Mapping Imagined Territory : Quaresmio’s Chorographia and Later Franciscan Holy Land Maps

This contribution examines pre-modern cartography as a territorial
technique for representing imagined territory, linking social groups to geo-
graphical space. It suggests that pre-modern maps could project territory
by means other than visualising boundaries, and that accompanying texts
could play a significant role, as in the case of Friar Francesco Quaresmio’s
map of the Holy Land in Terrae Sanctae Elucidatio (1639). By analysing the
immediate context of Quaresmio’s map – a lavish book publication – I
show how Quaresmio’s Chorographia represents Franciscan territorial
claims through an interaction between the map’s visual content and
its immediate textual context within the book. Like other Franciscan
maps also discussed here, it employs the imagined territories of the Bible
as a versatile cartographical topos for various purposes, territorial or
otherwise.