Mapping Cosmopolis: Moral Topographies of the Medieval City

Abstract

Cosmopolis is a concept that has a long history in many cultures around the globe. It is a mirroring of the ‘social’ and ‘natural’ worlds, such that in one is seen the order and the structures of the other—a mutual ‘mapping’. In this paper I examine how the presence of cosmopolis—a Christianised cosmopolis of the European Middle Ages—was made evident in the representation and formation of cities at that time. I reveal a dualism between the social and spatial ordering of both city and cosmos which defined and reinforced social and spatial boundaries in urban landscapes, evident for example in the 11th and 12th centuries. Recently, Toulmin (1992) has taken the idea of cosmopolis to argue that it has been a persistent presence in Western-Enlightenment science, philosophy, and religion—a ‘hidden agenda of modernity’. I contend that, as an idea, cosmopolis has a much earlier circulation in European thinking, not least in the Middle Ages. Locating cosmopolis in the medieval and the modern periods then begs a question of what is it that really makes the two distinct and separate? All too often human geographers have emphasised discontinuities between the ‘medieval’ and ‘modern’ age, locating the ‘rise of modernity’ some time in the Enlightenment period. However, what ‘mapping’ cosmopolis reveals are continuities, binding time and space together, which when looked at begin to help query the modernity concept itself.

Modernidade medieval: cidadania e urbanismo na era global

“…Em diversas disciplinas, o "medieval" continua a ser tratado como o "outro" 116 . É o campo dos medievalistas, e não dos teóricos críticos.…”

Sustopia or Cosmopolis? A Critical Reflection on the Sustainable City

“…In this time, Platonic and Aristotelian thought was flourishing within Christian thinking and it highly influenced writing, thinking and architecture: building the image of the 'Good City' in the shape of cathedral towns [30,34]. Medieval maps (Mappa Mundi) often show a world that is placed over the body of Christ.…”

“…Therefore, let us first plunge into an iconic reflection on the morphology of ancient and medieval cities. These cities have been ingrained with archetypical concepts of what the Good City is, or ought to be [30] and help us understand the way we conceptualise our contemporary cities.…”

“…At the same time, Plato drew a comparison between the Polis and the human body where the human limbs and faculties represented the larger scale arrangements and order of the 'cosmic body'. In Platonic and in later medieval times, the city was seen as a micro-cosmos that reflected the larger structure and order of the divine macro-cosmos: Cosmopolis [30,34]. In Plato's Cosmopolis, the centre of the city represented the highest order of the moral hierarchy (high reason, represented by the governing 'head' located in the citadel), whereas towards the fringes and outside of the city, the lower moral 'faculties' (or limbs) were represented, from sentries to farmers and wild, uncivilised nature outside the city walls.…”

“…In Plato's Cosmopolis, the centre of the city represented the highest order of the moral hierarchy (high reason, represented by the governing 'head' located in the citadel), whereas towards the fringes and outside of the city, the lower moral 'faculties' (or limbs) were represented, from sentries to farmers and wild, uncivilised nature outside the city walls. Achieving the highest 'Good' becoming a Philosopher King, or a little later for Aristotle, realising one's true human potential [14] was possible only through the symbolic and social geographies embedded in the structural and physical geography of the Polis [11,14,30,33,34].…”