Under the Big Tent

[ReneZ]

Coming back to Ellie's page, I see the point about orientation of the lower left (or South-East) circle as the most important point, and just about the only thing we can be reasonably certain about.
Given that (as so often) the text and the drawing are closely integrated, I do not doubt which orientation would have been 'up' for the person or persons creating this circle.

The second important point, which applies to almost all of the MS, is to realise that it could represent many different things: a sky view of something (e.g. a cloister or a garden), a building (church or tabernacle), a tent, but also a church tabernacle (basically a miniature building usually made of, or coated with, gold).

In all cases, such possible representations are based on what it seems to look like. That is inevitable as long as we can't read the text.

It becomes a problem as soon as one wants to decide which of these items it is. What is the criterium to use in order to prefer one or the other?

In most discussions here, this tends to be either: "it looks more like A than like B". This is very subjective and very personal, and cannot be used in my opinion.
Alternatively, it is based on a consideration that "it fits with a theory". This is also not very good.
(Both these points seem to be the basis for the identification of meso-american plants in the MS.)

Just recently, I was wondering to what extent 'sky view' maps were actually drawn in the late middle ages, but I found one in the "libro d'ultramare" about which I posted just a few days ago.
The illustration of the church of Sion that I showed in the same post reminded me exactly of the lower-right circle that is being discussed here. I would expect that other drawings of buildings (or tents) can be found that look much more similar to this.