Liber Floridus

Wikipedia:

Liber Floridus (“Book of Flowers”) is a medieval encyclopedia that was compiled between 1090 and 1120 by Lambert, Canon of Saint-Omer. The text compiles extracts from some 192 or so different works.

Lambert’s medieval encyclopedia contains a universal history, a chronological record of events to the year 1119. These are of Biblical, astronomical, geographical, philosophical and natural history subjects. Lambert wrote Liber Floridus originally in Latin, and later it was translated into French as Le Livre fleurissant en fleurs. A detailed description is in the Historia comitum Normannorum, comitum Flandriae.

The Liber Floridus was the first of the encyclopedias of the High Middle Ages that slowly superseded the work of Isidore of Seville. The original manuscript, completed in 1120 and dedicated to Saint Omer by Lambert, has been preserved in the Ghent University Library, though its latter portion has not survived. A copy is in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. There is also a copy in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Germany. There may be as many as six additional extant manuscript copies, dating from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries and produced in France or Flanders. Liber Floridus has the reputation of being one of the most famous encyclopedias of the Middle Ages.

Ghent University - Boekentoren:

This manuscript has been in Ghent since the 13th century. The author of this medieval century encyclopaedia is Lambert of Saint-Omer, a canon at the Church of Our Lady in Saint-Omer. The last additions to Lambert’s manuscript date from 1121. Saint-Omer was one of the leading economic and cultural centres of the Earldom of Flanders in the 12th century. A crucial fact since Lambert’s Liber Floridus, as an encyclopaedia, is above all a compilation of extracts from other books he had access to in Saint-Omer. Thus Lambert extensively uses and copies the much older and then leading encyclopaedias of Isidorus of Seville, Beda Venerabilis and Rabanus Maurus, but equally nearly a hundred other sources. In turn, Lambert’s work was copied several times, as evidenced by the many preserved later copies.

. . .The Liber Floridus is a medieval encyclopaedia where content was seemingly not organised in any way, but the chapters sometimes follow each other in random order, with the intention of counteracting loss of ‘knowledge’. The encyclopaedia has an organic structure, with knowledge embedded in the worldview. Lambert noted 161 chapters in his table of contents. They are often mere lists of names of popes, peoples, kings, inventors, provinces, founders of cities, genealogies and the glorious deeds of the Counts of Flanders and many other princes. eschatology (the doctrine of last things) is never far away and at the end of time a new and heavenly Jerusalem beckons.

This beautifully self-written manuscript is unique in any case, but it is also perhaps the oldest richly illustrated encyclopaedia. Not only does Lambert place himself in a long tradition by depicting himself writing at the beginning of the manuscript, but some of the images are commonly considered masterpieces of Romanesque art. A very typical example is the trees of virtues and vices. This beautiful artwork covers two pages with the roots of the trees touching in the fold of the book. Morality and natural history are captured in one image. The different branches of the tree of virtues bear different leaves representing a specific virtue, and female figures in the respective medallions. The colourful tree is directly identified with the Church of the Faithful. Diametrically opposed to this flowering tree is the barren tree of vices. No female representations in the medallions, just a textual representation of the various sins. Just as the virtues are identified with the Church, so Lambert’s anti-Semitism is expressed in the identification of the barren fig tree with the Synagogue.

HistoryofInformation.com:

Between 1090 and 1125 Lambert, Canon of Saint-Omer, France, compiled the Liber Floridus, a kind of illustrated encyclopedia of Biblical, chronological, astronomical, geographical, cartographic, theological, philosophical and natural history compiled from 192 different works. Lambert’s Liber floridus was the first of the encyclopedias of the High Middle Ages that slowly superseded the work of Isidore of Seville. The original autograph manuscript, completed in 1120 and dedicated to Saint Omer (St. Audomar) by Canon Lambert, is preserved in Ghent University Library, though its latter portion did not survive. In February 2014 Ghent University Library provided an unusually detailed, well documented, website for the manuscript, and a digital facsimile at this link.

Liber floridus includes various maps including a mappa mundi. The Ghent manuscript, the oldest of the known copies, includes a map of parts of Europe and two climate-zone drawings based on the Macrobian model as an attempt to make a complete world map. The parts of the European map sketch show interesting and odd representations.