Continuïteit of innovatie? : een onbestaand dilemma in het Liber Floridus van Lambertus van Sint-Omaars (1121)

The 12th century world maps or “mappae mundi” in the “Liber Floridus” of Lambert of Saint-Omer illustrate how didactic diagrams in medieval encyclopedias were fast becoming complex representations of the earth. Due to semantic changes in the definition of the map these diagrams differ from the present-day map, whose characteristics have gradually been developed until being largely determined by 18th century Enlightenment philosophers. Medieval “mappae mundi” are considered as cartography nonetheless, because of the common visual language. Different, however, from the modern cumulative scientific view of knowledge, does the medieval cosmographer never questions his predecessors’ authority, whose former ideas are building blocks in the development of future maps