70 Bouloux
of highly poisonous spider lives on its soil, the solifugid.”5 A particular plant,
Sardinian grass (ranunculus sardous) grows near sources of water and who-
ever eats it is afflicted with a rictus. His mouth is twisted in pain, and he dies
while appearing to laugh. Towards the end, Isidore points to the hot springs of
Sardinia and their curative virtues. The medieval man of letters interested in
Sardinia had this information on the identity and particularities of the island
at his disposal, and he could follow up by reading the Latin texts from antiquity.
One can also find traces of a specific interest in Sardinia as an island in at
least two manuscripts from the Collection of Memorable Things.6 The first of
these, copied in the tenth century, probably at Monte Cassino, bears carto-
graphic schemata accompanied by text in the margins of passages relating to
several islands.7 In f. 27v, a schema represents Sardinia in the form of an ellipse
bearing two towers. The passage from the History against the Pagans, in which
Orosius (II, 101–102) gives the position and measurements of the island, has
been added in the margins.8 Another manuscript of Solinus, copied at the be-
ginning of the fourteenth century, contains several kinds of illustrations, some
of them no doubt dating from late antiquity,9 including cartographic schemata
(especially in relation to archipelagos) and some actual maps. Sardinia is rep-
resented in the form of a triangle accompanied by the name of the island; it
may well be a sketch for a map. These drawings should be understood within
a general analysis of their role in the reading of geographical texts, where they
serve both to draw the attention of the reader and to clarify and complete cer-
tain points in the text. In the two cases in question, interest in Sardinia derives
primarily from its insular nature without adding to the precise knowledge of
the island itself.
On the whole, the more widely read encyclopedists of the Middle Ages relied
on these relatively stable components—including Honorius Augustodunensis
(first half of the twelfth century), Gervase of Tilbury (Otia imperialia, early
thirteenth century), or Bartholomeus Anglicus (first half of the thirteenth cen-
tury). On occasion things would go differently if one studies the organization
5 Isidore follows Solinus on this point, who underscores that its name means “those that flee
from the sun,” and that it lives primarily in silver mines (Solinus, Collectanea rerum memora-
bilium, ed. Th. Mommsen (Berlin, 1895), pp. 46–47).
6 Patrick Gautier Dalché, “Les diagrammes topographiques dans les manuscrits des classiques
latins (Lucain, Solin, Salluste),” in La tradition vive: mélanges d’histoire des textes en l’honneur
de Louis Holtz, ed. Pierre Lardet (Paris, 2003), pp. 291–306.
7 Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 3342.
8 Other islands benefited from the same treatment (Sicily, fol. 29, Crete, fol. 73v, Britain,
fol. 103).
9 Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, C. 246 inf., fol. 14r.