that our cultures mean slightly different things when we talk about the discipline of mathematics.

The “paper trail” for exactly what early childhood mathematical education might have looked like is not vast. But one tiny, but vivid, glimpse of what boyhood mathematical pursuits might have looked like can be seen in the writings of Hugh of St. Victor, an early twelfth century canon regular who wrote a book on the Liberal Arts called the Didascalicon. In this work, Hugh of St. Victor gives a rare view of his own early mathematical education:

I laid out pebbles for numbers, and I marked the pavement with black coals and by a model placed right before my eyes, I plainly showed what difference there is between an obtuse-angled, and an acute triangle. Whether or not an equilateral parallelogram would yield the same area as a square when two of its sides were multiplied together, I learned by walking both figures and measuring them with my feet. Often I kept watch outdoors through the winter nights like one of the fixed stars by which we measure time. Often I used to bring out my strings, stretched to their number on the wooden frame, both that I might note wih my ear the difference among the tones and that I might at the same time delight my soul with the sweetness of the sound. These were boyish pursuits…yet not without their utility for me, nor does my present knowledge of them lie heavy upon my stomach. (VI.3)

Hugh describes these activities as grounding him “in things small” so that he could “safely strive for all” later in life.

Notice how many of the activities mentioned by Hugh of St. Victor do not require a textbook at all, especially with a charismatic teacher, or in the case of Hugh’s own life, a particularly inquisitive child. Counting and the study of angles required only pebbles. The figuring of surface area required only the measurement of feet. An early acquaintance with the stars required actually going out to look at the night sky, even when it was cold, and the study of the relationship between musical notes came from literally fiddling around with a simple stringed instrument. To these activities, we might presumably add the common medieval practices of singing (cantus) and possibly dancing in set patterns. Or the calculating of times and seasons (computus). Or measurements of land and sea masses for commerce or geography. Or ratios for cooking. Many of these activities can be conveyed orally through constant interaction with numbers in the physical world. That is not to say that no formal study or book learning could or was be done in these areas, but the bulk of early mathematical learning did not need to take place in a school environment with a textbook. All that was needed was a student, the physical world, and a teacher with mathematical knowledge.

Christine and the Sybil pointing to a ladder from the heavens, from the Book of the Queen, France (Paris), c. 1410-1414, Harley MS 4431, f. 189v.

What Hugh recognized was that these mathematical activities, whether for play or practical application, were essential for what he and his contemporaries would have considered the formal discipline of mathematics as a liberal art (i.e. the Quadrivium), which would have taken place during the teenage years at higher level schools. Hugh distinguishes arts and disciplines in the following manner: “Knowledge can be called an art ‘when it comprises the rules and precepts of an art’ as it does in the study of how to write; knowledge can be called a discipline when it is said to be ‘full’ as it is in the ‘instructional’ science, or mathematics” (II.1).

A table used for Computus. Harley MS 3667 f 001v.

 In other words, the sorts of activities Hugh describes himself doing as a boy were not mathematical disciplines in his terminology. Instead, his boyish mathematical play was both pleasant at the time and useful as he grew up to study the mathematical disciplines. For this reason, Hugh praised such activity as best because it aids one’s movement “step by step” rather than “fall[ing] head over heels when [attempting] to make a great leap ahead” (VI.2). This learning process mirrors the original discovery of the disciplines themselves by humanity. As Hugh writes:

Such was the origin of all the arts; scanning them all, we find this true. Before there was grammar, men both wrote and spoke; before there was dialectic, they distinguished the true from the false by reasoning; before there was rhetoric, they discoursed upon civil laws; before there was arithmetic, there was knowledge of counting; before there was an art of music, they sang; before there was geometry, they measured fields; before there was astronomy, they marked off periods of time from the courses of the stars. But then came the arts, which, though they took their rise in usage, nonetheless excel it. (I.11)

Early childish mathematical play was not the Quadrivium, but Hugh considered it a necessary preparation for the later study of the Quadrivial arts. Just as Boethius argued in Institutio arithmetica 1,1,7 that the quadrivium provides steps (gradus) by which the mind is progressively illuminated and can raise itself from its immediate sensible circumstances to the certainty of intelligible truth, so Hugh argued that the humble mathematical play of childhood was one step on the way to learning the discipline of mathematics. Computus, stargazing, learning to sing, learning to dance, and making geometric shapes with pebbles—none of this was Quadrivium. These activities could be boyhood pursuits…or in some cases, ends in themselves practiced into adulthood, but activities of this sort were, in Hugh’s opinion, a necessary preparatory step for the Quadrivial disciplines.

Lesley-Anne Dyer Williams
Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

Lesley-Anne Dyer Williams is a Professor for Memoria College’s Masters of Arts in Great Books program and graduated with her doctorate from the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute in 2012. She was also the founding director Liberal Arts Guild at LeTourneau University. Her research focuses upon twelfth-century Platonism and poetry, especially Thierry of Chartres and Bernard Silvestris.

Further Reading:

Hugh of St. Victor. The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor:  A Medieval Guide to the Arts. Edited & translated by Jerome Taylor, Columbia University Press, 1991.

Jaeger, C. Stephen. The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950-1200. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

John of Salisbury. Metalogicon. Translated by C.C.J. Webb, Clarendon Press, 1929.

Orme, Nicholas. Medieval Children. Yale University Press, 2001.

Orme, Nicholas. Medieval Schools. Yale University Press, 2006.