Geographia sacra: Cartography, religion, and scholarship in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Beginning in late antiquity, exegetes and scholars painstakingly studied the geographical segments of the Bible and produced biblical maps and drawings. In the early modern period, however, fundamental geographical as well as religious certainties became unstable, while scholarship reached new and unprecedented levels of sophistication. Geographia sacra stood at the interface of these complex processes and engaged many of Europe's foremost scholars. This study examines the scope and content of this early modern genre within the broader history of scholarship, which modern literature has tended to neglect.; The dissertation's four chapters approach geographia sacra from different, complementary perspectives, while chronologically progressing from about 1540 to 1690. Chapter One investigates the biblical maps of the Spanish biblical scholar Benito Arias Montano (1527--98) and explores the connections between sacred geography and antiquarianism. Chapter Two looks at devout curiosity as practiced on-site, in Jerusalem, with particular attention to Franciscan documentary efforts. Chapter Three examines Protestant sacred geography, focusing on the historical-philological scholarship of the French pastor Samuel Bochart (1599--1667). The fourth and final chapter addresses ecclesiastical geography---the controversial project of mapping the Church and its history. An Epilogue traces the decline of sacred geography in the late seventeenth century. As the Bible lost its place as the basic paradigm of the human sciences, sacred geography lost its immediacy and relevance.; The main result of this dissertation is that students of the Bible of all denominations quickly adopted the new cartographic and documentary techniques that became available in the fifteenth century and after. I argue that Geographia sacra was an antiquarian project, approaching the Bible with the antiquary's tools: precise measurement, systematic collation of textual and material evidence, and attention to visual and tabular presentation. This devout curiosity was also fueled by confessional strife. Like other antiquarian projects, geographia sacra was never detached from present concerns such as Scriptural authority, the legitimacy of Rome, and the authenticity of liturgy. Hence today's scholarly interest in the notion of 'sacred space' had an important, highly controversial, and sophisticated precedent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.