Antique World Map — Beatus Map Paris II, Miller Facsimile 1895, Plate 2

An antique world map from Miller’s Mappaemundi, 1895

This plate reproduces one of the Beatus maps, the world maps drawn in manuscripts of the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana; this copy is known as Paris II. Konrad Miller printed it as Tafel 2 in the atlas part of Mappaemundi: Die ältesten Weltkarten (“the oldest world maps”), published in Stuttgart by J. Roth in six parts between 1895 and 1898. He devoted the first part of the series to this family of maps: Die Weltkarte des Beatus (776 n. Chr.).

The History of Cartography (1987) describes the large Beatus maps, “of which fourteen survive”, as going back to a lost prototype of 776–86. Their context, it explains, is evangelistic: “the apostles were to go into every corner of the earth”. In its general family tree of the large Beatus maps, Paris II stands among the later copies. Miller’s own caption on the plate reads “Beatuskarte 2 (Paris II). 13. Jahrh. (Bibl. nat. ms. lat. 1366.)”.

Konrad Miller (1844–1933) was a Catholic priest who taught natural sciences at the Realgymnasium in Stuttgart; from 1895 he published the Mappaemundi, the world maps of the Christian Middle Ages (Neue Deutsche Biographie). After the Beatus map and the atlas, the series went on to the smaller world maps, the Hereford map, the Ebstorf map and, in the sixth part, maps that Miller reconstructed.

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How to print

• The sheet is horizontal. At 300 dpi the plate prints to 47 cm. Pick the archive whose proportions match your frame; ask for matte fine-art paper in sRGB with auto-enhancement off.
• Where to print it: print shops near you and checked prices at online labs.

Source and rights

The scan comes from e-rara.ch, the Swiss platform for digitized rare books (plate image 11583327). Its record of the atlas, DOI 10.3931/e-rara-38523, reads “Die ältesten Weltkarten / 2 Atlas von 16 Lichtdruck-Tafeln : von Konrad Miller”, Jos. Roth’sche Verlagshandlung, 1895, 16 plates, and lists its contents as “Psalter-Karte, Beatus, Cotton Map, Hieronymus, Heinrich von Mainz, Higden”. Konrad Miller died in 1933; the plates are in the public domain. The scanned copy is held by ETH Library Zurich, shelfmark Rar K 257: 2 (e-rara record 11583321), and carries the Public Domain Mark. The size of the plates is not given here. There is no TIFF master in the package. Catalogue record: e-rara →