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Ravenna Cosmography



 
 
The Ravenna Cosmography was compiled by an anonymous cleric in Ravenna
Ravenna

Ravenna is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. The city is inland, but is connected to the Adriatic Sea by a canal. Ravenna once served as the seat of the Western Roman Empire and later the Ostrogoths and the Exarchate of Ravenna....
 around AD 700. It consists of a list of place-names covering the world from India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
 to Ireland
Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
. Textual evidence indicates that the author frequently used maps as his source.

The surviving texts are quite challenging. The three manuscript copies are distanced from the autograph (original manuscript) by three or four generations.






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The Ravenna Cosmography was compiled by an anonymous cleric in Ravenna
Ravenna

Ravenna is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. The city is inland, but is connected to the Adriatic Sea by a canal. Ravenna once served as the seat of the Western Roman Empire and later the Ostrogoths and the Exarchate of Ravenna....
 around AD 700. It consists of a list of place-names covering the world from India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
 to Ireland
Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
. Textual evidence indicates that the author frequently used maps as his source.

The surviving texts are quite challenging. The three manuscript copies are distanced from the autograph (original manuscript) by three or four generations. As a result, the copies are plagued by errors of spelling, word division, omission, and errors of hearing (The text was apparently dictated at one point.). The text-to-text variations are not limited to the place-names, but are also significant in the intervening commentary. Thus, the bulk of the blame cannot be placed on the original author.

The most recent critical edition of the three manuscripts is that of Joseph Schnetz, Itineraria Romana, vol. II: Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia et Guidonis Geographica, 1942 (reprinted 1990), B G Teubner, Stuttgart.

External links

Sites dealing with the British section

  • , its text and identifications of names
  • , Introduction and British section.
  • The British section of the Ravenna Cosmography and its sources.