Summary This book offers a way of reading maps of the Holy Land as visual imagery with religious connotations. Through a corpus of representative examples created between the sixth and the nineteenth centuries, it studies the maps as iconic imagery of an iconic landscape and analyses their strategies to manifest the spiritual quality of the biblical topography, to support religious tenets, and to construct and preserve cultural memory. Maps of the Holy Land have thus far been studied with methodologies such as cartography and historical geography, while the main question addressed was the reliability of the maps as cartographic documents. Through another perspective and using the methodology of visual studies, this book reveals that maps of the Holy Land constructed religious messages and were significant instruments through which different Christian cultures (Byzantine, Catholic, Protestant, and Greek Orthodox) shaped their religious identities. It does not seek to ascertain how the maps delivered geographical information, but rather how they utilized the geographical information in formulating religious and cultural values. Through its examination of maps of the Holy Land, this book thus explores both Christian visual culture and Christian spirituality throughout the centuries. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations Abbreviations Timeline Introduction Part I. Iconic Landscape, Iconic Map Chapter 1. Formation of a Holy Land Chapter 2. Madaba Map: A Visual Portrait of the Holy Land from the Byzantine Period Composition and Content Religious Message Generator of Cultural Memory Map and Pilgrimage The Holy Land Map and Early Christian Art Part II. The Map of the Holy Land in the Latin West Chapter 3. Innovative Western Spiritual Iconographies Twelfth-Century Maps Matthew Paris's Map in his Chronica majora (mid thirteenth century) Grid Maps from the Fourteenth Century Chapter 4. Fifteenth-Century Pilgrims' Maps: Late Medieval Instruments of Devotion Gabriel Capodilista's Map William Wey's Map Bernhard von Breydenbach's Map A Map by an Anonymous Author Part III. Between Pilgrimage and Scripture, Catholicism and Protestantism Chapter 5. Friedrich III's Cartographical Pilgrimage Imagery Lucas Cranach the Elder's Map: A Transitional Image Gotha Panel Chapter 6. Map and Scripture Gerard Mercator's Map of the Holy Land John Speed's Map, Associated with the King James Bible Maps of the Holy Land in the Dutch States-General Bible Justus and Cornelis Danckerts' Map of the Holy Land: A Pictorial Epitome Part IV. Map as Icon: Greek Orthodox proskynetaria from the Ottoman period Chapter 7. Icon of a Land Conclusion Appendices I. Inscriptions on the Madaba Map II. Sites Mentioned in the Pilgrimage Guide of Gesta Francorum Ihrusalem expugnantium (dated to 1101-1104) in Order of Appearance) III. Inscriptions on Three Twelfth-Century Maps of the Holy Land IV. Inscriptions on London, British Library, Add. MS 27376, fols. 188v-189r V. A List of Places in William Wey's Pilgrimage Account (Oxford, Bodleian Library,MS Bodley 565), said to be synchronized with his map of the Holy Land VI. Sites in and around Jerusalem in Bernhard von Breydenbach's Map of the Holy Land Bibliography Index