BEATUS

This article appears in Volume V03, Page 584 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BAR-BEC

BEATUS , of Liebana and Valcavado, Spanish priest and monk,
theologian and geographer, was born about 730, and died in 798. About 776 he published his Commentaria in Apocalypsin, containing one of the oldest Christian world-maps. He took a prominent part in the Adoptionist controversy, and wrote against the views of

Felix

of Urgel, especially as upheld by Elipandus of Toledo. As confessor to Queen Adosinda, wife of
King Silo of Oviedo (774-783), and as the master of Alcuin and Etherius of Osma, Beatus exercised wide influence. His

original

ORIGINAL

map, which was probably intended to illustrate, above all, the distribution of the Apostolic missions throughout the worlddepicting the head of Peter at Rome, of Andrew in Achaia, of

Thomas

in India, of James in Spain, and so forthhas survived in ten more or less modified copies. One only of thesethe " Osma " of 1203 preserves the Apostolic pictures; among the remaining examples, that of " St Sever," now at Paris, and dating from about 1030, is the most valuable; that of " Valcavado," recently in the Ashburnham Library, executed in 970, is the earliest; that of "

Turin

TURIN

," dating from about 1roo, is perhaps the most curious. Three others" Valladolid " of about 1035, " Madrid " of 1047, and " London " of 1109are derivatives of the " Valcavado-Ashburnham" of 970; the eighth, " Paris II," is connected, though not very intimately, with " St Sever," otherwise " Paris I "; the ninth and tenth, " Gerona " and " Paris III," belong to the

Turin

TURIN

group of Beatus maps. All these works ai.e emphatically of " dark-age " character; very seldom do they suggest the true forms of countries, seas, rivers or mountains, but they embody some useful information as to early medieval conditions and history. St Isidore appears to be their

principal

PRINCIPAL

authority; they also draw, directly or indirectly, from Orosius, St Jerome, St

Augustine

AUGUSTINE, SAINT (354-430)
AUGUSTINE, SAINT (d. c.613)

, and probably from a lost map of classical antiquity, represented in a measure by the Peutinger Table of the 13th century.
The

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

MSS. of the Commentaria in Apocalypsin are (13) Paris, National Library, Lat. 8878; Lat. nouv. acq. 1366 and 2290; (4) Ashburnham MSS. xv.; (5) London, B. Mus., Addit. MSS. 11695; (6) Turin, National Library 1, ii. (1); (7) Valladolid, University Library, 229; (8) the MS. in the Episcopal Library at Osma, in Old Castile.
There is only one complete edition of the text, that by

Florez

FLOREZ, ENRIQUE (1701-1773)

(Madrid, 1770). See also Konrad Miller, Die Weltkarte des Beatus, Heft I. of Mappaemundi: die dltesten Weltkarten (

Stuttgart

STUTTGART

, 1895); d'Avezac in Annales de . . . geographie (June 1870) ; Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, i. 387-388 (1897); ii. 549-559; 591-605 (1901). (C. R. B.)

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