were undertaken to remote parts of Asia. Some journeys were real, while others were mere ´armchair travels´. Most people took the descriptions in travel accounts to be the ultimate truth about the mysterious places in lands far away from Europe.
Scholars formed a general view of the God-created cosmos and its seemingly mysterious character, expressed in encyclopaedic works, summae, and in medieval maps, mappaemundi. The majority of the medieval maps were not geographical in a modern sense but cosmological, showing the world from Genesis to the Last Judgment.
Monsters Marvels and Miracles is a collection of 8 articles that brings the reader on a journey through the maps, the voyages and the ideas of cosmos that influenced the world view of the people of the Middle Ages.