Greetings!
>
>Mostly, my students go for the Early Christians cowering in the catacombs,
>the Vikings with horned helmets, illiteracy=ignorance, and the flat
>stationary world - but I'd really like to know about last three in the
above
>list. Can anyone help?
If you're talking about the mappa mundi and the Jerusalem map, you're
dealing with map as allegory. Many people see these stylized maps and
believe that medieval people believed that the world really was a flat disk
with Jerusalem at the centre or top, and that these maps were meant for
navigation. In fact, they're almost completely symbolic in nature.
As for distinguishing myths from the medieval period from those from the
modern era *about* the Middle Ages--although I think few people (other than
the odd nutbar) seriously believe that Jews poisoned the wells these days,
and I'm not sure anyone believes in green children or those men with faces
in their chests, Pope Joan is alive and well today and often told as a moral
tale, usually with the Big Bad Church as either the villain or the stooge.
Susan
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