The Catalan Atlas of 1375 and Competing Eschatological Views

Among Jews and Christians

Anthony M. Huffman

ARTH 455
Prof. Gertsman
4 May 2017
 Huffman 2

In 1377, King Charles V of France sent a document to the King of Aragon, Pedro IV,

requesting a contemporary representation of the world.1 The Aragonese Crown ruled over parts

of modern-day Spain and the Balearic archipelago, and the main island of Mallorca housed a

school of cartography renowned for producing high quality nautical maps and seafaring

instruments.2 Most scholars agree that the Catalan Atlas of 1375 (MS. Esp. 30, BnF) was

produced by the workshop of a Majorcan Jewish mapmaker named Cresques, son of Abraham

(1325-1387).3 Once the map was completed, it is believed that Pedro IV’s son, Prince Juan,

Duke of Gerona, sent it to Paris; the manuscript was recorded in the French Royal library

inventory in 1380.4 The focus of this essay is concerned with the interpretation of the

northeastern portion of the Atlas, which contains elaborate apocalyptic imagery. Medieval

scholars, such as Andrew Gow, Judy Schaaf, and Sandra Sáenz-López Pérez have considered the

images on this section of the map. Both Gow and Schaaf have tentatively suggested that the

apocalyptic vignettes contained might be read as a sort of Jewish response to an ongoing polemic

about Christians’ misperception of Jews’ role in the Apocalypse because the visual narrative

does not implicate Jews as aggressors or demons.5 However, there has not been a sustained art-

1
Judy Schaaf, “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the Catalan Atlas,” in Jews in Medieval Christendom:
‘Slay Them Not,’” edited by Kristine T. Utterback & Merrall Llewelyn Price, Études sur le Judaisme
Médiéval, Vol. 60 (Boston: Brill, 2013): 245.
2
Ibid.
3
Andrew Colin Gow, “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World Maps: Orientalizing
Ethnography in the Apocalyptic Tradition,” Journal of Early Modern History Vol. 2, no. 1 (1998), 75.
According to Georges Grosjean, this attribution is suggested by the names in letters of 1381. Cresques
was not the surname, but rather the given name of the cartographer; Spanish Jews used patronymics
during this time, see Abraham Cresques & Georges Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the
Year 1375 (Dietikon-Zurich: Urs Graf, 1978), 12.
4
Abraham Cresques & Georges Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375 (Dietikon-
Zurich: Urs Graf, 1978), 9. See also, Ernest-Théodore Hamy, « Cresques Lo Juheu: Note sur un
Géographie Juif Catalan de la Fin du XIVe siècle, » Extrait du Bulletin de Géographie historique et
descriptive, no. 3 (1891), 5. Unless noted otherwise, all translations are mine.
5
Schaaf concedes that her essay is speculative, not definitive and therefore can at least inspire future
scholarship about the map. She contends her essay is more an explication and observation than an
argument. She has argued that Cresques’ depictions of Alexander and Christ are neutral expressions of
 Huffman 3

historical investigation that examines the imagery on the Catalan Atlas in tandem with

comparable medieval mappaemundi and illuminated Apocalypses. Through close visual and

textual analysis that considers the imagery of the map within its larger iconographic tradition, I

will demonstrate that Cresques consciously and strategically gave visual manifestation to a set of

apocalyptic vignettes that subvert and critique Christian attitudes and beliefs about the

Apocalypse.

Structure and Content of the Catalan Atlas of 1375

Before addressing the northeast quadrant of the map, it would helpful to briefly consider

the atlas as a whole, its configuration, and its sources. The original form of the Atlas consisted of

six large wooden panels covered with parchment on one side which were then dyed and

illuminated.6 In the early sixteenth century, Louis XII divided the wooden panels and made the

map into a block-book, making the atlas easier to transport and store, but has resulted in the

severe abrasion of the edges.7 Panel one is comprised of sheets 1a-1b (Figure 1) and features

astrological, astronomical, and cosmographical texts and diagrams. These diagrams include days

of the month, tidal data (divided into eight winds), a model to determine the movable feast days

with the aid of the Golden Number, and a blood-letting figure.8 On the second panel, sheets 2a-

2b, is a large wheel diagram with calendars for the sun, moon, planets, seasons, and Zodiac. This

massive calendar-wheel derives from antiquity, with the inner circles representing the Ptolemaic

understanding of the earth and the four elements in the middle and seven planets circling around

narratives usually used to support anti-Jewish viewpoints, which was an attempt to counter Mandeville’s
vehemently anti-Jewish writings on these stories. See Schaaf, “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the
Catalan Atlas,” 246, 247, & 263.
6
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 10. The panels were about 65
cm high by 50 cm wide.
7
Ibid.
8
Many of the descriptions of the days of the month are formulaic, mentioning whether it is a good day to
plant crops, give birth, conceive, travel, or buy and sell goods.
 Huffman 4

it (along with the sun and moon).9 The configuration for the first part of the map is in keeping

with the medieval conception of the cosmos where the human body was understood to be a

microcosm of the universe because the elements, humors, and organs were directly related to and

controlled by the universe.10

Panels three through six constitute the map of the known world in 1375, emphasizing an

East-West orientation. The Catalan mappamundi is a transitional map, an intermediary

development between the various types of maps manufactured during the Middle Ages and those

produced in the early modern period. Maps of this type often have a well-delineated

Mediterranean and Black Sea area derived directly from portolan charts; however, the accuracy

begins to decrease outside this region and biblical sources begin to dominate the edges of the

map.11 The Catalan Atlas fuses three conceptual frameworks: the traditional, confined

mappamundi, the contemporary portolan chart, and an integration of Ptolemy’s geo-centrism.12

However, the understanding of the world as a sphere is at times mixed with conceptions of the

earth as a circular disk.13 The map simultaneously reflects Catalonian sea-going trade and

knowledge of the fourteenth century and draws upon important models or prototypes, including

northern Italian maps.14 For example, the influence of the wheel-type map, the T-O prototype, is

9
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 22.
10
David Woodward, “Chapter 18: Medieval Mappaemundi,” in The History of Cartography Vol. 1:
Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean edited by J.B. Harley &
David Woodward (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 340.
11
Ibid., 358.
12
Ibid., 295-7 & 314. Schaaf notes that Cresques’ mappamundi reflects both the tradition of visualizing
the world through legend and the modern experience of exploring it as history; the map is made of both
science and story, see “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the Catalan Atlas,” 245.
13
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 21.
14
Gow, “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World Maps,” 75. Prototypes for the
Catalan Atlas include Genoese (Angelo de Dalorto of 1330) and Mallorcan (Angellino Dulcert, 1339)
maps, according to Grosjean in Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 23. The most important
source is the account of the travels of Marco Polo (1254-1323), who travelled with his father, Nicolo Polo,
and his uncle, Matteo Polo, between the years 1271 and 1295, through central Asia to China. Woodward
 Huffman 5

most evident in the northern part of the map.15 The nucleus of the map, though, is based on

portolan nautical charts, which were used by navigators to sail across open waters with a

compass from port to port.16 The distinctive feature of portolani are the rhumb lines radiating out

from points on the map.17 These maps were placed on the chart-tables of ships and rotated

according to the direction of the ship; the bow of the ship was supposed to be aligned with the

rhumb lines on the map.18 The influence of the portolani on the Catalan Atlas is best seen in how

figures and texts are oriented toward different directions, underscoring that this map was not

meant to be surveyed from one fixed position but rather meant to encourage circulation and

inspection from multiple vantage points. Of course, the Catalan mappamundi was never intended

to be used in a functional way; rather, it was meant to be enjoyed in a princely library for

ideological purposes. As Peter Barber notes in “Medieval Maps of the World,” in The Hereford

World Map: Medieval World Maps and their Context, by “the later fourteenth century monarchs

and merchants desirous of commercial privileges were commissioning chart-makers in Majorca

and Barcelona to produce this new, southern-European style of mappamundi, in the form of

single maps or atlases, as diplomatic gifts for the kings of England and France.”19 In this

particular instance, the Catalan Atlas was a gift commissioned by the king for himself, but the

point remains that he would have enjoyed the map as a gift in his private study.

also notes that the Catalan Atlas is the first map that bears the influence of the travels of Polo, see
Woodward, “Chapter 18: Medieval Mappaemundi,” 315.
15
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 21. The atlas also bears
characteristics of older medieval through its use of red coloring for the Red Sea and by placing Jerusalem
at the center of the world.
16
Ibid., 13-15.
17
Ibid., 15.
18
Ibid., 11.
19
Peter Barber, “Medieval Maps of the World,” in The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and
their Context edited by P.D.A. Harvey (London: The British Library, 2006), 32.
 Huffman 6

As for populating the map with figures and descriptions, Cresques and his workshop

drew upon motifs from travel books, the Bible, and collections of antique legends.20 The

mapmakers had access to and utilized the vast library of the Aragonese king, which included the

travel accounts of Marco Polo (1254-1323), Odoric of Pordenone, and William of Boldensele

among others.21 What is more, the textual explanations that fill the margins of the atlas sheets are

taken from authors ranging from Homer to Herodotus from Nearchos to Pliny the Elder from

Isidor of Seville to Ptolemy.22 Arguably, one of the most important sources for the producers of

the Catalan Atlas was The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (c. 1356), a text that activated

Europeans’ imaginations about the unknown Far East and left an indelible impact on Europeans’

conception of their place in the world, spatially and temporally, for centuries to come.23

The Northeast Corner, Traditions of Gog and Magog, and Jewish Subversion of Christian
Apocalyptic Imagery
Whereas the Mediterranean region of the Catalan Atlas has sparse figural representations

and seems to aspire for cartographic accuracy, the far reaches of the map exhaust fourteenth-

century knowledge and therefore rely upon fantastical elements to fill spaces of the unknown

(Figure 2). It is important to understand that this region was not an optional aspect of the map, it

had become an important fixture on world maps in the preceding centuries because it gave visual

form to Christian eschatological beliefs.24 Medieval mappaemundi did not simply represent

20
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 13.
21
Schaaf, “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the Catalan Atlas,” 245. Grosjean also notes that Marco
Polo’s descriptions are supplemented by the accounts of Ibn Battuta, who was born in Tangier in 1304
and died in Fes in 1377, see Grosjean in Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 23.
22
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 21-24.
23
Schaaf, “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the Catalan Atlas,” 245-6.
24
Gow, “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World Maps,” 75. There is a preparatory
sketch (Figure 3) housed by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France that seems to have been sent by
Cresques to Charles V for approval in advance of the final production of the Catalan Atlas. This sketch
has not been discussed in the literature and deserves further attention because to my mind it indicates
that Cresques had to navigate the thorny problem of trying to satisfy a Christian king while also subverting
 Huffman 7

physical geography, but rather they also charted the history of salvation (Heilsgeschichte); there

was a moral topography built into the represented landscape where the end of space met the end

of time.25 On the Catalan Atlas, disparate temporal events and figures from Biblical history, the

legendary antique past, and the modern day occupy the same spatial plane. Moving from East to

West across the map, one progresses toward the historical present.26 The future or the

Apocalypse is pictured from the perspective of the mapmaker, where the calamitous events that

will be unleashed at the end of time are contained in the far corners of the Northeast.

Cresques manipulates and subverts the key figures that form this apocalyptic imagery in

order to undermine Christian conceptions of the End of Times. The key figural representations

that comprise this apocalyptic imagery include Holubeim the Chief Khan (pictured crowned and

seated with a scepter in green); Alexander the Great; Satan (who has a face on his abdomen like

Blemmyes); two statues with horned instruments; the Prince of Gog and his followers who hold

a baldachin over him and carry flags; and an assembly of medieval laity and clergy surrounding a

Christ-like figure, who distributes gold from boughs or from palms of immortality. 27 These

vignettes are oriented in different directions (Figure 4), requiring a viewer to move around the

map to see them fully. Except for Alexander, the Great Khan, and the two statues, the historical

and biblical characters are contained in two clearly delineated cells or areas by a chain of

Christian apocalyptic iconography to offer a Jewish critique of Christian eschatological beliefs; thus, this
explains why the imagery can be ambiguous at times.
25
Ibid., 62. Bertrand Russell has used the phrase chronogeography to describe this conflation of time and
space.
26
Schaaf, “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the Catalan Atlas,” 248.
27
Gow, “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World Maps,” 75. The accompanying text
on the map for the king on horseback says, “The great lord and ruler over Gog and Magog. He will march
out with many followers at the time of the Antichrist,” from Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the
Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 90. Grosjean identifies this figure as the antichrist, but both Gow and
Schaaf identify the figure as Christ. Perez identifies this Christ-like figure as the Antichrist as a false
prophet performing miracles. The figure identified as Holubeim is Kublai Khan, the grandson of Gingis
Khan.
 Huffman 8

mountains (the Caspian Mountains). Inside the mountainous sections are bent trees and

identifying inscriptions as well; the trees are bent because according to the Alexander legend

when he came to this region he encountered trees so tall they appeared to touch the clouds.28 An

icon for a pagan city (distinguished from Christian cities which have crosses) is situated between

Alexander and the Devil, effectively serving as a sort of gateway into this enclosed area.29 This is

different from other depictions of the Gates of Alexander, such as the Psalter Map (BL Add. MS.

28681, fol. 9r), which shows only a wall with the closed gates (Figure 5) rather than a city

serving as a point of entry. One of the text panels nearby explains that Alexander enclosed the

Tatars Gog and Magog in this region, with the aid of Satan, along with other nations who dared

to eat raw flesh.30 As wind passes through the horned instruments of the statues near the pagan

city, a shuttering sound is created that helps keep back the enclosed peoples. However, as Gow

has noted, Cresques expresses doubt whether Alexander made it this far east.31 In light of the

ways Cresques altered the iconography related to Alexander, namely Gog and Magog, I interpret

his skepticism as a way of undermining Christian beliefs about how Alexander imprisoned the

peoples of Gog and Magog. Cresques was able to do this under the guise of cartographic

accuracy, one the purported characteristics of maps produced by his workshop. Collectively,

these figures are some of the most highly detailed and elaborate images on the atlas, which

speaks to their importance for the intended audience.

28
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 86.
29
Schaaf, “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the Catalan Atlas,” 260.
30
The placement of the monstrous races, which includes the peoples of Gog and Magog, varied
according to the three main types of mappaemundi (T-O, zonal/climatic, and transitional), see Woodward,
“Chapter 18: Medieval Mappaemundi,” 322. The Cottonian or Anglo-Saxon Map (BL, Cott. Tib. B.V. fol.
58v.) of circa 1025-1050 was the first to show Gog and Magog in the Northeastern corner of the world,
see Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, “Jerusalem on medieval mappaemundi,” in The Hereford World
Map: Medieval World Maps and their Context, esp. 361-2.
31
Gow, “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World Maps,” 75.
 Huffman 9

Before proceeding to analyze the ways in which Cresques and the Mallorcan School of

Cartography modified the traditional iconography of Christian apocalyptic imagery found on

previous medieval mappaemundi, I believe it would be fruitful to briefly address the evolving

textual tradition of the story of Gog and Magog. The story of these apocalyptic people is

ultimately based on the New Testament’s distortion of Ezekiel 38-39 in which the phrase Gog

from the land of Magog is changed to Gog and Magog in Revelation 20.7-8.32 These invented

peoples subsequently came to be fused with the Alexander cycles. According to the Alexander

legend, the great conqueror encountered wild peoples (feras gentes), unclean peoples (immundas

gentes), or cannibals on his journeys through Asia. In order to prevent them from destroying the

world, he trapped them between two mountains by praying to God to seal the pass.33 This story

spread and continued to evolve not only in Christian eschatological texts, but also in Hebrew and

Islamic traditions.34 In the Hebrew tradition, Gog is understood as the leader of a nation (Magog)

that is hostile to Jews, and Muslims sometimes associated Gog and Magog with ancient tribes

that would be released at the end of time to consume non-believers.35 For the Jews of the

Diaspora, they believed that the exiled ten northern tribes of Israel mentioned in II Kings would

return at the end of time to save them from bondage (I Ezra 39-50); this belief or hope intensified

during countless waves of persecution and expulsion.36 By the twelfth century, Christians had

come to believe several facts about Gog and Magog: that they were the same as the Ten Lost

32
For a comprehensive, though dated, source on the tradition of Gog and Magog, see Andrew R.
Anderson, Alexander’s Gate, Gog and Magog, and the Inclosed Nations, 1932.
33
Gow, “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World Maps,” 63.
34
Ibid., 62.
35
Schaaf, “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the Catalan Atlas,” 257. As Schaaf explains, in Josephus’s
The Jewish War VII, 7, 4 (first century C.E.), he specifically identifies Magog with the Scythians.
36
Andrew C. Gow, “Chapter 2: Apocalypticism and Messianism: Christian and Jewish Perspectives on
the End in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” in The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age,
1200-1600, studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, edited by Heiko O. Oberman vol. LV (Leiden:
Brill, 1995), 23 & 33-4.
 Huffman 10

Tribes of Israel (those mentioned in II Kings 17, 6); that they had been enclosed behind an

impenetrable wall by Alexander the Great; and that they would break out at the time of the

Antichrist and devastate the world.37 The identification of the apocalyptic destroyers Gog and

Magog with the Ten Tribes of Israel first appeared in scholastic circles, with Petrus Comestor’s

(c. 1110-1179) Historia Scholastica serving as the primary catalyst.38 These conflations and

misunderstandings were propelled by Christians during particularly intense anti-Semitic periods

in medieval European history. The enclosed nations of Gog and Magog therefore figured

prominently in Christian and Jewish conceptions of the end of the world, which were in turn

represented on medieval mappaemundi.

The apocalyptic imagery in the northeastern corner of the Catalan Atlas markedly departs

from ways of visualizing comparable scenes on maps produced before 1375 and after. On the

Ebstorf Map of circa 1214 (Kloster Ebstorf (fac.)), which was produced within a monastic

context in lower Saxony, nude cannibals devouring bloody limbs are blocked in a square

surrounded on all sides by mountains and walls (Figure 6). While these figures are not explicitly

identified as Jews, by this date there was already a clear conflation between the enclosed peoples

of Gog and Magog with the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.39 These three figures, as representatives of

37
Gow, “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World Maps,” 68. Gow also discusses The
th th
Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius, which was one of the most popular apocalyptic texts from the 8 -16
centuries. In this text, it is prophesized that the Antichrist will deceive and bring together the scattered
Jews to Jerusalem, where they will aid him as their Messiah. This text also ascribed cannibalism; roasting
or boiling pregnant women and eating their fetuses; and dipping swords in fetal blood to the enclosed
Jews. Overall, according to Gow, this vilification can be understood as a hostile interpretation of the
apocryphal fourth book of Ezra. See Gow, “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World
Maps,” 63; Schaaf, “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the Catalan Atlas,” 258; and Gow, “Chapter 3:
Antisemitism and Apocalypticism in the Middle Ages,” in The Red Jews, 3 & 45.
38
Gow, “Chapter 3: Antisemitism and Apocalypticism in the Middle Ages,” in The Red Jews, 38.
39
Gow elaborates in Chapter 3 of The Red Jews that so long as Gog and Magog were portrayed as
cannibals in Latin sources (i.e. The Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius and the Comestorine tradition) and
th
the Alexander cycles (which lasted through the 16 century) and so long as the Lost Tribes were
identified with the destroyers Gog and Magog, Christians had ample reason to believe the Jewish Ten
 Huffman 11

the barbaric or monstrous races of Gog and Magog that Alexander locked away, are not given

the same prominence they occupy on the Catalan Atlas. Further, the peoples of Gog and Magog

on the Catalan Atlas are shown in a military procession with their leader, emphasizing their role

as an army that will attempt to destroy Christendom. In the Psalter Map (BL Add. MS. 28681,

fol. 9r) produced around 1265, Gog and Magog are not physically represented (Figure 5).

Rather, their presence is implied by the wall and closed gates that Alexander supposedly built

around this region.40 In a similar T-O map (The Hereford Map) produced at the end of the

thirteenth century (c. 1276-1305), one finds only a textual description of Gog and Magog

(Figure 7). The caption describes the bitter cold in this region, unimaginable horrors, how the

inhabitants feast on human flesh and blood, and that they ultimately descend from Cain.41 This

text is set within a peninsula near the edge of the map with a mountainous range on three sides

and a crenellated wall on the fourth. Similarly, on the map from Ranulf Higden’s (ca. 1299-

1363) Polychronicon of circa 1350, the peoples of Gog and Magog are not pictured, only

described (Figure 8). The Polychronicon, edited by a Benedictine monk, was one of the most

popular Latin histories of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.42 On the far northeastern reaches

of the map within this manuscript, the Caucus mountains are roughly delineated by daubs of blue

ink or pigment and hem in the description relating to the destroyers of the end of time.43

In two mappaemundi produced after 1375, text and image are mixed to describe Gog and

Magog. The Walsperger mappamundi (Konstanz, parchment, 73.5 × 59.5cm) of circa 1448

Tribes/Gog and Magog practiced cannibalism both out of savagery and for religious purposes. See Gow,
“Chapter 3,” in The Red Jews, esp. 52.
40
Barber, “Medieval Maps of the World,” 18.
41
Gow, “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World Maps,” 73. Translation of map text
by Gow.
42
Woodward, “Chapter 18: Medieval Mappaemundi,” 312.
43
Ranulph Higden's Polychronicon, c. 1350, The Ramsey Abbey Higden Map, BL, Royal MS. 14. C.ix,
fols 1v-2r, parchment, 46 x 34 cm.
 Huffman 12

locates the cannibalistic Gog and Magog just north of a land-locked Caspian Sea and identifies

the inhabitants as Mongols and Jews (Figure 9). The figure meant to represent these peoples is

standing on a peninsula consuming body parts. On the Zeitz Map (MS. Hist. fol 497, Zeitz

Stiftsbibliothek), created roughly twenty years later (1470), a train of Jews are depicted with

pointed hats behind a mountain barrier (Figure 10) with an accompanying text in red that reads:

“Gog and Magog//the Jews of the 10 [tribes] [of Caspia?]//are enclosed here.” What emerges

from this brief survey of medieval world atlases of nearly three hundred years is that Cresques

and his workshop gave unprecedented attention to the elements of the Christian apocalyptic

narrative. I maintain that these detailed visual manifestations or elaborations enabled Jews to

subvert and critique Christian beliefs about the End of Days.

Through the images themselves and the selection of texts to accompany those images,

Cresques rendered ambiguous vignettes that concealed his visual invective. The articulation of

the Caspian mountains into two discrete cells or zones is significant because this demonstrates

that Cresques relied upon Marco Polo’s travel accounts. Polo is reported to have asked about the

peoples of Gog and Magog on his journeys and received the explanation that the Mongols called

the place Ung and Mungul (two separate provinces): Ung houses the people of Gog and the

Tatars in Mungul.44 Further, one of the text panels that is inserted with this region says “he

[Alexander] shut up the Tatars Gog and Magog…”45 The peoples of Gog and Magog are

explicitly identified as Tatars (or Mongols), which can perhaps be seen as a strategy to capitalize

on Europeans’ fears of the Mongols who had ravaged Europe in the preceding century. The

facial features and attire of the peoples of Gog and Magog resemble figural groupings pictured

44
Gow, “Gog and Magog on Mappaemundi and Early Printed World Maps,” 74.
45
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 86.
 Huffman 13

nearby, outside the mountain prison, which effectively links these apocalyptic destroyers not to

Jews but to Asian tribes. Moreover, cannibalism is not pictured in the image itself, only

referenced in the accompanying text. By identifying the nations of Gog and Magog with the

Tatars this conjures up legends about Tatar horsemen who supposedly ate raw meat by putting it

under their saddles and riding their horses until the meat was tender.46 Therefore, I argue, that

both textually and visually the long-standing tradition of identifying the cannibalistic peoples of

Gog and Magog as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel is subverted and the identification is placed on

Tatars instead.

As with the identification of the peoples of Gog and Magog as Tatars, I understand

Cresques’ deployment of the Antichrist as another form of criticism. The insertion of a figural

representation of the Antichrist on a world map by Cresques is to my knowledge unprecedented

and therefore demands close scrutiny and analysis. Traditionally, the narratives about the life,

deeds, and role of the Antichrist were most fully elaborated in illuminated Apocalypses of the

Middle Ages, and Cresques must have used texts like these as a template for the construction of

his image, though I have been unable to find a definitive model.47 On the Catalan Atlas, in the

mountainous cell beside the armies of Gog and Magog (Figure 11) is a palm-bearing figure with

long hair and beard shaking what appear to be boughs, which in turn release gold coins. The

figure is surrounded by medieval kings, noble women, bishops, nuns, monks, and lower

members of society, all of whom reach out to grab the gold. There has been much debate about

the identity of this figure, but ultimately I concur with Grosjean and Pérez that this figure is the

Antichrist for a number of reasons. First, the clothing of this messianic figure is similar to the

46
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, Panel 6-Sheet 6a, page 86.
47
Should this investigation be continued, it would be helpful to have a definitive inventory of Pedro IV’s
library around 1375, which would provide some of the potential manuscripts Cresques might have turned
to for inspiration for his atlas.
 Huffman 14

robes of secular kings on the rest of the map, most notably those standing on his right. Most

importantly, though, Cresques’ Antichrist seems to be performing a well-known miracle that was

featured in popular literature and illuminated Apocalypses. The Antichrist was often pictured as

converting the unwary by performing a series of unnatural wonders, the most famous being the

strange flowering of trees (either making a dry tree bloom or the roots of an upturned tree bear

fruit).48 For instance, on fol. 241v. of the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad of Hohenbourg (Figure

12), the Antichrist is making a tree blossom, deceiving those to his left, among which include

Jews. In an Anglo-Norman Apocalypse from the mid-thirteenth century (The Morgan

Apocalypse, MS M.524), the Antichrist is portrayed as performing a comparable miracle in front

of a company of bishops and knights (Figure 13). This type of imagery continued into the

fifteenth century as can be seen on fol. 10v of the Wellcome Apocalypse (Wellcome Library,

London, MS 49).

As the textual and visual tradition of the Antichrist evolved, the relationship between

Jews and the Antichrist became increasingly fused. Indeed, as Gow has explained in “Chapter 5:

The Medieval Antichrist and His Jewish Henchmen” in The Red Jews, beginning in the early

Middle Ages, “Christian belief assimilated the Jewish Messiah to the Christian Antichrist.

Christians came to see in the Antichrist they expected at the End of Time the figure the Jews

believed would be their Messiah.”49 This false assumption on behalf of Christians led to

depicting Jews as assisting the Antichrist in his attack on Christianity during the period leading

up to the Last Judgment. For example, in an Apocalypse from the third-quarter of the thirteenth

century (The Abingdon Apocalypse, MS Add. 42555, fol. 72r), Jews are shown attacking a

48
Richard K. Emmerson, “Chapter 4: Antichrist in Medieval Art,” in Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study
of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 134.
Emmerson notes that this specific miracle is described in Adso’s Libellus de Antichristo.
49
Gow, “Chapter 5: The Medieval Antichrist and His Jewish Henchmen,” in The Red Jews, 94.
 Huffman 15

Church filled with Christian clergy while the Antichrist monitors the scene (Figure 14). In the

Wellcome Apocalypse, on fol. 11r., Jews are not shown carrying out the work of the Antichrist,

but rather mistaking him for their Messiah and converting under his deceitful teachings (Figure

15).

The peculiar rendering of the Antichrist on the Catalan Atlas is therefore quite striking, as

it does not conform to these visual traditions of either showing Jews converting or carrying out

his deeds. Instead, Cresques has consciously chosen to include Christians, laity and clergy, who

fall prey to the false teachings of the Antichrist.50 The Catalan mapmaker’s decision can be seen

as a visual strategy to combat entrenched beliefs about the role of Jews with regard to the

exploits of the Antichrist. He has modified some of the iconography of the Antichrist as false

prophet by mixing in gold coins with the blossoming flora miracle, adding an additional layer of

criticism against Christians about avarice. Cresques uses the indeterminacy and ambiguity of this

figure to his advantage in order to inveigh against Christian attitudes concerning Jews and the

Antichrist. There is not an explicit text panel inside this mountain region like there is for Gog

and Magog. Instead, the accompanying texts for this region are located in the ocean nearby: one

describes how the Antichrist will be brought up near Galilee and the other is a chapter from

Isaiah dealing with conversion before the End of Days.51 A Christian audience would have been

inclined to understand this image as Christ triumphant distributing the palms of immortality to

50
In the commentary of the 1978 facsimile for the Catalan Atlas, Grosjean also noticed the peculiarity of
this image and its implied message: both secular and religious leaders have been led astray, see
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 90.
51
Cresques & Grosjean, Mappamundi, the Catalan Atlas of the Year 1375, 90: “The Prophet Isaiah [says
th
in] the 67 [chapter]: ‘I shall send those who are saved to the peoples of the sea, to Africa and Lydia,’ and
further: ‘I will send to the isle afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they
shall declare my glory among the Gentiles [Isaiah 66, 19].”
 Huffman 16

the faithful after the Antichrist had been vanquished, which is how Gow and Schaaf interpret this

figure.

If one is willing to grant that these unusual depictions of the Christian apocalyptic cycle

can be seen as a subtle critique by a Jewish community of mapmakers working under the Crown

of Aragon in Palma, then the question becomes what ultimately compelled these cartographers to

offer this veiled visual polemic. In Schaaf’s analysis of this imagery on the Catalan Atlas she

gives much weight to the 1356 publication of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, arguing that

this text intensified the Christian-Jewish debate about the Apocalypse because the author offers a

decidedly anti-Jewish view that explicitly identifies Gog and Magog with the lost Jewish tribes.52

Moreover, the author of the Mandeville text excites apocalyptic fears by describing how some

Jews occasionally escape from the enclosed mountains and that they only maintain knowledge of

Hebrew in order to communicate with the lost tribes at the end of time.53 The Mandeville-author

explains that:

The Jews of the Ten Lost Tribes are shut up in those hills; they are called Gog and
Magog, and they can get out on no side…Folk in the country nearby say that in the time
of Antichrist those Jews will sally out and do much harm to Christian men. And so all the
Jews in the different parts of the world learn to speak Hebrew, for they believe that the
Jews who are enclosed among those hills will know that they are Jews (as they are) by
their speech when they arrive. And then they will lead them in to Christendom to destroy
Christian men.54

52
Schaaf, “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the Catalan Atlas,” 250. Schaaf draws upon Iain Macleod
Higgins’ argument that the Mandeville-author ignored the tradition linking Gog and Magog with the Tatars,
see Higgins, Writing East: The “Travels” of Sir John Mandeville, 6.
53
Schaaf, “The Christian-Jewish Debate and the Catalan Atlas,” 251 & 263. This is in contrast to the
exegetical writings of the early fourth-century Christian apologist Commodianus, who wrote that the Ten
Lost Tribes of Israel would in fact be united under Christ in the end of time, defeat the Antichrist, and
rescue Jerusalem.
54
Josef Krása and John Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville: A Manuscript in the British
Library, 165-166.
 Huffman 17

I believe Schaaf is correct in suggesting that the Catalan Atlas can be understood as partially

responding to the vituperative rhetoric generated by Mandeville’s text. However, I also contend

that there were specific events in the life of Cresques and his family that may have led to the

decision to include subversive imagery in a world atlas that was intended for a Christian king.55

Cresques lived through a time that was characterized by rising anti-Jewish sentiment in

the Kingdom of Aragon, and as Kristine Utterback has demonstrated, Jews engaged in specific

resistance tactics to counter Christian proselytization techniques and they defended their own

beliefs and way of life. In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Black Death of 1348 led to

the widespread dissemination that Jews were responsible for the plague because they had

poisoned the wells, springs and streams.56 This insidious rumor gained currency because it fit the

larger understanding of the time that Jews were co-conspirators with the Ten Lost Tribes and

were determined to destroy Christendom. It was a widely-accepted belief that Jews were the

henchmen of the Antichrist. Therefore, in Aragon and other countries, Christians attempted to

convert Jews by entering their synagogues and preaching, among other strategies. There were

also public debates held between Christian apologists and Jewish rabbis, but the rabbis were

normally restricted in what they could say in these fora. As one way of combatting these

aggressive conversionary methods, as Utterback explains, Jews put out popular “polemical

55
While it is outside the scope of this essay, the reception of this map deserves particular attention from
art historians in the future. Brigitte Buettner has analyzed the gift-giving culture of the Valois Courts
around 1400 and demonstrates how objects were exchanged to mediate social relations. While this map
was ultimately a gift that the king commissioned for himself, it is worth exploring how it would have been
received at the court as part of these spectacles. Further, Daniel Connolly has written about the king’s
gaze and his knowledge of the world, and it would be fruitful to apply his scholarship on English kings and
mappaemundi to the specific contexts of Charles V and his son Charles VI. See Brigitte Buettner, “Past
Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400,” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 83, no. 4 (December
2001): 598-625; and Daniel K. Connolly, The Maps of Matthew Paris: Medieval Journeys through Space,
Time and Liturgy, esp. “Chapter 6: Monarchical Journeys: The King’s Gaze, the ‘Royal’ Itinerary, and
Matthew’s Maps of Britain.”

56
Gow, “Chapter 4: The Red Jews in their Native Habitat,” in The Red Jews, 81-2.
 Huffman 18

writings [that] argued that Christianity was not only inferior to Judaism but actually a false

religion. Jewish polemicists explained that Christians operated under many false assumptions.”57

These debates and conversionary, counter-conversionary tactics continued until the pogroms of

1391, after which Jewish society in Aragon largely collapsed and a number of Jews converted to

Christianity under duress.58 One of these Jews who was forced to convert was Cresques’ son,

Jehuda, who took the Christian name Jacobus Ribes.59 In light of these events, I believe we can

understand Cresques’ workshop engaging in an extended, creative form of these counter-

conversionary strategies that other Jews were employing during the fourteenth century in

Aragon. Of course, by subverting Christian apocalyptic imagery on the Catalan Atlas Cresques

was not attempting to persuade his audience about the validity or superiority of Jewish beliefs.

Rather, like other Jewish polemicists, he was offering a critique of Christianity and its many

false assumptions, principally those about the legend of Alexander and his encounter with Gog

and Magog; identifying Gog and Magog as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel; and the assumption that

Jews were collaborators or henchmen of the Antichrist.

In short, I have attempted to demonstrate that the apocalyptic imagery contained in the

northeastern corner of the Catalan Atlas of 1375 can be interpreted as a subversion of traditional

Christian iconography by a group of Jewish mapmakers working under the crown of Aragon in

the last quarter of the fourteenth century. Cresques and his workshop gave unprecedented

attention to these apocalyptic figures in order to carefully critique Christian misconceptions

about the End of Time that had been mounting for several centuries. By expressing doubt about

57
Kristine T. Utterback, “Jewish Resistance to Conversion in the Late-Medieval Crown of Aragon,” in
Jews in Medieval Christendom: ‘Slay Them Not,’” 165.
58
Ibid., 164.
59
Hamy, « Cresques Lo Juheu: Note sur un Géographie Juif Catalan de la Fin du XIVe siècle, » 6.

 Huffman 19

the Alexander cycle; explicitly labeling the peoples of Gog and Magog as Tatars; placing the

capital city of the Chief Khan as part of Alexander’s mountain prison/wall; and showing

Christian clergy and laity falling under the false teachings and miracles of the Antichrist, I

believe the cartographer was attempting to visually combat Christians’ conflations of Jews both

with the peoples of Gog and Magog and as collaborators with the Antichrist. Both of the

apocalyptic vignettes clearly depart from established iconographic traditions on previous

medieval mappaemundi and Apocalypses. I maintain that this difference can be accounted for by

the identity of the mapmaker and his experiences living under the Christian kingdom of Aragon.
 Huffman 20

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