Theater of the World

by Thomas Reinertsen Berg

  South America had stabilised as a kind of triangular-shaped continent, with its tip at the Strait of Magellan in the south; but slightly north of the equator, around today’s Central America, was where cartographers’ problems began. About what lay north of this, little was certain–and this applied to both the size of the land mass and the question of whether or not it was part of Asia. On his map, Finé had written ‘Asia’ over a North America and Asia that were joined together, but on their globe, Frisius and Mercator chose to make America a separate continent. Regarding its size, however, they were reserved, making the continent a meagre 30 degrees of longitude across–83 degrees of longitude too narrow.

  Like Ortelius, Mercator had studied the art of engraving, and in doing so had become convinced that Latin characters were far easier to read than the gothic characters that were the norm in northern Europe at the time. Frisius’s globe is both the first Dutch map to feature Latin characters, and the first to bear Mercator’s signature: ‘Gerardus Mercator Rupelmundanus’.

  BIBLICAL MAPS | The first map Mercator created was made on commission for a reformer and map collector who wanted a large map of the Holy Land–Terrae sanctae–to hang on his wall; a map that would shine with the clarity, precision and beauty that only modern copper-plate printing could provide.

  A map of the Holy Land included in a book published by Lucas Brandis in the German city of Lübeck in 1475 is the world’s first modern, printed map. The map is modern in the sense that it is based on eyewitness accounts, rather than purely classical and biblical sources–Brandis drew the map while reading Descriptio terrae sanctae by the monk Burchard of Mount Sion, a pilgrim who travelled around the area between 1274 and 1284.

  In Mercator’s time, Dutch readers were familiar with a map included in the Lutheran Bibles published in Antwerp from the year 1526. The map was drawn by Lucas Cranach, a friend of Martin Luther; its main motif was the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the Holy Land. The map broke with traditional Catholic imagery, which only illustrated certain scenes from the text. The reformers liked the map because the Israelites’ journey symbolised the movement from slavery into freedom; from ignorance to knowledge of God. For them, Egypt represented the corrupt papacy from which they were trying to break free.

  A version of this map was used in Myles Coverdale’s English Bible–the Bible Ortelius’s father Leonard had been involved in printing, and which had resulted in him having to flee Antwerp in order to avoid the Inquisition.

  Mercator had grown up with Cranach’s map. He also consulted a map of the area drawn by Jacob Ziegler. ‘We have drawn this map of Palestine,’ Mercator wrote, ‘and the Hebrews’ route into it from Egypt through the stony regions of Arabia, from Ziegler, the most faithful cartographer of these things.’ Although Mercator was unsure how satisfied he was with his map’s final result, it was at least an improvement on that drawn by Ziegler, who had never completely finished his version.

  In 1538, Mercator announced on a world map what his life’s work would consist of–‘a division of the world along broad lines’, followed by ‘individual maps of particular regions’. The message was brief, but clear–his world map provided an overview of the world, but the next maps would provide detail. Mercator, now twenty-six years old, had decided that he wanted to spend his life describing and exploring the world through maps. He hadn’t yet seen the sea or mountains–and nor would he, as the great geographer would never travel further from his birthplace than the city of Frankfurt, 400 kilometres away. His world was Flanders, with its fields, canals and church spires, and this was the very first place he wished to map.

  In 2001, Martin Waldseemüller’s large world map from 1507 was acquired by the American Library of Congress for the sum of $10 million because it was regarded as America’s birth certificate: the map is the first to apply the name ‘America’ to the newly discovered lands in the west. But debate about whether these lands constituted a separate continent or were simply the eastern part of Asia continued for some years after Waldseemüller had drawn his map.

  The area was in full revolt. In 1537, Ghent, the capital of Flanders, refused to make a financial contribution to the king of Spain’s war against France. While some citizens fled the city, others took up their weapons and barricaded the city gates, while others fled the city, and a huge festival was planned to celebrate the city’s illustrious past. Pierre van der Beke created a map of Flanders with clear nationalistic undertones for the occasion; this was necessary, he wrote, because ‘until now no description has been accurately made, appropriate to the situation of the said country.’ The map emphasised Flanders’ strategic location between Brussels and the sea, the land cut through with sailable canals, and was richly decorated with caravels and galleys bearing the colours of all the countries that traded goods in the area. After the festival, Charles V sent two messengers from Spain to spread the word that he intended to pay the city a visit.

  Charles V was highly interested in maps, and may well have seen that created by van der Beke. But Pierre de Keyzere, the man who had printed the map, was taking no chances, figuring that both his business and his life would be safer if he published a map re-establishing Flanders as a loyal province as soon as possible. Mercator agreed, as did several merchants and other cartographers, along with the authorities in Brussels. Mercator worked quickly, removing the waving flags and instead decorating the map’s upper and lower borders with portraits of the rulers of Flanders up to and including Charles V. The map also featured an extravagant dedication to the king.

  We don’t know whether the king ever saw Mercator’s map, but he was displeased nonetheless. He marched into Ghent with an entourage that took no more than five minutes to break through the barricaded city gates. Thirteen rebel leaders were beheaded, and judges, mayors, six representatives from each guild and fifty citizens, dressed in black and with halters around their necks, were forced to walk barefoot from the courthouse to the castle, where they were made to fall to their knees and beg for forgiveness. The city lost all political rights, and an entire district was razed to the ground to make way for a new fortress. Finally, the king took the large city clock away with him. The glorious city of van der Beke’s map lay in ruins.

  Mercator continued to work on mapping all the world’s regions. Never before had anyone published modern, regional maps of the world, which was now known to be much larger than Ptolemy had been aware of, and the project would take time. Unfortunately, time was something that Mercator was lacking–he was continually forced to take on commissions to care for his growing family. Barbara, his wife, had already given birth to two daughters and two sons; another child arrived in 1541, and before long the couple had a total of seven children. Mercator worked every waking moment–whenever high-ranking officials asked him for a new globe, or a printer wanted him to write a book about cartographic typography, he always said yes, and postponed his work on the regional maps. In 1543 he was charged with dabbling in Protestantism and jailed for seven months; the Inquisition ransacked his home, but found nothing. In 1552 Mercator moved to the other side of the Rhine, to the small German town of Duisburg, and it was here that he was finally able to complete the map of Europe he’d been working on for fourteen years.

  As he was drawing northern Europe, Mercator took one last look at Ziegler’s map before combining it with Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina and Dutch nautical charts, which he believed represented the Norwegian coast better than the Carta Marina did. The map of Europe ‘attracted more praise from scholars everywhere than any similar geographical work which has ever been brought out,’ wrote a humanist at the time, and Mercator understood that he had finally published something that would earn him good money.

  In good spirits, Mercator travelled up the river to the book fair in Frankfurt, where for the first time he met the 28-year-old map colourist from Antwerp–grey-eyed, golden-haired, and with an idea of how the whole world could be made to fit between the covers of a book.

  A ROUGH ATL
AS | In 1554, Jan Rademacher, a friend of Ortelius, started working for Gillis Hooftman–‘the well-known merchant of Antwerp’–whose ship traded goods from near and far. Hooftman purchased all the maps he could get his hands on, as this not only helped him to calculate the distances from one place to the next and to understand the dangers that might await his crew should they choose one route over another, but also to keep up to date on the European wars. ‘And as the period was rich in disturbing events, he would buy maps of all the parts of the world that existed,’ wrote Rademacher in a letter late in life.

  Time and again, the enterprising Hooftman–who wasn’t one to waste time and would therefore fold out his maps while eating or discussing where it was worth going with others–found that the maps were produced in a format more suited to a wall than to a table full of food and drink. Rademacher suggested that it might be a good idea to gather a number of smaller maps together to make a book, and Hooftman agreed. He therefore tasked Rademacher with finding as many small maps as possible, and Rademacher passed the assignment on to Ortelius. The result was a small book of thirty-eight maps that proved to be extremely practical–Hooftman could now leaf through the maps while sitting at his dining table or in bed. Ortelius had created a rough version of what would become his life’s work–the world’s first modern atlas.

  CHRISTOPHER PLANTIN | Four years later, 31-year-old Ortelius walked into De gulden passer–the Golden Compasses–the printing house and bookshop of Christopher Plantin. Plantin was French, and originally a bookbinder, but became a printer and publisher after a drunken man attacked him with a sword, delivering such a blow to his arm that the injury left him unable to bind books. After Ortelius left, he noted: ‘Le 13 Janvier 1558. A Abraham paintre des cartes 1 Virgilius Latin rel. en parchemin’ (‘13 January 1558. For Abraham who colours maps I Virgilius in Latin, bound in parchment’).

  Like Mercator, Plantin became one of Ortelius’s lifelong friends, and not long after their first meeting hired Ortelius to colour thirty-six copies of a map of the landscape of northern France. From the 1560s, Plantin also acquired the original maps that Ortelius had begun to make.

  The oldest known map signed by Ortelius is from 1564, a large world map measuring 148 by 87 centimetres, printed across eight sheets, and modelled on the maps of German Caspar Vopel and Italian Giacomo Gastaldi from 1545 and 1561. Ortelius also consulted Marco Polo’s travelogues, classical sources including Ptolemy, and Spanish and Portuguese maps, spending much time studying what other cartographers had done and scrutinising everything in the greatest possible detail. The result was a map that reproduced all the latest and most reliable information Ortelius could lay his hands on.

  Ortelius’s first map had little impact on other maps; nor did the next two maps he completed, one of Egypt and one of the Holy Land, attract much attention. But in 1567, when Ortelius showed Plantin a wall map of Asia, Plantin sensed that significant sales were ahead and purchased 100 copies for one guilder each. This was the success that made Ortelius’s name among the cartographers of the age.

  In a text addressed to those who viewed the map, Ortelius noted that Giacomo Gastaldi, a worthy geographer, had recently published a map of Asia based on a version by Arab cosmographer Ismael Abulfeda, and had not included the original creator’s name. Ortelius never tried to hide the fact that his map was based on Gastaldi’s version–through a friend, he had learned that Gastaldi had failed to credit his source, Abulfeda, and criticised Gastaldi for the omission. Ortelius would not make the same mistake when gathering maps he could use in the book he was planning–an expanded and more thorough version of the simple collection of maps he had created in 1554. He carefully noted down the name of the creator of every map he wished to include.

  THE WORLD BY LETTER | ‘I therefore send you my map of Wales, not completed in all its details, but faithfully drawn,’ wrote Welsh cartographer Humphrey Lhuyd to Ortelius in 1568. Ortelius had sent Lhuyd a copy of his map of Asia, simultaneously asking for permission to use Lhuyd’s map of Wales in his forthcoming book as he knew it was the best available map of the region. Lhuyd continued: ‘You will also receive a map of England with its ancient and modern names, and another map of England tolerably accurate.’

  Abraham Ortelius’s map of the northern regions from 1570. ‘Septentrionalium’ was the Latin name for the north, because the Romans called the group of stars known as the Plough ‘Septentriones’–the seven oxen. Because this constellation is always visible in the north, Septentriones also became the Roman name for this cardinal direction. Note that Greenland is drawn as an island–this is something Ortelius could not possibly have known at the time, since no Europeans had travelled so far north.

  Ortelius had a large network of cartographers and geographers he could contact to obtain the best possible maps. Historian Johannes Pannonius sent him a map of Transylvania, English explorer and diplomat Anthony Jenkins gave him a map of Russia and so on and so forth, until Ortelius had a large pile of maps to work from.

  Ortelius redrew all the maps he received in the format of his new book, editing and improving them wherever possible. This process, which no one had ever attempted before, gave the maps a standardised appearance. The Italians had a tradition of creating books of maps by gathering individual maps together and binding them, but these maps were all of different sizes and featured varying typography, symbols and colours–Ortelius’s atlas is known as the first of its kind because he aimed to create a standardised depiction of the world between the covers of a book. It was a huge undertaking, and took its toll–in July 1568 Ortelius wrote a letter to a doctor friend describing the heart palpitations he’d been experiencing.

  After Ortelius had drawn the maps he passed them to his good friend Frans Hogenberg, one of the best engravers of his time, who incised them onto copper plates. In determining the order in which the maps should be presented, Ortelius followed ‘Ptolemy, prince of geography’, who recommended opening with a world map before presenting the countries from the north-west to the south-east. In September 1569, Ortelius purchased forty-seven rolls of paper from Plantin. He paid for the publication himself.

  At this time, however, Plantin was occupied with printing a multilingual version of the Bible in eight volumes, which is probably why he didn’t have time to print the first edition of his friend’s atlas. Ortelius therefore approached Gillis Coppens van Dienst, a master printer with over thirty years’ experience with maps and cosmographic works, and it was van Dienst who noted down the day on which the Theatrum orbis terrarum was published–20 May 1570.

  THE EYE OF HISTORY | ‘Abrahamus Ortelius of Antwerp to the benevolent reader,’ begins Ortelius’s preface. ‘Seeing, that as I think, there is no man, Gentle Reader, but knoweth what, and how great profit the knowledge of histories, doth bring to those which are serious students therein, I do verily believe and persuade myself, that there is almost no man […] that is ignorant how necessary, for the understanding of them aright, the knowledge of Geography is, which in that respect therefore which is of some, and not without just cause, called the eye of history.’

  To make this connection between history and geography was not unusual. In the Middle Ages, certain church fathers emphasised that knowledge of the Holy Land’s geography resulted in a greater understanding of holy scripture. During the Renaissance, the connection followed the scientific reproductions of a world that had become much larger and much more accurately described than previously–reproductions that meant people could now ‘see things that were done, and where they were done, as if they happened in the present,’ as Ortelius put it–almost like watching events unfold in a theatre.

  For the first time, those who could afford it were now able to purchase the whole world, bound within a book. The cover of the Theatrum presents four and a half continents represented by female figures. At the top, Europe sits on a throne, wearing a crown, two globes placed to her left and right. Directly beside her is a third globe, which she’s holding with the help of a c
ross, as she’s responsible for bringing Christianity to the world.

  Asia is also clad in noble robes, but has a tiara rather than a crown, and is subordinate to the European queen, as is Africa–more sparsely clad and wearing a halo inspired by the Sun to emphasise the heat where she lives. At the very bottom is their American sister, but little about her is reminiscent of the advanced civilisations–the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs–encountered there by the Spanish. This is primitive, cannibalistic America, holding a European man’s head in her hand–naked and armed, she is a femme fatale who both seduces and devours European men. Beside her is a bust that represents the as yet only partly discovered continent furthest south: ‘Terra australis nondum cognita’–‘The southern land not yet known’.

  AUSTRALIA | The ancient Greeks had long ago imagined that there must be large, unknown land masses south of the equator. ‘There must be a region bearing the same relation to the southern pole as the place we live in bears to our pole,’ wrote Aristotle in his Meteorology. In around the year AD 400, Roman philosopher Macrobius drew a map featuring a large, cold continent far to the south: ‘Frigida Australis’. Magellan believed that he had the southern continent on his port side when in 1520 he sailed through the strait between the islands of Tierra del Fuego and the American mainland.

  ‘Some call this southern continent “Magellanicam” after its finder,’ Ortelius has written on Terra australis, and on the part of the continent located below South America he uses the name Magellan gave the region: ‘Terra del Fuego’. Further away, below Africa, he has written ‘Psitacorum regio’–‘Region of Parrots’. The name is Portuguese, and has resulted in speculation about whether the Portuguese had already mapped parts of Australia at this time in connection with their trading activities with the Spice Islands slightly further north, and whether Ortelius had access to these maps. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that Ortelius has drawn in a strait between New Guinea and Terra australis–a strait that was not officially discovered by the Europeans until Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through it in the year 1606.