In the early twelfth century Lambert, canon of Saint-Omer, now in French Flanders, compiled an encyclopaedia of the knowledge available.

In that book, entitled Liber Floridus, he describes the world and the cosmos and man’s life within that great frame.

“The world we inhabit is like a small island. Everything is linked within nine orbits and the outermost celestial circle contains all the others. In the centre, in the last and ninth circle, is the earth.”

Lambert illustrated his findings with colourful miniatures. He drew maps of the world four centuries cartography became a discipline in its own right.

Ghent City Museum

The world- famous manuscript Liber Floridus originated from St Bavo’s Abbey in Ghent and is now part of Ghent University Library Collection.

The Ghent City Museum STAM dedicates an exhibition to this marvel. Thanks to precious illuminated manuscripts from the late-eight to the twelfth centuries loaned by institutions in Belgium and abroad, the Liber Floridus can be shown alongside its sources and works by Lambert’s contemporaries.

The ambulatory and Gothic refectory of the former Bijloke Abbey with its fourteenth-century wall paintings provide a fitting setting for this feast of medieval knowledge and cartography.