9 Rosette - Specific Details

[arca_libraria]

I haven't had a chance to read it all of it yet, I just glanced through the text, but the folio from the Zwettl abbey appears to me to be more of a map of holdings showing the major possessions of the abbey, rather than an itinerary map.

Or rather both.

Miniature with the Zwettler foundation legend on f. 12r der Bärenhaut - The drawing on fol. 12r illustrates the founding legend of the monastery Zwettl: at upper left Hadmar I. von Kuenring and Hermann, the first abbot of Zwettl, ride around the area which is supposed to belong to the monastery. This circular ride is represented by a large circle; within the circle there are eight medallions with Zwettl possessions: around the Zwettl monastery church are the granges Dürnhof, Gaisruck, Pötzles, Edelhof and Ratschenhof, as well as the town of Zwettl and the parish church of St. John in Zwettl. On the outside of the circle there are three medallions with Pope Innocent II, King Konrad III and Duke Leopold of Bavaria. On the opposite side (fol. 11v) a hand in a semicircle points to Hadmar and Hermann.

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Looking at the map and reading the description, it reminds me of boundary clauses in medieval charters. Medieval people cared about land ownership and even in the early middle ages medieval people were writing documents to record the ownership of land and the transfer of land. Charters (or sometimes just the boundary clauses) were sometimes copied into liturgical books as a safe place to store the ownership information, charters were regularly recopied into things known in English scolarship as 'cartulary collections' for safe-keeping, and by far the largest class of medieval forgeries (i.e. forgeries made in the medieval period by medieval people) are forgeries of writs and charters.

This is a translated boundary clause from an early medieval charter You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:

These are the land-boundaries of Eaton - first from beetle's stream up along the streamlet till it comes to the coloured floor. Thence along the valley by the two little barrows till it comes to the spring at Wulfhun's plantation. Then diagonally over the furlong to the thorn bushes westward where the large thorn tree used to stand, and so to bird pool. Then along the ditch till it comes to the muddy spring, and so along the water course till it comes to the Cherwell which forms the boundary from then on.

I know Anglo-Saxon charters are a bit far removed from what we're talking about, but I wanted to provide an example of how medieval people thought about and described space and place (particularly local and familiar space and place) in the absence of detailed maps. Of course people were making aps and diagrams throughout the middle ages, but maps were not always acessible or sufficiently accurate. The circle diagram in Zwettl, Zisterzienserstift, Archiv, Cod. 2/1 looks to me a little bit like someone illustrating a written description of the land holdings, which is not something that I have seen before.