1492: An Ongoing Voyage
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THE
MEDITERRANEAN WORLD
The peoples who inhabited the semi-arid
shores of the Mediterranean were united in a common world view - as
the name suggests, they saw themselves as living at the center of the
world. The region, similar in size to that of the Caribbean, had seen
the rise and fall of several civilizations and, in the late 15th century,
was again in flux. Prosperous city-states were on the rise amidst the
decline of medieval feudal society.
Renewed interest in Greek and Roman
cultures fostered humanistic studies in art and science. New, stimulating
ideas were spread with the advent of printing. Out of the doomsday mentality
caused by the Black Death, civil wars, and economic uncertainties emerged
expansionism, cohesion, and a sense of prosperity.
As the eastern Mediterranean reeled
before the expanding Ottoman Empire, and Muslim rule ended in Iberia,
western Mediterranean traders and mariners looked beyond the Straits
of Gibraltar for alternative routes to the riches of the East.
The Setting
The Mediterranean Sea linked three continents
-- Europe, Asia, and Africa. Surrounding that sea was a world of diverse
peoples, languages, and religions. Even its northern shores, largely
united by Christianity, exhibited a remarkable variety of tongues, customs,
currencies, and political economies.
In the absence of nations, city-states
dominated economic, political, and cultural activities in the late 15th
century. Vibrant cities and ports, such as Rome, Florence, Venice, Genoa,
Seville and Lisbon, were engaged in a variety of cultural and economic
activities. They traded with each other and with merchants in other
important centers like Constantinople, Alexandria, and Tunis. Traders
followed the routes taken by thousands of pilgrims and crusaders during
the Middle Ages on their way to the Holy Land.
Iberia: Cultural Diversity
The Christians, Muslims and Jews of
the Iberian Kingdoms -- modern-day Spain and Portugal -- had coexisted
throughout most of the Middle Ages in considerable harmony, despite
periods of war and conflict. Close contact and currents of influence
among these groups fostered a varied culture and flourishing intellectual
life more advanced than anywhere else in Europe.
Unification of the Christian kingdoms
of Aragon, Navarre, and Castile began in 1469 when Princess Isabel of
Castile married Prince Fernando of Aragon. In 1480, they established
the Holy Inquisition to enforce orthodox Christian belief and practice.
In the very year of Columbus' first voyage, the monarchs conquered the
last Muslim kingdom of Granada and expelled all Jews who refused to
convert to Christianity. Despite such repressions, the extraordinary
cultural diversity of late medieval Iberia left an enduring legacy in
art, architecture, language, music, foodways, agriculture, and urban
life.
The Changing Order
The Renaissance was an age of paradox in
Europe. This period witnessed dramatic changes in cultural and intellectual
life, linked to the enthusiastic rediscovery of the ancient Greek and
Roman past. Artists and writers brought a new, intense scrutiny to the
individual human subject within the context of an emerging secular spirit.
Yet, during the Renaissance, religious mysticism, superstition, and political
authoritarianism intensified.
Though handwritten and illuminated manuscripts
had been the preserve of the learned few, the invention of printing
led to a democratization of information. The creation of increasingly
modern and powerful economies, based on banking, trade, and commerce
enabled an emerging middle class to participate in this free exchange
of ideas. Readers were exposed to dramatically different world views,
ranging from imaginary maps and travel accounts to information partly
based on practical experience.
"O Adam, you may have whatever you desire"
(Humanism's liberating idea, expressed in an essay by Pico della Mirandola).
EXPANDING HORIZONS
European exploration in the 15th and
16th centuries drew on many sources. A growing desire for expansion
and trade, along with advances in shipbuilding and commercial technique,
fostered the search for new markets and for the legendary sources of
precious metals and other commodities.
Portuguese exploration and trade along
the West African coast and the Atlantic islands, encouraged and directed
by Prince Henry de Avis, the Navigator, continued throughout
the 15th century. He assembled an international team of experts which
made revolutionary advances in geography, navigation, and cartography.
Handbooks, guides, and charts, along
with the invention of more sophisticated and practical nautical instruments,
professionalized what had been largely an intuitive craft. Crucial to
these innovations were Muslim and Jewish contributions in mapmaking
and navigational instruments. Christopher Columbus went to sea on the
crest of these maritime advances.
European World View: Imagined and Observed
European world view in the late 15th century
wavered between bizarre imaginings about the unknown and scientific observations
of the known. t-o maps illustrate a Medieval world view laid
out into three continents by a T within a circle, but also record real and imagined
countries.
Theories of the universe first proposed
by ancient Greek or Roman philosophers were accepted well into the 16th
century. For example, the Vopel globe was based on Ptolemy's idea of
an earth-centered universe. Ironically, it was made in 1543, the same
year that Nicolaus Copernicus published his heliocentric, or sun-centered,
theory of the universe. Caspar Vopel was a master-craftsman of astronomical
and navigational tools. He made the sphere encircling the globe so that
the seasonal changes in the orbits of the heavenly bodies could be observed.
His "nocturnal," or compendium, was used for telling time at night and
had several other navigational functions.
Terrestrial globe with armillary sphere
Caspar Vopel (Cologne, 1543).
Geography and Map Division
Terrestrial and celestial globes and
armillary spheres were important educational tools for illustrating
the geographical, astronomical, and cosmographical concepts of the Renaissance
and the Age of European Discovery. Terrestrial globes not only reflected
the spherical nature of the earth but also served to document man's
changing perception and expanding knowledge of the geography of the
earth. Armillary spheres were demonstration models for teaching astronomy
and for illustrating the earth's position within the universe.
This finely crafted and well-preserved
three-inch terrestrial globe, within a six-inch armillary sphere, mounted
on an octagonal brass base, is the work of Caspar Vopel (1511-1561),
a teacher of mathematics in Cologne, Germany, and a scholar of wide
cosmographical interests. Vopel skillfully drew by hand his portrayal
of the earth's surface directly on the globe ball. Of particular historical
interest is his portrayal of the uncertainty still prevalent in the
first half of the sixteenth century among cosmographers regarding Columbus's
contention that he had reached Asia. As shown on the globe, Vopel agreed
with the school of thought that North America and Asia were joined as
one land mass -- a misconception that continued on some maps until the
late sixteenth century.
Vopel's armillary sphere presents a
model of the Ptolemaic, or earth-centered, cosmic system. The series
of eleven interlocking and overlapping brass rings or armilla, some
of which are movable, that make up the armillary sphere are adjustable
for the seasons and illustrate the circles of the sun, moon, known planets,
and important stars. The wide ecliptic band includes delicate engravings
of the signs of the zodiac. It is interesting to note that 1543 is not
only the year of the construction of Vopel's armillary sphere, but it
is also the year Copernicus's theory of a heliocentric universe was
published, a theory that greatly changed the design of armillary spheres.
Venetian Sailing Directions
Drawings of zodiacs, hands, and divisions of time in Nicolo Stolfo.
[Early Venetian Sailing Directions in the Mediterranean Sea] Manuscript.
[Venice,] August 1499.
Rare Book and Special Collections
Division
By the late fifteenth century an emerging
body of literature to facilitate sea travel in the Mediterranean world
was available. This early book of sailing directions served as a handy
guide for the sailor and a storehouse of practical information for laymen.
The use of the hand and zodiac for information was considered vital
to the 15th century Mediterranean navigator.
World Map
In [Donnus Nicolaus Germanus] Cosmographia, Claudius Ptolemaeus
Ulm, 1482.
Thacher Collection,
Rare Book and Special Collections
Division
The most poular geographical work to
be printed from movable type in the fifteenth century was Ptolemy's
Geography or Cosmography. Originally compiled by the
Alexandrian geographer, astronomer, and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy
in the second century A.D., it was translated from Greek into Latin
in Florence, Italy about 1410. The map of the world here reproduced,
beautifully illuminated with twelve wind heads, is one of thirty-two
maps illustrating the edition of the Cosmographia issued from
the press of Lienhart Holle of Ulm, Germany, on July 16, 1482. Holle's
edition was the first to be printed north of the Alps and the first
to include maps printed from woodcuts. To produce his printed edition,
Holle used a manuscript copy prepared under the direction of the Benedictine
Monk known as Donnus Nicolaus Germanus.
This world map shows the state of European
cartographic knowledge of the world prior to Columbus' 1492 voyage.
It reflects the Ptolemaic world view. The old (or known) inhabited world,
oikoumene, is depicted as extending 180 degrees east and west,
but in reality it covers only 105 degrees of longitude. This elongation,
greatly shortening the unknown portion of the earth, was to influence
navigators such as Christopher Columbus for many years. Also depicted
is Ptolemy's mistaken notion that the Indian Ocean was an enclosed body
of water, an idea that was to be disproved only five years later by
the successful rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartholomeu Dias
of Portugal.
New information began to find its way
into the classical representations then in circulation in Western Europe,
and the 1482 world map was no exception. Nicolaus Germanus, for example,
extended the map northward to show Iceland (correctly positioned north
of the British Isles) and Greenland (incorrectly shown as a peninsula
of Europe). Raleigh Skelton in the introduction to the facsimile edition
of Claudius Ptolemaeus Cosmographia, Ulm, 1482 (Amsterdam,
1963) noted that this is the "earliest printed delineation of Greenland,
Iceland and the North Atlantic [on a world map]; and this was to exercise
a potent influence in the cartography of the early 16th century."
American Geographical Sites
In Martin Waldseemuller. [Ptolemaeus]
Geographiae Opus Novissima Traductione ...
Strasbourg, 1513.
Geography and Map Division
The first appearance of a map of America
in a Ptolemy atlas occurred in the 1513 Strasbourg edition, which included
a series of new maps, based on findings from recent European explorations.
Martin Waldseemuller of St. Dié began work on this new edition
of Ptolemy about 1505 and compiled the maps. In this work, America remains
named Terra Incognita and Columbus is credited with informing
Fernando and Isabel of its existence.
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