Freiburger historische Bestände - digital

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' Dionysius Ofer, De Situ orbis habitabilis' (1477), where
he says:—

" We produced (profecimus) this work from the most
illustrious cosmographers and geographers of antiquity,
such as Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Diodorus Siculus,
Herodotus, Pliny Secundus, Dionysius and others, as also
from moderns, including Paul of Venice (Marco Polo),
Petrus de Eliaco (Pierre d'Ailly), and the very experienced
men of the King of Portugal."

Further on he tells us, however, that the globe is
absolutely the work of M. Behaim, and adds Ptolemy
to the authorities claimed to have been consulted.

Behaim had access, likewise, to valuable collections of
books and maps, most important among which was the
library of the famous Johann Midler of Konigsberg
(Monteregio), who at the time of his death was engaged
upon a revised edition of Ptolemy,1 which he intended to
illustrate with modern maps, including one of the entire
world. The library had been purchased in 1476 by his
friend and pupil, Bernhard Walther.2 There are three
sections of the globe, upon the origines of which much
light might be thrown by the discovery of ancient maps
formerly in the possession of John Midler. These are
first the region between the Euphrates and Ganges;
secondly south-eastern Asia with its many islands ; thirdly
the greater portion of inner Africa. As to the first it is
remarkable that although Ptolemy's outlines of lakes
and rivers have been retained, his place names have for
the most part been rejected and others substituted, the
source of which I have not been able to trace. Eastern
Asia, with its islands, and Africa have, however, been
copied from a map or maps which were also at the
command of Waldseemiiller. A comparison of that
cartographer's map with Behaim's globe leaves no doubt
as to this, unless we are prepared to assume that
Waldseem uller took his information from the globe, which
I have shown (p. 64) to be quite inadmissible. It was on
the same map that Ritter von Harff,3 who returned to
Germany in 1499 after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land,
performed his fictitious journey from the east coast of
Africa, across the Mountains of the Moon and down the
Nile to Egypt. On Behaim's globe may be traced twenty-
one names, out of about forty to be found on Waldsee-
miiller's map of 1507, and four of them mark stages of the
worthy knight's journey.

1 A broadsheet printed at Nuremberg in 1476 enumerates the work
which J. Miiller proposed to carry out (Brit. Museum, IC. 7081). Joh.
Werner, in 1514, published the first book of Ptolemy, which had been
completed by him. Wilibald Pirckheimer embodied M tiller's annotations
in the Strassburg edition of 1522.

* Walther by his last will and testament enjoined his heirs to part
with this valuable collection of books and MSS. only as a whole, but they
discarded this injunction, and in 1522 ->nly 145 volumes were left. They
were purchased for the town library, but hardly a dozen volumes are to
be found in it to-day. (H. Petz, ' Mitth. d. Ver. f. d. Gesch. d. Stadt
Nurnberg,' VII., 1888, p. 217.)

3 ' Die Pilgerfahrt des Ritters Arnold von Harff in den Jahren 1496-99;'
' Nach den iiltesten Handsohriften,' von Dr. E. von Groote, Coin, 1860.

But long before Waldseemiiller and Behaim, the same
old map must have been accessible to Dom. Nicolaus
Germanus, for in the map of the world in the edition of
Ptolemy published in 1482 he introduces a third head
stream of the Nile, which is evidently derived from it.4

Among maps not yet discovered are those reported to
have been designed by two distinguished Italian artists,
Ambrogio Lorenzetti of Siena (1290-1348) and Giovanni
Bellini of Venice (1428-1516).

There is one other map to which I may refer. In the
Nuremberg city library (Bibl. Solg. I., No. 34) there is a
codex of 1488 containing accounts of the travels of Marco
Polo, St. Brandan, Mandeville, Ulrich (Odorico) of Friaul,
and Hans Schildberger, the original owner of which,
Matthaus Bratzl, steward (Rentmeister) of the Elector of
Bavaria, had a " costly " map prepared to illustrate these
travels. He desired that book and map should never be
separated, but the map is no longer to be found.5 Behaim's
globe contains no data which can be traced to Odorico or
Schildberger.

Conclusion.

Behaim is no doubt indebted to his globe, and to the
survival of that globe, for the great reputation which he
enjoys among posterity. But whilst the undoubted
beauties of that globe are due to the miniature painter
Glockenthon, the purely geographical features do not
exhibit Behaim as an expert cartographer, if judged by
modern standards. He was not a careful compiler, who
first of all plotted the routes of the travellers to whose
accounts he had access, and then combined the residts
with judgment. Had he done this, the fact of India being
a peninsula could not have escaped him ; the west coast
of Africa would have appeared as shown on Map 5.
His delineation is rather " hotch-potch " made up without
discrimination from maps which happened to fall in his
hands. In this respect, however, he is not worse than are
other cartographers of his period: Fra Mauro and Waldseemiiller
, Schoner and Gastaldo, and even the famous
Mercator, if the latter be judged by his delineation of
Eastern Asia.

But we may well ask whether greatness was not in a
large measure thrust upon Behaim by injudicious panegyrists
; and if, on a closer examination of his work, he
does not quite come up to our expectations, they, at all
events, must bear the greater part of the blame.

If, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, Behaim could
have " revisited the glimpses of the moon " and wandered

4 See the insets on Map 2. Also my remarks on Wieser and Fischer's
publication of Waldseemuller's maps, ' Athemeum,' March 26, 1906, and
' Geogr. Zeitschrift,' XII., Heft 3,1906. There is reason to believe that a
map discovered recently by Rev. Jos. Fischer, S.J., but not yet published,
is one of the " lost " maps to which I have referred (' Stimmen aus Laach,'
1906, p. 353).

6 The Marco Polo of this codex is the edition printed at Augsburg in
1481 ; the other accounts are MSS. of the fifteenth century.