[of Liebana and Valcavado]. Spanish priest and monk, theologian and geographer, born about 730, and died in 798. About 776 he published his Commentaria in Apocalypsin, containing one of the oldest Christian world-maps. He took a prominent part in the Adoptionist controversy, and wrote against the views of Felix of Urgel, especially as upheld by Elipandus of Toledo. As confessor to Queen Adosinda, wife of King Silo of Oviedo (774783), and as the master of Alcuin and Etherius of Osma, Beatus exercised wide influence. His original map, which was probably intended to illustrate, above all, the distribution of the Apostolic missions throughout the worlddepicting the head of Peter at Rome, of Andrew in Achaia, of Thomas in India, of James in Spain, and so forthhas survived in ten more or less modified copies. One only of thesethe Osma of 1203preserves the Apostolic pictures; among the remaining examples, that of St. Sever, now at Paris, and dating from about 1030, is the most valuable; that of Valcavado, recently in the Ashburnham Library, executed in 970, is the earliest; that of Turin, dating from about 1100, is perhaps the most curious. Three othersValladolid of about 1035, Madrid of 1047, and London of 1109are derivatives of the Valcavado-Ashburnham of 970; the eighth, Paris II, is connected, though not very intimately, with St. Sever, otherwise Paris I; the ninth and tenth, Gerona and Paris III, belong to the Turin group of Beatus maps. All these works are emphatically of dark-age character; very seldom do they suggest the true forms of countries, seas, rivers or mountains, but they embody some useful information as to early medieval conditions and history. St. Isidore appears to be their principal authority; they also draw, directly or indirectly, from Orosius, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and probably from a lost map of classical antiquity, represented in a measure by the Peutinger Table of the 13th century.
The chief MSS. of the Commentaria in Apocalypsin are (13) Paris, National Library, Lat. 8878; Lat. nouv. acq. 1366 and 2290; (4) Ashburnham MSS. xv.; (5) London, B. Mus., Addit. MSS. 11695; (6) Turin, National Library 1, ii. (1); (7) Valladolid, University Library, 229; (8) the MS. in the Episcopal Library at Osma, in Old Castile.
There is only one complete edition of the text, that by Flórez (Madrid, 1770). See also Konrad Miller, Die Weltkarte des Beatus, Heft I. of Mappaemundi: die ältesten Weltkarten (Stuttgart, 1895); dAvezac in Annales de géographie (June 1870); Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, i. 387388 (1897); ii. 549559; 591605 (1901).