The Evesham world map: A late medieval English view of god and the world

Abstract

Abstract The newly‐discovered Evesham world map, a wall map that was almost certainly commissioned for Evesham Abbey in about 1390, was added to and amended some 20 years later, and was then reused by 1452. It derives from what was probably a standard world map copied for Ranulf Higden for his Polychronkon. However, there is no evidence that the Evesham map was ever intended to illustrate any particular text. Within the traditional geographical and spiritual framework, the pre‐occupation with the universal, ancient, and mythical—typical of earlier large world maps—has yielded primacy to the depiction of contemporary England and the territorial, dynastic, and commercial aspects of English patriotism.