seas, and islands, which I wrote was for sale in Worms, but I could hardly be induced to give such a price for it as forty florins. I purchased, however, a few days since at a low price, a beautiful terrestrial globe of small size.”140 He wrote further, “Henricum de Bunau dies vita audini defunctum, sed libros eius et globum cosmographiae quem alim comparavit ex officina tua remanisse apud Saxoniae Principes, quod tu existimas non audini.” “I am informed that Henry Bunau died some time ago, but I never heard it said that his books and the cosmographical globe which he bought in your work-shop remained with the Princes of Saxony, as you believe.”141 It has been thought by some that the globe referred to as having been purchased in Worms was the globe of Waldseemüller.
Since the discovery in 1902 of the long-lost Waldseemüller maps of 1507 and of 1516 by Professor Joseph Fischer, S.J., in the library of Prince de Waldburg-Wolfegg (Fig. 30), great interest has centered especially in the work of that early German map maker. As the new transatlantic discoveries of the Spanish and the Portuguese greatly quickened interest in geographical science and made necessary the construction of new maps in rapid succession, Germany, already a land in which the renaissance spirit had found an enthusiastic reception, and whose people were awake to every new interest, soon became a center for the spread of information concerning the new regions. Commercially important trade cities of this country had been for some time in intimate touch with the important maritime trade centers of Spain and Portugal. Word of the newest discoveries was quickly carried over the Alps to France and to Germany, and the latest publication of the writer on matters geographical had its references to the parts of the world newly found of which Ptolemy had not known.
Fig. 30. Castle of Prince Waldburg de Wolfegg.
One of the first German geographers of the century, and now justly famed as one of the most distinguished of the period, was Martin Waldseemüller (ca. 1470–1522 ca.), whose name, according to the practice of the time, was classicized as Hylacomylus.142 So significant was the influence of Waldseemüller in the mapping of the New World that a somewhat detailed word concerning him may here well be given. When Duke René of Lorraine (1451–1508) became a patron of learning, with particular interest in cosmography or geography, the cartographical studies of the Germans began to have a place of far-reaching importance. It was under this enlightened duke that the little town of St. Dié became a center of culture. Here was organized the Vosgian Gymnasium,143 a society of learned men not unlike the Platonic Academy of Florence or the Danubian Society, Vienna. Of this St. Dié coterie none was more prominent than Jean Bassin de Sandacourt,144 the translator of the ‘Four Voyages’ of Amerigo Vespucci from the French into the Latin, Lud, the ducal secretary and author of an important little work of but few pages, which he called ‘Speculi orbis succinciss … ,’145 and Waldseemüller, the professor of cosmography, the author of the ‘Cosmographiae Introductio … ,’146 and a cartographer of great skill, who, with Ringmann, planned and carried well on toward completion, as early as 1507 or 1508, an edition of Ptolemy, which in 1513 was printed in the city of Strassburg.147 It probably was as early as 1505 that the plan was under consideration for a new translation of Ptolemy from the Greek into the Latin, and that thought perhaps had its inspiration in the letters of Vespucci, in which he gave an account of his four voyages, and in the new chart which but recently had fallen into the hands of Ringmann. These charts, says Lud, in his ‘Speculum,’ came from Portugal, which, if true, leads one to the belief that they exhibited genuine Vespucian data.148 Whatever the truth concerning the origin of these charts, that determination became a starting point for a most important evolution in cartographical history of the world.149 In April, 1507, Waldseemüller had written to his friend, Amerbach, in Basel, “Non credo te latere nos Ptholomei cosmographiam, recognitio et adiectis quibusdam novis tabulis impressuros in oppido Divi Deodati. … Solidum quod ad generale Ptholomei paravimus nondum impressum est, erit autem impressum infra mensis spacium.”150 “I think you know already that I am on the point of printing in the town of St. Dié (Lorraine), the Cosmography of Ptolemy, after having added to the same some new maps … the globe comprising Ptolemy in general, which we have prepared, is not yet printed, but will be so in a month.” While great interest centers in these “new maps,” prepared for the proposed edition of Ptolemy, a greater interest now centers in the map to which Waldseemüller repeatedly alludes in the years 1507–1511, especially in his ‘Cosmographiae Introductio’ (Fig. 31), which map it was the good fortune of Professor Joseph Fischer, S. J., to bring to light in the year 1902, as noted above.151 In the dedication of his little book to the Emperor Maximilian, he says, “Hinc factū est ṽt me libros Ptholomei ad exēplar Grecū quorunda ope p virili recognoscēte & quatuor Americi Vespucii navigationū lustratioēs adiiciēte: totius orbis typū tā in solido q̄ȝplano (velut preuiam quandā ysagogen) p cōmuno studiosorū vtilitate parauerim.”152 “Therefore studying to the best of my ability and with the aid of several persons, the Books of Ptolemy from a Greek copy, and adding the Relations of the Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, I have prepared for the general use of scholars a map of the whole world, like an introduction, so to speak, both in the solid and on a plane.” Waldseemüller says further, wherein he gives a description of his new map, “Propositum est hoc libello quandam Cosmographie introductionē scribere; quam nos tam in solido q̄ȝ plano depinximus. In solido quidem spacio exclusi strictissime. Sed latius in plano. …”153 “The purpose of this little book is to write a description of the world map, which we have designed, both as a globe and as a projection. The globe I have designed on a small scale, the map on a larger.”
Fig. 31. World Map of Martin Waldseemüller, 1507.
From the above citation it appears that as early as April, 1507, the same preparation had been made for a globe that had been made for the issue of a large world map. The map, as noted, has been found, but neither a globe nor a set of globe gores is known bearing the indisputable evidence of his authorship. In the library of Prince Liechtenstein, however, is a somewhat crudely executed gore map (Fig. 32) which, according to certain cartographical students, should be accepted as a copy of the work to which the allusions are made in the ‘Cosmographiae.’154 These gores, twelve in number, and each 12 cm. in length, this length representing the length of a meridian of the globe ball which the gores could be made to cover, were printed from a wood engraved block. They exhibit the Old World, in the main, in accord with the Ptolemaic idea, and the New World with a close resemblance to the Canerio map record, and that of Waldseemüller’s world map of 1507.155 The North American region is nameless, but the South American region bears conspicuously the name “America.” At
