VALERIA PROVINCIA IN THE COSMOGRAPHy OF ANONYMOUS OF RAVENNA

Anonymous of Ravenna wrote the Cosmography at the beginning of the eighth century, but his creation of the work cannot be determined more precisely. The Cosmography contains descriptions of the entire world in five books, the fourth of which includes a narration of Provincia Valeria Media. In describing the province, Anonymous of Ravenna referred to several authors’ works, including the Tabula Peutingeriana , Marcomir and Jordanes’ works, and other sources of unknown origin. Anonymous noted that Provincia Valeria Media was located between the Pannonia Superior and Pannonia Inferior, covering the area of the ancient provinces of Valeria and Savia. Anonymous listed the toponyms in Provincia Valeria Media’s territory, which he took from an early copy or transcript of the Tabula Peutingeriana . In Cosmography , Carniola was the western neighbour of Provincia Valeria Media, and it was bounded on the south by Liburnia Tarsaticensis. Regarding the name of Carniola, this researcher can assume that it was a later addition to the text of the Cosmography . Scholars disputed whether Provincia Valeria Media existed in the fifth century or whether Anonymous took its name from historical sources. Recent research has suggested that Anonymous borrowed the name Valeria from Jordan and the name Media Provincia from the Tabula Peutingeriana . He merged the two terms into Provincia Valeria Media. The actual historical value of the Cosmography is not the creation of the name Provincia Valeria Media but the early medieval data that Anonymous recorded in his book.


Introduction
The Unknown Ravennese or Anonymous of Ravenna was an anonymous author in Ravenna during the seventh or early eighth centuries.The Cosmography of Anonymous of Ravenna (Ravennatis Anonymi Cosmographia) is a compilation of information about the world, including toponyms, peoples and countries from East Asia to Ireland.Scholars have disputed the exact date of the origin of the Cosmography.Pinder and Parthey published the first critical edition of the Cosmography, and Joseph Schnetz published the new critical edition of the text without an index of the toponyms (Pinder and Parthey 1860;Schnetz 1940).Marianne Zumschlinge composed an excellent index of the toponyms in the Cosmography and published it with Schnetz's critical edition in a stereotype edition (Schnetz 1990).The Cosmography consists of five books, the fourth of which includes a description of Europe.In listing the names of political units, cities, and rivers, Anonymous of Ravenna described the territory of Central Europe in detail (Guckelsberger and Mittenhuber 2013: 1-4, 8-12).The names of the Roman provinces appeared in the text of the Cosmography, and new peoples and political formations in the early Middle Ages were included.In describing the southwest region of Central Europe, Anonymous mentioned the names of Pannonia, Valeria, Illira, Dalmatia, Carneola and Liburbnia, not as provinces (provincia) but as countries (patria).Although patria was synonymous with a Roman province, he named new political formations using this word.In the Cosmography, the unusual name of Media Provincia appeared in connection to Valeria, the origin of which is controversial in the literature (Schnetz 1990: 54-59).According to Endre Tóth, the Media Provincia was a new province that was established in the Sava region during the Hun period in the fifth century.The Roman imperial government relinquished the territory of Valeria along the Danube to the Huns.The provincial inhabitants of Valeria were settled next to the Sava region in the new province of Media Provincia.The memory of the new province's foundation survived in the Tabula Peutingeriana, which is an ancient Roman road map.An early copy was the basis on which Anonymous of Ravenna described the location of the Valeria Media Province (Tóth 1989: 223-225).After a thorough investigation, Péter Kovács rejected Endre Tóth's opinion about the origin of Valeria Province.According to Kovács, Provincia Valeria Media appeared as an error in the early version of the Tabula because the Roman imperial government had not established such a province.Anonymous of Ravenna combined this mistaken source with the data in Jordanes' Romana, thus creating Provincia Valeria Media (Kovács 2020 a : 267).This paper uses the manuscripts of the Cosmography to examine the history of the Cosmography, and it shows a new map of Provincia Valeria Media.The reason for developing a new edition of the map is that Miller's Valeria sketch does not include many toponyms mentioned in the Cosmography, and some inscriptions on the map are not visible.

The Manuscripts of the Cosmography
An autograph manuscript of the Cosmography no longer exists, but three copied text versions have survived in different codices: the Codex Vaticanus, fourteenth century; the Codex Parisinus, thirteenth century; and the Codex Basiliensis, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Schnetz 1990: 5-7;Guckelsberger and Mittenhuber 2013: 2).More recently, Keith J. Fitzpatrick-Matthews gave a brief description of the manuscripts (Fitzpatrick-Matthews 2020: 4-5).According to Dillemann, the Codex Vaticanus originated in the thirteenth century, the Codex Parisinus emerged in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the Codex Basiliensis was made in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries (Dillemann 1997:13).Examining the Codex Vaticanus, the reader can see that the scribe used dark-coloured (black) ink up to the thirty-fifth recto, the outline of the letters being sharp and easy to read.From the seventeenth row of the left column, the colour of the ink is sharply different from the previous one.From this point, the colour of the ink is grey until the end of the codex.The letters are a bit thicker, and the writing is still easy to read.The Cosmography ends on the forty-seventh verso, but the codex continues and contains other texts from forty-eighth recto to the one-hundred-and-ninth verso.The ink colour and writing image hardly change up to the one-hundred-and-eighth verso.The handwriting, columns and rows provide a unified picture; damage, repair, scraping are not visible in the codex.Two initials adorn the text, one the initial letter of Cosmography and the other the first letter of the papal list.The initials are coloured blue and red, and their style is similar.The Codex Vaticanus content is also interesting because its texts originated before the end of the eighth century.The Codex Vaticanus contains six source: 1) The Cosmography of Anonymous of Ravenna (1r-47v).
2) This section contains five short narratives: the history of Ninus king of the Assyrians; the story of the Scythians; a tale about the Amazons; and the deeds of the Franks and Rome (48r-54r).3) A short extract from Paul the Deacon's Historia .4) Extracts from Eutropius' Breviarium (Abbreviated History of Rome) and Paul the Deacon's Historia Romana with additions from other authors (55r-93v).5) The excerpts from Paul the Deacon's Historia Romana again (93v-106v).6) A list of popes from St. Peter to Pope Gregor II (715-731).At the end of the papal list, the name of Sisinus is an erroneous later addition; the handwriting is different from the script of the list (Codex Vaticanus 107r-108v).After the papal list, the last item consists of two separate fragments in eight lines unrelated to the previous sources.These fragments do not have titles in the catalogue (Codex Vaticanus 109v).In the second item, the story of the Franks (historica et fabulosa de … Francis) tells the story of Aeneas.The Codex Parisinus contains the same sources as the Codex Vaticanus, and in identical order; only the page numbers are different.However, the National Library of France used other names for the same items in their manuscript catalogue.In the Codex Parisinus, the colour of the ink is dark up to the fifty-sixth verso, and the writing appears to be the work of a scribe.However, from the fifty-seventh recto, the ink is paler, and the handwriting changes somewhat.Perhaps another scribe continued the work.The style of abbreviations and handwriting are consistent and uniform.An exceptionally ornate initial opens the codex, and the initials standing at the beginning of the chapters are decorated.The first recto shows a number (1431) above the right-hand column, but it is not clear whether this is related to the text of the codex.The other two numbers may be subsequent entries.In the Codex Parisinus, the Cosmography is the first manuscript (1°).The second part (2°) of the codex contains the second, third, fourth and fifth items of the Codex Vaticanus.The third part (3°) of the Codex Parisinus is identical to the sixth (6) item of the Codex Vaticanus.In the Codex Parisinus, the name of Pope Constantine (708-715) is at the end of the papal list (3°), but the name of Pope Gregor II (715-731) does not appear.An inscription is found after the list of popes: the book ends with "Explicit iste liber" (Codex Parisinus 66r).The same parts of the two codices end at this point.
At the end of the Codex Parisinus, two additional short manuscripts follow the papal list, but they are not narrative texts and not connected to the former sources.The first addition is a letter on the rule of health (4° Anonymi epistola de regimine sanitatis, 66v-67v), its accurate title in the codex being: "A most useful letter on the health of the body" ("Epistola utilitissima ad sanitatem corporis").The title of the second supplement is "A letter of the Patriarch of Jerusalem to the Pope" (5° "Patriarchae Hierosolymitani epistola ad Romanum Pontificem") (Codex Parisinus 67v).The list of the popes, an early copy of the Liber Pontificalis, had a clerical background in Italy (EMC 2021: 1028; Mommsen 1898).Anonymous wrote his Cosmography in Ravenna; Paul the Deacon lived in Italy as a cleric but was a monk for part of his life (Bartolini 1997: V-VI; Galamb 2012, 14-15, 25).In the libraries of the royal and ecclesiastical courts, Italian clerics had the opportunity to copy excerpts from earlier historical sources, Eutropius' Breviarium and Paul the Deacon's Historia Romana (Droysen 1879: 1-182;183-224).

The Sources of Anonymous of Ravenna's Description of Valeria
Anonymous of Ravenna stated that the same authors described both Valeria and Pannonia.Among them, he mentioned Castorius, Lollianus and Arbitio, who were Roman writers, and he named Aitanarid, Edelvald and Marcummir as authors among the Goths (philosophi Gothorum).Nevertheless, Anonymous claimed that his description of Valeria was based on Marcomir, and he also referred to Jordanes as a source for the Cosmography (Schnetz 1990: 56-57).According to Dillemann, Castorius' identification is uncertain, but he did not exclude Castrorius from the authors of antiquity.In Dillemann's book, Lollianus and Arbitio appeared among pseudo-writers who did not really exist or were not original authors.The names of Gothic authors, Aitanarid, Edelvald and Marcummir, were formed because of textual deterioration, but Dillemann supposed that persons with these names existed in the sixth century (Dillemann 1997: 53-58).In Staab's opinion, the Gothic authors Athanarid, Heldebald and Marcomir were historical figures in the time of Theoderic the Great (Staab 1976: 54).An additional source appears in the chapter on Valeria in the Cosmography.An early copy or transcription of an ancient Roman road map became known as the Tabula Peutingariana, which was an important source for Anonymous (Weber 1976;Dillemann 1997: 22-23).Part of the toponyms in the Tabula Peutingeriana appeared in the text of the Cosmography, so Anonymous could have used an early version or transcript of the map (Schnetz 1942: 50-52, 85-87).
In my opinion, some particulars of the Cosmography were an interpolation from Paul the Deacon's History of the Langobards (Historia Langobardorum) and the Royal Frankish Annals (Bethmann and Waitz, 1878;Kurze 1895).
To understand the territorial divisions described in the Cosmography, it is worth recalling the administrative system of Pannonia in late antiquity.In organising a new provincial subdivision, Emperor Diocletian (284-311) divided Pannonia Superior into Pannonia Prima and Savia.The former was the northern province lying between the Danube and the River Drava west of Lake Balaton, and the latter was the southern province.Most of the Savia territory was between the Drava and Sava, but a small part extended beyond the Sava River.The reorganisation also extended to the territory of Lower (inferior) Pannonia, as the emperor separated its lands into Valeria and Pannonia Secunda.The territory of Valeria lay between the Danube and the River Drava east of Lake Balaton and Pannonia Secunda, which was situated in the eastern part of the interfluve between the Drava and the Sava.Savia province was the western neighbour of Pannonia Secunda (Mócsy 1974: 273-274;Kovács 2015: 289-296;Migotti 2012: 4).
In Romana, Jordanes recorded the names Valeria and Suavia but did not mention Pannonia Superior and Pannonia Inferior; he simply called them the two Pannonias (Pannoniae duae).Jordanes did not record the original Savia toponym (Romana 1882: 218).More recently, Gračanin has examined the Suavia question; in his opinion, the form of the word Suavia evolved from the name of the Suavi, "meaning a land of Suevi" (Gračanin 2016: 226-227).To describe the territory of Valeria, Anonymous used the terms Valeria and Pannonias (Pannoniae), but he did not borrow the name of Suavia from Jordanes' work.
An early copy or transcription of the Tabula Peutingeriana, which was an important source for Anonymous, included the names Pannonia Superior, Pannonia Inferior and Middle Province (Media Provincia).The names of Savia and Valeria were not shown on the Tabula, but the inscription of Media Provincia appears along the River Sava in the original place of Savia province.Media Provincia was south of Pannonia Superior and west of Pannonia Inferior (Rathmann 2018: 54-57, A2-5).In fact, Media Provincia replaced Savia; the provinces, in this arrangement, appeared only on the Tabula Peutingeriana.

Geographical Locations and Neighbours of Valeria in the Cosmography
Anonymous remarked that Valeria patria was next to Pannonia.He did not call Valeria and Pannonia provinces (provincia) but homelands or countries (patria).
The following can be said about the rivers of Pannonia.Schnetz amended the name of the river Ira to the Mur, but this identification cannot be verified (Schnetz 1951: 62).In contrast to Schnetz, Dillemann concluded that the Ira (Hyra) river was near Dertona in Italy (Getica 1882: 236; Dilleman 1997: 99).Both Schnetz and Dillemann accepted that Bustricius was derived from Bistritza, the name of a Slavic river.In his study, Dickenmann identified Bistra/Bistrica as Slavic water names and listed them all (Dickenmann 1939, 19-21, 52-54;SZI 2009: 61).Of these hydronyms and water bodies, the tributary of the Drava seems to be identical with Bustricius in the Cosmography.On his map, Miller depicted the River Bustricus as a tributary of the Drava between Drava and Sava, flowing southwest to northeast between Marinianus and Balenito (Miller 1898: 18).On Miller's map, the identification and localisation of the River Bustricius were correct because medieval and early modern sources also attested to its existence.In the deed of Stephan V, King of Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Rama, the name Biztra Brook emerged in 1267/1270 and the following centuries (Smičiklas 1907: 562;1911: 513;1914: 169;1915: 556;Wenzel 1870: 281, 285;Heller 1980: 24, 83-85).Five hundred years later, in the territory of modern Croatia, the name Old Bistra (Stara Bistra) was visible east of Ðurđevac (St.Georgen) and north of Kalinovac (Kallinovecz) on the maps of the First and Third Military Surveys of the Habsburg Empire (W.G. 1781-1782; H. K. F. 1869-1887).
The inscription of Stara Bistra indicated the remnant of an old riverbed on a military map, south of the Drava, but it still held water in the nineteenth century (Image 1).By the twentieth century, after the river regulation, this old riverbed disappeared.In the chapter on Pannonia, the appearance of Bistritza as a Slavic geographical name indicates Anonymous' attempt to update his geographical knowledge based on data of his own century.In late antiquity, the population changed or disappeared after the Hun period (Migotti 2012: 19-21).A new Slavic people migrated to the territory south of the Drava, which was proven by the name of the Bustricius River.Some of these people could have been in Liudewit's dukedom in Pannonia Inferior (dux Pannoniae Inferioris), which was also reported in the Royal Frankish Annals (Kurze 1895: 149-151).The name of the Bistra River was recorded in the Cosmography, and the Croatian royal charters attested to its continuity since the seventh or eighth centuries.
The Parsium is identifiable as the Arsia River in Istria, so it was not in Pannonia.
In another identification of the Parsium, this river may be identical to Parisos in Strabo's Geography or it could be the Pathisus in Pliny's work on the border of Dacia; consequently, the Parsium was outside Pannonia (Dillemann 1997: 99-100).Parisos, Pathissus and similar forms of this river name have been identified with the River Tisza in the Carpathian Basin (Szádeczky-Kardoss 1953: 79-80).Identifying the name of the Dravis River with the Drava is not problematic, as the name of the river has remained unchanged for centuries.Because Lake Balaton (lacus Pelsois) was in its territory, the previously mentioned Pannonia is identifiable as Pannonia Superior.
In the Cosmography, the origin of the name of Valeria Province and its location needed to be explained.Anonymous could have borrowed the name Valeria from Jordanes' Romana, in which the location of Valeria Province was accurately described as between the Danube and the Drava (Romana 1882: 217).Anonymous noted that Valeria was named Middle Province (Media Provincia) because it lay between Pannonia Superior and Pannonia Inferior (Schnetz 1990: 57).Jordanes and Anonymous used similar wording.Anonymous could create the phrase Valeria Media Provincia based on Jordanes.In describing the geographical location of Valeria, Anonymous took the toponyms from an early copy or transcription of the Tabula Peutingeriana, in which the place-names appeared along the Sava River south of Pannonia Superior and the Danube.Péter Kovács expressed a different opinion on the origin of the term Media Provincia.Anonymous did not have correct information about the administrative organisation of Pannonia, so he linked Valeria Province, adopted from Jordanes, to the Media Provincia in the Tabula Peutingeriana (Kovács  2021 b : 120-121).The origin of Media Province is a controversial issue.The later depiction of Media Provincia on the Tabula is conceivable; a medieval cartographer or copier could have borrowed names from the Cosmography and supplemented them with names from the Tabula.
The absence of the name Savia indicates that Anonymous did not know it, although  Zb. rad. Filoz. fak. Splitu, 14 (2021), 101-117 he tied its territory to Valeria.His information about the geographical position of Valeria between Pannonia Superior and Pannonia Inferior was inaccurate.He considered that Valeria, including the territory of Savia or Media Provincia, was a country, or patria, between Pannonia Superior and Inferior.This is evidenced in lists of the settlements of Savia among the cities of Valeria and the appearance of the River Sava as its boundary (Schnetz 1990: 57-58).In describing Valeria, Anonymous deviated from Diocletian's provincial subdivisions because he depicted the area of Valeria as including the territory of the antique Roman Savia.
According to Anonymous, the River Sava was the boundary of Valeria or Media Provincia, but he did not remark on the name of the southern neighbour of Valeria.Fortunately, the order of the text of the Cosmography reveals that Liburnia Tarsaticensis was the province next to Carniola.Anonymous placed the territory of Liburnia along the western bay of the Mediterranean, which he referred to as the Adriatic Sea (Schnetz 1990: 58-59).The geographical position of Liburnia is remarkably similar in the Cosmography and in the Tabula Peutingeriana, which indicates a connection between the two sources in this case.Anonymous listed the names of the cities of Liburnia Tarsaticensis, some of which were in the Tabula Peutingeriana (Rathmann 2018: 52-59, segm. 4-5A).There can be little doubt that Anonymous used an early copy or transcript of the Tabula although he did not adopt the toponyms correctly (Kovács 2020 a : 259).The origin of the phrase Liburnia Tarsaticensis is questionable, but it was not visible in this form in other sources in the century of Anonymous (Turković and Basić 2011: 63-71).It is worth mentioning that Liburnia and Tharsaticum also appear in later stages of the Cosmography.The name Tharsaticum is included in a list of cities in Liburnia, and another passage describes Tharsaticum as a city in the province of Liburna (civitas Tharsaticum provinciae Liburniae) (Schnetz 1990: 58, 76).In the Royal Frankish Annals (Annales Regni Francorum) and Einhard's Vita Caroli Magni, the term Tarsaticum is recognisable, almost word for word, in the phrase Tharsatica Liburnae civitas (Kurze 1895: 108-109;Turković and Basić 2011: 73-74).
In the Cosmography, Carneola or Carnech/Carnich patria was next to Valeria, which ancient authors called the Alpes Iuliana.Nowadays, it is called the Julian Alps, or Julijske Alpe in Croatia (Schnetz 1990: 58).In explaining the geography of north Italy, Anonymous noted the mountains of Carnium, formerly named Alpis Iulia, which were between Italy and the patria of Carnium (Schnetz 1990: 75-76).Carneola, or its modern name Carniola, was the western neighbour of Provincia Valeria Media in the upper valley of the Sava.Carniola was a new toponym in the text of the Cosmography.
The names of twenty-five cities listed in the chapter on Carniola are unidentifiable, except Carnium, which could be the same as Julio Carnico (Stolte 1949: 84).According to Dillemenn, attempts to identify settlements were unsuccessful (Dillemenn 1997: 177-178;Dillemann 1972: 320-322).Carnium was northwest of Emona on the banks of the River Sava (Talbert 2000: 290).Carniola appeared as a country, or patria, separate from Valeria and Savia; thus, its description deviated from the Roman provincial subdivision in which the territory of Carniola belonged to Savia.
Carniola, as a geopolitical entity, first emerged in the Historia Langobardorum (Luthar 2013: 92).In this work, Paul the Deacon reported that Ratchis, the Duke of Friuli (Foroiulium), and his men attacked Carniola, the homeland of the Slavs (Carniola Sclavorum patria) around 738 (Bethmann and Waitz 1878: 183).A second example of the emergence of Carniola was recorded in the Royal Frankish Annals (Annales Regni Francorum) in 820.The inhabitants of Carniola (Carniolenses), who lived around the River Sava, bordered Friuli (Kurze 1985: 153).According to Schnetz, Carniola was a subsequent name for the Carnech, which was used formerly (Schnetz 1951: 63, 1n).Schillinger-Häfele mentioned that Anonymous of Ravenna knew the name Carniola from Paul the Deacon.However, Schillinger-Häfele's opinion is contradictory because he accepted Schnetz's view that the name Carniola was a later interpolation in the text of the Cosmography (Shillinger-Häfele 1975: 255-256).Peter Štih stated that the thirteenth century was the date after which the interpolation of Carniola was impossible in the Cosmography (Štih 2021: 27).
In the case of the Carantani, a concordance seems possible between the Cosmography and the Historia Langobardorum.Anonymous of Ravenna mentioned that the Alps were the frontier between Italy and the Carantani, or the inhabitants of Carantania (Schnetz 1990: 75).Paul the Deacon described Carantanum as the homeland of the Slavs (Bethmann, and Waitz, 1878: 152).Carantanum is a unique version of the word Carantania .Another source, the Royal Frankish Annals, described how a Frank army had gone across the province of the Carantani (Carantanorum provincia) in 820.The annalist mentioned that Louis the Pious had sent Bertric the count palatine into the province of the Carantani in 826 (Kurze 1895: 152-153, 169;Wolfram 1979: 76-77, 76n10).
The results of codicological research suggested that a copier used the Historia Langobardorum when he copied the Cosmography and inserted some information into its text at the end of the eighth century or the beginning of the ninth century.
The scribe edited the new copy of the Cosmography and other sources into a new codex.After the early ninth century, later copiers did not attach new records to the codex until the thirteenth century when a scribe edited the Codex Parisinus and attached two documents to the former collection of the sources.

The Cities in Provincia Valeria Media
Anonymous remarked that he described the cities of Valeria based on Marcomir, but he also read the works of Castorius, Lollianaus, Arbitio, Athanarid and Edelvald.The twenty-two towns (civitas) of Provincia Valeria Media appeared in two groups.The first consisted of thirteen settlements along the Danube.The second group, including eight towns, was located along the River Sava (Schnetz 1990: 57-58).Based on the Tabula Peutingeriana, the settlements of the first group of Valeria are identifiable.Altaripa, Annamatia and Acquincum were three additional place names in the Tabula, which were not included in the Cosmography (Co. in Table 1).On the Tabula Peutingeriana (TP in Table 1), the thirteen settlements functioned as stations along the Roman road by the Danube River.Six stations were in Pannonia Inferior, and seven were in Pannonia Superior (Tóth 2006: 167-170).It is worth mentioning that the name Valeria was missing, but Pannonia Inferior, Superior and Media Provincia were on the Tabula (Rathmann 2018: 60-63).The Unknown Cosmographer copied the toponyms from an earlier version or transcription of the Tabula Peutingeriana, but he deviated from the territorial system of the public administration depicted on it.The settlements of the second group were also stations along the Roman road between Siscia and Atamine (Emona).The Tabula Peutingariana also contained the names of other stations on this route, which were not mentioned in the Cosmography.Urate, Servitor, Pretorius, Quadrata, ad Praetorium and ad Protonium were depicted on the Tabula but are absent from the text of the Cosmography.There is a discrepancy between the parchment of the Tabula Peutingeriana and the text of the Cosmography.On the Tabula, the towns lying between Crucio to Emona were in Liburnia, but they are described as belonging to Media Provincia in the Cosmography.The area of Media Provincia depicted on the Tabula and the territory of Provincia Valeria Media described in the Cosmography do not match exactly.In this case, this difference indicates that Anonymous of Ravenna did not use an early copy of the Tabula Peutingeriana but an extract from it, or he used other sources.

The Map of Provincia Valeria Media
contents of the two codices finish here.)(Two fragments of two different texts in eight lines) (109v) 4° Anonymi epistola de regimine sanitatis (66v-67v) 5° Patriarchae Hierosolymitani epistola ad Romanum Pontificem (67v) The Codex Vaticanus and Codex Parisinus contain essentially the same sources; their texts originated before the end of the eighth century.The last text, Paul the Deacon's Historia Romana, was completed between 766 and 773 (EMC 2010: 1191).A compiler edited the Cosmography, extracts of the historical sources and the papal list into a new codex in the late eighth or early ninth century.Copying the text of the Cosmography at the beginning of the codex, he had the possibility to supplement it with his knowledge.After the Cosmography, the extracts follow, and the papal list is the last document at the end of the codex.This codex contained each record of the Codex Parisinus and Vaticanus without the subsequent supplements.The compiler seems to have worked in a rich library where he could read many sources, including Paul the Deacon's Historia Romana, from which he also made extracts.Subsequent copiers respected the order of the texts and did not change the contents of the codex.Of course, errors and misinterpretations occurred while making copies.The Basel text version of the Cosmography has a different history.An editor separated the text of the Cosmography from the attached extracts and the papal list, and he copied the Cosmography into a new codex.The Cosmography became the fifty-sixth manuscript (Codex Basiliensis 85r-108v One hundred and twenty years ago, Konrad Miller constructed a map of Valeria based on the text of the Cosmography.The inscriptions on his map were handwritten, and the names of the towns are in small letters that are hardly visible.On his map, Miller did not depict several place names that were included in the Cosmography(Miller  1898: 18).In the early modern age, cartographers made charts on which Valeria was visible.For example, Tóth Endre published part of W. Lazius' map depicting Valeria south of the Drava(Tóth 1989: 211-212).The depiction of Valeria on these early modern maps does not appear connected to Anonymous' Provincia Valeria Media.According to Kovács, on these maps, Valeria was a creation based on the works of humanist authors (Kovács 2020 a : 266-267).In drawing a new map of Valeria, my aim was to depict Provincia Valeria Media's toponyms (Map 1).In this work, Balázs Holl's map was the chart base, and Talbert's Atlas and the Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire were helpful in locating the towns(Holl 2004;Talbert 2000; Åhlfeld 2020).Basic map: Holl, B. 2004.Maps on the Carpathian Basin and Hungary.Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum.Data source (copyright): Hungarian National Museum, Budapest.Szántó, R.: VALERIA PROVINCIA IN THE COSMOGRAPHy OF ANONYMOUS OF RAVENNA Zb. rad.Filoz.fak.Splitu, 14 (2021), 101-117 7. Summary Anonymous of Ravenna wrote his Cosmography based on the geographical knowledge of late antiquity and the works of authors in this period.An essential source of the Cosmography was an early copy or transcript of the Tabula Peutingeriana.In addition to ancient writers' work, the Cosmography contains a wealth of information on political changes in the early Middle Ages, such as the emergence of the Khazars in Eastern Europe, the immigration of the Bulgars to the Balkans and the appearances of the Danish and the Normans.These data indicate that Anonymous strove to collect new information, thus updating his geographical and geopolitical knowledge.The Cosmography includes a description of Central Europe's regions, among which was Provincia Valeria Media.This province lay between Pannonia Superior and Pannonia Inferior, including the territory of antique Valeria east of the Danube and the Province of Savia between the Sava and the Drava.In writing the Cosmography, Anonymous used an early version or transcript of the Tabula Peutingeriana, Jordanes' Romana and Getica, and the work of Marcomir and other authors.Anonymous listed the names of waterbodies in Pannonia, among which the names Mur (Ira) and Bistra (Bustricius) are evidence that he also used new geographical names in the Cosmography.According to Anonymous, Pannonia Superior was the northern neighbour of Provincia Valeria Media.The Danube and Pannonia Inferior were on the east side of Provincia Valeria Media.Carniola was its western neighbour, and Liburnia Tarsaticensis lay to the south.The Cosmography includes a detailed description of the Carniola and Carantania areas, which shows some parallels with the Royal Frankish Annals and Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum.The appearances of Carniola and Carantania are later additions in the chapter on Carniola in the Cosmography.The place names Provincia Valeria Media closely match names of towns on the Tabula Peutingeriana, which proves that Anonymous used an early version of the Tabula.Nonetheless, this researcher cannot ignore the possibility that Anonymous could have created the phrase Provincia Valeria Media, elements of which he adopted from Jordanes.Only Anonymous used the name Provincia Valeria Media in the historiography.Anonymous seems to have created the name Valeria Media Provincia.However, the actual historical value of the Cosmography is not the creation of the name Provincia Valeria Media, but the early medieval data that Anonymous recorded in this book.The codicological research reveals that the Vatican and Paris codices of the Cosmography contain the same texts following the Cosmography, and their order is the same too.All the sources originated in Italy before the end of the eighth century.A compiler copied the Cosmography and other texts into a codex and supplemented the text of the Cosmography at the end of the eighth or at the beginning of the ninth century.This collection of manuscripts has survived in the Paris and Vatican Codices.

Table 1 .
The first group of towns in Provincia Valeria Media along the Danube from south to north