History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0116/01161.txt

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$Unique_ID{how01161}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Discovery Of America
Part VIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Fiske, John}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{map
globe
name
asia
america
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$Date{1892}
$Log{}
Title:       Discovery Of America
Book:        Chapter VII: Mundus Novus
Author:      Fiske, John
Date:        1892

Part VIII

     We shall the better understand that further stage if we pause to
illustrate, by means of two or three early maps, just what the phrase "New
World" meant to the men who first used it.  A glance at my sketch of Martin
Behaim's globe will assure the reader that in the old scheme of things there
was no place for such a coast as that which Americus had lately explored.
Such a coast would start to the east of Behaim's 330th meridian, a little
below the equator, and would run at least as far as south as the southern
extremity of Behaim's island of "Candyn." Nobody had ever dreamed of inhabited
land in such a place.  What could it be?  What could be said of its relations
to Asia?  Two contrasted opinions are revealed by the old maps.  As in the
days of Ptolemy and Mela, we again see a dry theory confronted by a wet
theory.  Some supposed the "Land of the Holy Cross" to be a southeasterly
projection from the vast continental mass of Asia; others conceived it as an
island of quasi-continental dimensions lying to the southeast of Asia,
somewhat in the position actually occupied by Australia.  This theory is most
vividly presented on the map of the world by Johann Ruysch, in the edition of
Ptolemy published at Rome in 1508.  This is the earliest published map that
shows any parts of America, and it is the first such map that was engraved,
except perhaps the Tabula Terre Nove.  It exhibits a study of many and various
sources of information, and is a very interesting sketch of the earth's
surface as conceived at that time by a truly learned geographer.  In the
eastern half of his map Ruysch is on a pretty firm ground of knowledge as far
east as the Ganges.  The relative position of Sailam (Ceylon) is indicated
with a fair approach to correctness.  Taprobana (Ptolemy's Ceylon) has now
become a different island, apparently Sumatra; and both this island and
Malacca are carried more than a thousand miles too far to the south, probably
from associations with Ptolemy's Cattigara land.  Curiously enough, Ceylon
(Seylan) reappears in latitude 40 Degrees S. as the very tip end of Asia.
Coming now to the western half of the map, we find Sumatra reappearing as
"Iava Minor," and Java itself as "Iava Major" wildly out of place.  Ciamba
(Cochin China), Mangi and Cathay (southern and northern China) are given,
after Marco Polo, with tolerable correctness; but Bangala (Bengal) is mixed up
with them on the coast of the Plisacus Sinus (Yellow Sea).  Gog and Magog,
from the Catalan map of 1375, are separated only by a great desert from
Greenland, which is depicted with striking correctness in its relations to
Gunnbjorn's Skerries (at B) and Iceland, as well as to Terra Nova (probably
Labrador) and I.  Baccalauras (Newfoundland).  The voyages of the Cortereals
are recognized in the name C. de Portogesi.  In rather startling proximity
comes the Barbadoes.  The island which terminates with the scroll C probably
represents the Florida of the Cantino map, with which this of Ruysch is
demonstrably connected by the droll blunder "Abatia oniu sactoru" on the
Brazilian coast.  There is no mistaking Spagnola (Hayti), which Ruysch is
still inclined (in legend D) to identify with Cipango.  The fabulous Antilia
is in the same longitude as upon Behaim's globe.  If now, contrasting Ruysch
with Behaim, we observe the emergence of the "Land of the Holy Cross, or New
World" from the Atlantic ocean, in place of the fabulous St. Brandan's isle,
we cannot fail to see in a moment what was the most huge and startling feature
that had been added to the map of the world during the interval between 1492
and 1507. And this emergence of land from an unknown deep was due chiefly to
the third voyage of Vespucius, for the short extent of Pearl Coast explored by
Columbus in 1498 was not enough to impress men's minds with the idea of a
great continent detached from Asia.

     So far as "Mundus Novus" is concerned, I have called Ruysch's map an
exponent of the wet or oceanic theory.  In its northern portion, however,
where Greenland and Labrador are joined to China, we have the continental or
dry style of theorizing, very much after the fashion of Claudius Ptolemy.  For
an extreme illustration of the oceanic style of interpretation we must look to
the Lenox globe, which was discovered in Paris about forty years ago, and
afterward found its way into the library of Mr. James Lenox, of New York.
This is a copper globe, about five inches in diameter, made in two sections
which accurately fit together, making a spherical box; the line of junction
forms the equator.  The maker's name is unknown, but it is generally agreed
that it must have been made in 1510 or early in 1511. ^1 It is one of the
earliest records of a reaction against the theory that it would be possible to
walk westward from Cuba to Spain dry-shod.  Here the new discoveries are all
placed in the ocean at a good distance from the continent of Asia, and all
except South America are islands.  The land discovered by the Cabots appears,
without a name, just below the Arctic circle, with a small vessel approaching
it on the east.  Just above the fortieth parallel a big sea monster is
sturdily swimming toward Portugal.  The sixtieth meridian west from Lisbon
cuts through Isabel (Cuba) and Hayti, which are placed too far north, as on
most of the early maps.  If we compare the position of these islands here with
the imaginary Antilia on Ruysch's map, we shall have no difficulty in
understanding how they came to be called Antilles.  A voyage of about 1,000
miles westward, from Isabel, on this Lenox globe, brings us to Zipangri
(Japan), which occupies the position actually belonging to Lower California.
Immediately southeast of Japan begins a vast island or quasi-continent, with
the name "Terra do Brazil" at its northwestern extremity.  The general name of
this whole portion of the earth is "Mundus Novus" or "Terra Sanctae Crucis."
The purely hypothetical character of the western coast-line is confessed by
the dots.  The maker knew nothing of the existence of the Pacific ocean and
nothing of South America except the northern and eastern coasts; he had no
means of proving that it did not extend as solid land all the way to Asia; but
his general adherence to the wet theory, i.e. his general disposition to
imagine water rather than land in the unknown regions, led him to give it a
western boundary.  He would probably have called it a vast island in the
Atlantic ocean. Observe that the eastern coast seems to be known as far as
latitude 50 Degrees S. and beyond, and a notable eastward twist at the
extremity seems intended to include the ice-bound coast where Vespucius turned
back in 1502.

[Footnote 1: There is a description of the Lenox globe by Dr. De Costa, in
Magazine of American History, September, 1879, vol. iii. pp. 529-540.]

     The Ruysch map and the Lenox globe illustrate sufficiently the various
views of those who were inclined to imagine the region we call South America
as separated from Asia by water.  In the globe we have an extreme instance of
oceanic theory, in Ruysch a kind of compromise.  Now for an instance of the
opposite or continental theory we cannot do better than cite a very remarkable
globe, made, indeed, a quarter of a century later than Ringmann's edition of
the "Mundus Novus," but retaining the earlier views in spite of more recent
discoveries.  This globe was made in 1531, by Oronce Fine, better known as
Orontius Finaeus, a native of Dauphiny, professor of mathematics in the
College Royal deFrance.  In his mathematics Orontius, though clever, was
decidedly unsound; ^1 but his knowledge of geography was extensive and minute.
One of the chief points of interest in his globe is the conservatism with
which it presents a geographical theory derived from Ptolemy and dovetails
into it the new discoveries. ^2 This makes it excellent testimony to the views
of the continentalists, if I may so call them, in the time of Ruysch's map and
the Lenox globe.  The reader must bear in mind that before Orontius made his
globe, Mexico had been discovered and conquered, the Pacific ocean had been
discovered and crossed, the Peruvian coast had been explored as far as
latitude 10 Degrees S., the North American coast had been followed from
Labrador to Florida, and Portuguese sailors had found their way around Malacca
to the coast of China.  Yet so far was Orontius from assimilating the unwieldy
mass of facts so rapidly thrust before the mind, that we find him unable to
surrender the preconceived theory - common to him with many other geographers
- which made what we call South America a huge peninsula jutting out
southeasterly from Asia.  This, I say, was the dry or Ptolemaic way of
conceiving the position of "Mundus Novus," as Ruych's was the wet or Mela-like
way of conceiving it.

[Footnote 1: He believed that he had discovered how to square the circle and
trisect angles, "ce qui est un peu scandaleux de la part d'un professeur du
College Royal de France," says Delambre, Astronomie du Moyen Age, p. 400.]

[Footnote 2: A double-hearted map representing this globe, with northern and
southern hemispheres each on a polar projection, was published in Grynaeus,
Novus, Orbis, Paris, 1531.  It is reproduced by Henry Stevens, in his
Historical and Geographical Notes, London, 1869.  Stevens also gives a
reduction of it to Mercator's projection, after which I have made my
simplified sketch.  For the sake of clearness I have omitted many details
which have nothing whatever to do with the purpose for which it is here
cited.]

     Starting now from the prime meridian and from the top of the map, we may
observe that Orontius has a fairly good idea of the relations between
Greenland and Baccalar (Labrador-Newfoundland).  Florida and the northern part
of the gulf of Mexico are quite well depicted.  Observe the positions of the
Rio de Santo Espiritu (the Mississippi), the R. Panuco, and the Rio de
Alvarado, as well as of Temisteta (the city of Mexico); they are given with a
fair approach to correctness.  But observer also that these places are
supposed to be in China, and there is Cambaluc (Peking) about 1,000 miles
distant from the city of Mexico, slightly to west of north!  As for Parias
(i.e. Lariab), which the early maps sometimes correctly place by the river
Panuco, but which is oftener confounded with Paria and placed near the island
of Grenada, the worthy Orontius makes a compromise, and it stands here for
what we call Central America.  And now we come to the most instructive feature
of the map.  The Mexican peninsula being represented as part of Asia, the
"Mundus Novus," here called America, is represented as a further offshoot from
Asia.  But this is not all.  In the theory of Orontius America is evidently a
part of the Terra Incognita by which Ptolemy imagined Asia to be joined to
Africa, enclosing the Indian ocean. This is proved by the position of the name
Cattigara, which occurs in the same latitude at the easternmost verge of
Ptolemy's world; and it is further illustrated by the bits of antarctic
continent labelled "Regio Patalis" and "Brazielie Regio" (!) peeping up from
the lower border.  The "Mare Magellanicum," or Pacific ocean, was to the mind
of Orontius only a huge gulf in a landlocked Indian ocean!  This notion of an
antarctic continent coming well up into the southern temperate zone may be
seen upon many maps, and it survived into the seventeenth century. ^1 It was
probably a reminiscence of both Ptolemy and Mela, of Ptolemy's Terra Incognita
and Mela's Antichthon or Opposite Earth.  Mela's idea that Taprobane, or some
such point eastward in Asia, formed an entrance to this antipodal world was
very nearly in harmony with the suggestion, upon Ptolemy's map, that one might
go thither from Cattigara. ^2 In this southern world, according to Mela's
doctrine of the zones, the course of things was quite contrary to that with
which we are familiar.  Shadows fell to the south, it was summer in December
and winter in June, and the cold increased as you went southward.  Mela had
even heard that somewhere out in "India," on the way toward this mysterious
region, the Greater and Lesser Bears disappeared from the sky. ^1 In the
Middle Ages there was more or less discussion as to the possible existence of
such an antipodal world as Mela had described; and among the clergy there was
a strong disposition to condemn the theory on the ground that it implied the
existence of a race of men cut off (by an impassable torrid zone) from the
preaching of the gospel.  The notion of this fiery zone was irretrievably
damaged when the Portuguese circumnavigated Africa; it was finally demolished
by the third voyage of Vespucius.  Many things seen upon that voyage must have
recalled Mela's antipodal world with startling vividness.  It is true that the
characteristics of the southern temperate zone had been to some extent
observed in Africa.  But to encounter them in a still greater degree and in
the western ocean on the way to Asia, upon the coast of a vast country which
no one could call by name, was quite another affair.  That it did not fail to
suggest Ptolemy's Terra Incognita is proved by the position of Cattigara and
the general conception of the Indian ocean upon the globe of Orontius; and for
those who preferred Mela's wet theory it was fair to suppose that the "Mundus
Novus" as given upon Ruysch's map was the entrance to that geographer's
antipodal world.  From a passage interpolated in the Latin text of the
Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) we learn that this supposed antipodal world in the
southern hemisphere was sometimes called "Quarta Pars." ^1 Europe, Asia, and
Africa were the three parts of the earth, and so this opposite region,
hitherto unknown, but mentioned by Mela and indicated by Ptolemy, was the
Fourth Part.  We can now begin to understand the intense and wildly absorbing
interest with which people read the brief story of the third voyage of
Vespucius, ^2 and we can see that in the nature of that interest there was
nothing calculated to bring it into comparison with the work of Columbus.  The
two navigators were not regarded as rivals in doing the same thing, but as men
who had done two very different things; and to give credit to the one was by
no means equivalent to withholding credit from the other.

[Footnote 1: See for example the maps of Agnese, 1536, and Gastaldi, 1548.  On
the great influence of Ptolemy and Mela in the sixteenth century, there are
some good remarks in Thomassy, Les Papes geographes et la cartographie du
Vatican, Paris, 1852.]

[Footnote 2: Orontius was not alone in identifying the New World with
Ptolemy's Cattigara land.  The name recurs upon old maps, as e.g.  the French
mappemonde of about 1540, now in the British Museum.  It is given in Winsor,
Narr. and Crit. Hist., viii. 389.  In this map, made after the discovery of
Peru had had time to take effect, the name Cattigara is simply pushed
southward into Chilian territory.]

[Footnote 1: De Situ Orbis, lib. iii. cap. 7; probably a misunderstanding of
the very different statement reported by Strabo (ii. 1, Section 19), that in
the southern part of India the Greater and Lesser Bears are seen to set.]

[Footnote 1: "Extra tres ptes orb: qrta e ps trasocceanu iteriore i meridie q
sol' arderibs nob' incognita e: i cuis finibs antipodes fabulose habitare
dicuntur." Harrisse, Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, p. 40.]

[Footnote 2: When we remember how much theological discussion there had been
with regard to an antipodal world beyond the equator, we can appreciate the
startling effect of the simple right-angled triangle with which Americus
illustrated the statement that he had sailed over an arc of 90 Degrees from
Lisbon to a point where the zenith corresponded to Lisbon's horizon: - "Igitur
ut dixi ab Olysippo, unde digressi sumus, quod ab linea equinoctiali distat
gradibus trigintanouem semis nauigavimus vltra lineam equinoctialem per
quinquaginta gradus qui simul juncti efficiunt gradus circiter nonaginta, que
summa eam quartam partem obteniat summi circuli, secundum veram mensure
rationem ab antiquis nobis traditam, manifestum est nos nauigasse quartam
mundi partem.  Et hac ratione nos Olysippum habitantes citra lineam
equinoctialem gradu trigesimo nono semis in latitudine septentrionali sumus ad
illos qui gradu quingentesimo habitant vltra eandem lineam in meridionali
latitude angulariter gradus quinque in linea transuersali:et vt clarius
intelligas: Perpendicularis linea que dum recti stamus a puncto celi imminente
vertici nostro dependet in caput nostrum: illis dependet in datus [read latus]
vel in costas.  Quo fit vt nos simus in linea recta: ipsi vero in linea
transuersa, et species fiat trianguli orthogoni, cujus vicem linee tenemus
cathete ipsi autem basis et hipotenusa a nostro ad illorum pretenditur
verticem: vt in figura patet.

Mundus Novus, 1504, apud Varnhagen, p. 24.  The Venetian version introduces
the above paragraph with the heading, -

     "Forma dela quarta parte de la terra retrouata."]

     The last point which we are called upon to observe in the Orontius globe
is the occurrence of the name America in place of the Mundus Novus of the
Ruysch map and the Lenox globe.  Thus in about a quarter of a century the
first stage in the development of the naming of America had been completed.
That stage consisted of five distinct steps: 1. Americus called the regions
visited by him beyond the equator a "new world" because they were unknown to
the ancients; 2. Giocondo made this striking phrase Mundus Novus into a title
for his translation of the letter, which he published at Paris while the
writer was absent from Europe and probably without his knowledge; ^1 3. the
name Mundus Novus got placed upon several maps as an equivalent for Terra
Sanctae Crucis, or what we cal Brazil; 4. the suggestion was made that Mundus
Novus was the Fourth Part of the earth, and might properly be named America,
after its discoverer; 5. the name America thus got placed upon several maps as
an equivalent for what we call Brazil, and sometimes came to stand alone as an
equivalent for what we call South America, but still signified only a part of
the dry land beyond the Atlantic to which Columbus had led the way.  We have
described the first three of these steps, and it is now time to say something
about the fourth and fifth.

[Footnote 1: Since Vespucius was so careful to withhold his book from the
press until he could have leisure to revise it, I am inclined to believe that
if he had known what Giocondo was doing he would not have been pleased.]

    Rene II., de Vaudemont, reigning Duke of Lorraine, and titular King of
Sicily and Jerusalem - the "blue-eyed gentle Rene" who with the aid of stout
Swiss halberds overthrew Charles the Bold at Nancy in 1477 - was an
enthusiastic patron of literature and the arts, and at his little town of
Saint-Die, nestling in one of those quiet valleys in the Vosges mountains
which the beautiful tales of Erckmann-Chatrian have invested with imperishable
charm, there was a college.  The town had grown up about a Benedictine
monastery founded in the seventh century by St. Deodatus, bishop of Nevers.
Toward the end of the tenth century this monastery was secularized and its
government placed in the hands of a collegiate chapter of canons under the
presidency of a mitred prelate whose title was Grand Provost.  The chapter was
feudal lord of the neighbouring demesnes, and thus as the population increased
under its mild rule there grew up the small town in whose name Deodatus
suffered contraction into Die. ^1.  It is now a place of some 8,000
inhabitants, the seat of a bishopric, and noted for its grain and cattle
markets, its fine linen fabrics, and its note-paper.  From the lofty peaks
that tower above the town you can almost catch sight of Speyer where
Protestantism first took its name, while quite within the range of vision come
Strasburg, associated with the invention of printing, Freiburg with that of
gunpowder, and Vaucouleurs in the native country of the Maid of Orleans.  The
college of Saint-Die was curiously associated with the discovery of America,
for it was there that toward 1410 the Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly wrote his "Imago
Mundi," the book which so powerfully influenced the thoughts of Columbus.  At
the end of that century there were several eminent men among the canons, as
Pierre de Blarru, author of the local heroic poem the "Nanccide, Jean Basin de
Sendacour, of whom we shall have more to say presently and Duke Rene's
secretary, Walter Lud.  Under the auspices of the latter a printing press was
set up at Saint-Die about the year 1500, and so many learned men came to the
college that Pico della Mirandola wondered how such a society could ever have
been brought together in so obscure a town.  One of the lights of this little
society was the brilliant and witty young Ringmann, who returned from Paris in
1505 and accepted a professorship of Latin at Saint-Die.  About the same time
another young man of three-and-twenty or so, named Martin Waldseemuller, ^1 a
native of Freiburg in the Breisgau, was appointed professor of geography at
Saint-Die, and an intimate friendship sprang up between him and Ringmann.  The
latter had acquired while at Paris, and probably through his acquaintance with
Fra Giocondo, a warm admiration for Vespucius, and published, as we have
already seen, in 1505 a Latin version of the letter to Medici, under the title
"De Ora Antarctica."

[Footnote 1: Avezac, Martin Waltzemuller, p. 12.]

[Footnote 1: The family name seems to have been Waltzemuller, but he always
preferred to write it Waldseemuller.  He was more commonly known by his
literary name Hylacomylus.]