The medieval reception of the geography of Orosius

Abstract This article traces the reception of the description of the known world that opens Paulus Orosius’ Historiae, from its wide circulation in the early Middle Ages to its marginalization by first-generation humanists in the fourteenth century. Particular attention is given to two roughly contemporaneous translations of the Historiae—the Old English Orosius, and the Arabic Kitāb Hurūshiyūsh—which reworked and supplemented Orosius’ geography in innovative ways. A concluding section argues that it is on mappae mundi that the most substantial engagement with the convergence of geography and history, implicit at the opening of Orosius’ work, took place.