Theater of the World

by Thomas Reinertsen Berg

  That same year, Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon became the first European we know of to map parts of the northern coast of Australia and go ashore there. It would then be another thirty-six years before another Dutchman, Abel Tasman, embarked on a long voyage south to find a place on Terra australis rumoured to be full of gold. While he didn’t find what he was looking for, he did discover the island of Tasmania south of Australia, and was the also first European to reach New Zealand and subsequently map parts of these two islands. In 1644, Tasman travelled to the north and north-west coasts of Australia, thoroughly mapping this region and dubbing it ‘Niew Holland’. A world map from two years later is the first to feature New Zealand.

  But since the Dutch found neither spices nor gold, nor anything else of value in these areas, they soon lost interest, and the rest of the region remained unknown until the British captain James Cook mapped New Zealand in 1769 and the east coast of Australia in the following year. But the question of whether or not the south coast was linked to a large continent at the south pole remained open. Only when British navigator Matthew Flinders sailed around the entire continent and published the ‘General chart of Terra Australis or Australia: Showing the parts explored between 1798 and 1803 by M. Flinders Commr. of H.M.S. Investigator’ was Australia no longer a ‘nondum cognita’.

  A SUCCESS | The first edition of Theatrum orbis terrarum contained sixty-nine maps. To create these, Ortelius built upon the work of eighty-nine cartographers, and named each and every one of them–the list is a kind of Who’s Who in European cartography at the end of the 1500s. Mercator, of course, features here, represented by ‘Palæstinæ, siue Terræ Sanctæ’ and ‘Item Flandriæ’, together with Humfredus Lhuyd (‘Angliæ Regni Tabulam’), Antonius Ienkinsonus (‘Rußiam’) and Olaus Magnus Gothus (‘Regionum Septentrionalium Tabulam’).

  On the world map–‘Typus orbis terrarum’–is a quotation from the Roman politician and lawyer Cicero, which provides a glimpse of the deeper meaning Ortelius saw in cartography: ‘Quid ei potest videri magnum in rebus humanis, cui aeternitas omnis, totiusque mundi nota sit magnitudo’ (‘For what human affairs can seem important to a man who keeps all eternity before his eyes and knows the vastness of the universe?’).

  After the world map come the maps of the continents: ‘Americae Sive Novi Orbis, Nova Descriptio’; ‘Asiae Nova Descriptio’; ‘Africae Tabula Nova’ and ‘Europae’. England, Scotland and Ireland have the honour of being the first countries to have individual maps included, since Ortelius had no maps of the westernmost, American countries to include in the first edition. The order in which the maps are presented is as classical as Ptolemy, and as modern as that which can still be found in atlases today.

  In his preface, Ortelius apologises that many readers will search the atlas for a map of their homeland in vain. He assures these readers that the missing maps have not been consciously omitted, overlooked or left out because he didn’t wish to spend money on them, but rather because he was unable to find maps of a high enough quality for inclusion. Ortelius therefore encourages readers who either have or know of maps he might use in the next editions of the atlas to send them to him, so that ‘hereafter they may be inserted into this our book.’

  This was a relatively common strategy among cartographers at the time–on his map of Europe, Mercator had appealed to the ‘benevolent reader’ to supply him with cartographic sketches and astronomical coordinates for use in his next project. Such requests formed the basis for a productive collaboration between cartographers and the public–a friend sent Ortelius a map of Moravia, and one day he received a letter and enclosed map of Sina from an Italian, who encouraged Ortelius to use the map in his next edition of Theatrum, ‘which, I believe, will soon be necessary.’

  The atlas sold well–the first printing of 325 copies was followed by a second just three months later, and the Dutch translation, Theatre oft Toonneel des Aerdtbodems, was published the following year. The French and German editions were published in 1572: Théâtre de l’univers and Theatrum oder Schawbüch des Erdtkreijs. ‘All extol your Theatrum to the skies and wish you well for it,’ wrote one enthusiastic reader, and in a letter to Ortelius dated in 1570, Mercator wrote: ‘I have examined your Theatrum and compliment you on the care and elegance with which you have embellished the labours of the authors, and the faithfulness with which you have preserved the production of each individual, which is essential in order to bring out the geographical truth, which is so corrupted by map-makers.’

  Most of the individuals who purchased the Theatrum were academics and wealthy citizens. The atlas was uncoloured, but those who wanted a coloured copy could pay Anne Ortel or another colourist to colour it for them. In May 1571, Plantin noted that Mynken Liefrinck, one of his employees, had received six guilders and fifteen stuivers for colouring an entire atlas–around the same price as that paid for the book. Some years later, Liefrinck was handsomely rewarded for a magnificent edition for the Spanish court, painted in in silver and gold: ‘Afgeset een Theatrum in Spaens met gout ende silver tot 36 fl.’–thirty-six guilders.

  Less affluent readers could buy the entire atlas unbound, as a sheaf of separate sheets, or purchase individual map sheets of the areas they were interested in–these cost two stuivers each, or five if they were coloured.

  The Theatrum orbis terrarum was continually improved and expanded as Ortelius both added new maps and replaced outdated ones. The 1573 edition includes sixty maps–seventeen more than the first edition–and in 1579, when Plantin finally had capacity to print the atlas, the book featured ninety-three maps. Ortelius continued to maintain contact with the world’s most prominent cartographers, including Mercator, who in 1580 wrote to Ortelius to inform him that he had heard of someone creating a wonderful new map of France, and that he himself had received a new world map, on which the Far East was depicted particularly well. Ortelius enthusiastically replied that English sea captain Francis Drake had embarked on a new expedition, while Mercator responded that captain Arthur Pitt had set out to explore Asia’s northern regions, and that he would probably return home across the north side of the American continent. In this way, they kept each other informed about the world while Theatrum continued to grow, and in 1591 the atlas reached its largest format, containing a total of 151 maps.

  In December three years later, Ortelius received a letter: ‘Gerardus Mercator died on the 2nd inst. about midday sitting in a chair as if about to take a nap before the fire.’

  In January 1598, Ortelius wrote to a nephew: ‘Farewell, I write no more for I am dying from day to day.’ In July, one of Ortelius’s friends wrote to the same nephew: ‘I therefore inform you that the pious Abraham Ortelius died and rested in the Lord on June 28 and was very decently buried in the Church of St Michael, mourned by many good people who still wished him to live; but his course was to end […]. He is at rest, we still moving.’ Anne outlived her brother by two years.

  Ortelius died unmarried and childless, but sold 7,500 copies of Theatrum orbis terrarum. Plantin’s children and grandchildren took responsibility for the last editions of the atlas, right up until the year 1612.

  EPIGRAPH | In 1630, one of Plantin’s grandsons wrote that he did not wish to publish a new edition of Ortelius’s atlas–that it was better to allow Ortelius to remain the Ptolemy of his time. Perhaps the old geographer would have shed a tear of joy to hear the comparison–which he had once used to complement Mercator–applied to himself.

  With his life’s work, Ortelius had rendered Ptolemy redundant, and now it was he who had become a monument to time past. Ptolemy remained a source for almost 1,500 years–mostly because the time around him had seemed to stand still. But Ortelius was set aside just thirty years after his death, although this is probably as he would have wished–being so indefatigably critical of maps and discarding those that were unfit for purpose or outdated, including his own. Ortelius understood that maps are not set in stone. On the copper plates, the engravers polished out incorrect c
ity names to engrave new ones; hammered out mountain ranges that had been located too far north; and added new information brought home on the merchants’ ships. The world was in a state of constant change. Ortelius raised the curtain on the theatre of the world–but others played on. The atlas quickly became established as a standard of the cartographic tradition for which there was great demand.

  THE BUSINESS | The maps of the Renaissance were a continuation of the late-medieval nautical charts–generally created with practical purposes in mind, rather than religious ones, and influenced by the Europeans’ increasing voyages out into the world. The translation of the works of Ptolemy into Latin in the early 1400s resulted in a gradual change in direction to a more scientific and experience-based attitude to map-making, and a more professional one–individuals like Abraham Ortelius and Gerardus Mercator were among the first to make a living from their maps as an enterprise. The art of printing enabled a distribution of maps that would have been impossible when every single copy had to be drawn by hand; rich merchants, diplomats, professors, aristocrats and others had the necessary funds to finance increasingly accurate and up-to-date maps. In the Middle Ages, a schematic map from the year AD 800 might appear in a book published 400 years later, but in the Renaissance maps had a much shorter lifetime.

  In 1533, Dutch cartographer Gemma Frisius published a small book about land surveying. This drawing shows how he constructed a network of triangles starting in Antwerp, and used simple geometry to calculate the distances to the neighbouring cities of Bruxel (Brussels), Mittelburgum (Middelburg), Louamum (Leuven) and others. His method was used all the way up until the invention of positioning using satellites.

  Excerpt from the 1644 edition of Johannes Janssonius’s map of the Diocese of Stavanger from 1636. The map states that the bishop of Stavanger’s journey through the Diocese of Bergen starts south-west of the island of Findaass (Bømlo).

  VENTURING OUT

  Hardangerfjord, Norway

  59° 36′ 18″ N

  5° 12′ 41″ E

  This is where the journey through the Diocese of Bergen to Hallingdal and Valdres starts. The bishop of Stavanger, Laurids Clausen Scavenius, sails into the Hardangerfjord between Ryvarden and Bømlo in western Norway, past the old abbey on the island of Halsnøy, to visit the most remote areas of his diocese. At the innermost end of the fjord, at the village of Eidfjord, a crew is waiting to transport him over the Hardanger mountains to the long valleys in the east. Scavenius takes notes along the way, with the intention of drawing a map.

  Scavenius is responsible for a geographically challenging and divided diocese. Since the year 1125, the cathedral in Stavanger has been responsible for the inland areas of Hallingdal and Valdres, but since they border on Trondheim to the north, Bergen to the west and Oslo to the south, Scavenius is forced to travel through the Diocese of Bergen in order to visit them. Scavenius grew up in Copenhagen and studied in northern Germany, and so at the time of his consecration on Whit Sunday in 1605 had never before seen a fjord or a mountain. As he sails into Eidfjord, Mount Oksen and the peak of Toraldsnuten shoot straight up from the water, rising 1,240 metres into the sky on either side of him. As he makes his way over the mountains he can see the Hardangerjøkulen glacier when the weather clears.

  Scavenius notes down distances and the names of bridges, rivers, mountains, villages and lakes: Vatnedal, Lia bro, Brommen, Biordals Vand, Fielde field and Marrete Stuen. He had already familiarised himself with the Diocese of Stavanger, entering a list of the incomes of each parish and deanery in his land register, Grågås. After returning from his journey to Hallingdal and Valdres, back home in his episcopal palace, he uses his notes to complete an area of the map he is working on.

  Scavenius’s original map has unfortunately not survived, but we know of its existence because some years later a Danish historian wrote that the map was created in 1618, and because Dutch cartographers Joan and Cornelius Blaeu printed the map Dioecesis Stavangriensis & partes aliquot vicinæ, opera L. Scavenii, S. S (Diocese of Stavanger and Some Adjacent Regions, prepared by L. Scavenii, S. S) in 1638.

  Nor do we have any papers from the episcopal archives, or Scavenius himself, that give any indication of how the map was created. But what we do know is that Peder Claussøn Friis, a parish priest in Undal and provost of the Deanery of Lister, and author of the book Norriges og omliggende Øers sandfærdige Bescriffuelse (A Truthful Description of Norway and the Surrounding Islands), also wrote Stavanger Stifts Bescriffuelse (A Description of the Diocese of Stavanger), and gave this to Scavenius some time around the year 1608. Friis was primarily familiar with the southern part of the diocese–about Hallingdal and Valdres he knew little more than that the mountains ‘between Setesdal and Hallingdal are called Halnefield’ and ‘between Hallingdal and Hardanger is Hardangersfield’.

  Scavenius’s source for the coast to the north of his diocese–the part of the Diocese of Bergen he had to sail through to reach Eidfjord–was a map of western Norway drawn by the bishop of Bergen, the Dane Anders Foss, some years earlier. This map has survived, and is the oldest surviving map of a part of Norway to be drawn by someone who lived there.

  The map presents the region of Vestlandet (western Norway) from the Trondheimsfjord to just south of Stavanger, and although the map is only a sketch, it is far more accurate than the Dutch nautical charts that best represented Norwegian waters at this time, and clearly the result of much hard work. All the fjords and islands within the diocese are accurately located, and an entire 700 place names and 120 churches are marked. To the north and south of the Diocese of Bergen, however (i.e. north of the Stad peninsula and south of the municipality of Karmøy), the representations are fairly approximate, which emphasises the fact that this is a diocese map.

  The Diocese of Bergen included Nordfjord in the region of Fjordane, a county given to the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe by the king. Brahe obtained most of the income required to run his large Danish observatory from here–the fjord’s farmers paid him taxes in the form of dried fish, animal skins, tar, butter, cheese and small amounts of money. Brahe’s income from the county amounted to around 1,000 daler (the Scandinavian currency at the time) per year.

  Anders Foss was a friend of Brahe’s, who often made visits to the astronomer’s observatory and gave him his map of western Norway in 1595. Brahe wrote the words ‘Descriptiones littorum Noruagiae & quedem alia’ (‘Descriptions of Norway’s coasts and some other areas’) on the map, packed it up, and took it with him when leaving Denmark after losing his royal support some years later. The map then remained lost for 300 years, until it was rediscovered among Brahe’s posthumous papers.

  It was therefore via Scavenius’s copy that Foss’s map became a part of the geography of the 1600s. The bishop of Stavanger, who most likely discussed geography with the bishop of Bergen whenever they visited one another, must have drawn the stretch of coastline from Bømlo and down to Karmøy on his map–the part of the Diocese of Bergen through which the bishops of Stavanger must travel. Scavenius noted this at the mouth of the Hardangerfjord: ‘Hic incipit iter per Diocesim Bergensem in Hallingdaliam et Valdresiam’ (‘Here starts the journey through the Diocese of Bergen to Hallingdal and Valdres’).

  BLUE WILLEM | Brothers Joan and Cornelius Blaeu retained this text when they redrew the map before printing it in 1638. But from what source did they obtain Scavenius’s map? We simply don’t know. All we know for sure is that maps, in the pockets of travelling traders, seamen and military personnel, often moved throughout the landscapes they described–and sometimes even beyond them.

  Joan and Cornelius made up the second generation of the map dynasty founded by their father Willem, who was born Willem Janszoon in 1572. As an adult, Janszoon took his grandfather’s nickname ‘Blaeu Willem’–‘Blue Willem’–as his surname. The Janszoons were a merchant family, but Willem had a passion for mathematics, and so ended up at Tycho Brahe’s observatory in the year 1595–the same year that Bishop Foss visited B
rahe and gave him the map of western Norway. If Blaeu had taken a copy of the map with him upon returning home, perhaps Foss’s map might have been included in one of Blaeu’s many atlases long before 1638.

  In 1605, Blaeu established himself as one of Amsterdam’s many booksellers and printers. The city had taken up the position Antwerp had lost twenty years earlier, when the Spanish had given Antwerp’s Protestant population four years in which to leave. The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, which had earned itself a hard-won kind of independence in 1579, benefited greatly from all the talented individuals fleeing Spanish rule and making their way north. Blaeu acquired premises in the district of Op het water (‘By the water’). Not only was the area teeming with ships and seamen, it was also the heart of publishing in the city, and a central location for booksellers. Blaeu hung a sign featuring a golden sundial and opened his shop, De vergulde sonnewijser.

  The Dutch East India Company had been founded in Amsterdam just three years before Blaeu arrived in the city, and was the Dutch answer to the Spanish and Portuguese spice trade with the Indonesian islands. Although the Dutch lacked the resources and crews of the Iberians, they had printers, engravers and cartographers who could disseminate the latest geographical information via maps, globes and atlases. Ortelius, Mercator, Waldseemüller and others proved that it was possible to make a living from producing maps, and in 1590s Amsterdam a large number of cartographers competed to offer the trading companies the best maps available. The Spanish and Portuguese stuck to hand-drawn maps in a futile attempt to keep the information about their trade routes secret.