Thought to have been created round 1300 CE, the Hereford Mappa Mundi is the most important surviving full map of the medieval world. Named for Hereford Cathedral the place the map is housed at present, the extraordinary doc affords perception into the minds of Christian Europeans within the Middle Ages, revealing the extent to which their understanding of the world was formed by tales from the Bible and the Classics. In this video essay, the US graphic designer and video producer Jeremy Shuback explores the map’s construction and the breadth of its illustrations, detailing how this imaginative piece of medieval cartography binds history, geography, mythology and faith to kind a useful sketch of the Middle Ages.
