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Who
was Waldseemuller? |
|
Who
was Waldseemuller? |
There were a few large-scale maps produced in the early 1500’s. One such map was compiled and published by Martin Waldseemuller in 1507. It was the first map to bear the name America. One of the most important maps of all time, its existence was known only by what the author wrote about it until the year 1900, when a single copy was found.
Waldseemuller, who was probably born at Radolfszell on Lake Constance, studied at the University of Freeburg. Later he became a clergyman in the diocese of Constance and was finally appointed Canon of St. Die in the Vosagense Mountains. His interests were broad and his friends learned; in fact St. Die was an unusual little town. A small group of men including Waldseemuller comprised the Gymnasium Vosagense, a kind of literary salon devoted to the study of philosophy, cosmography and cartography. Canon Walter Ludd, secretary to the Duke of Lorraine, was the guardian angel of the group. Ludd set up a printing press in St. Die for the express purpose of publishing his own effusions, arid, incidentally, the writings of other members of the Gymnasium. Martin Waldseemuller and Philesius Ringmann did the printing.
Ringmann and Waldseemuller spent considerable time prowling through the
libraries of Strassburg and Basel, collating various manuscripts and maps for a
proposed edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia,
but the discoveries of the Spanish and Portuguese were too important to
ignore, and Waldseemuller was fascinated by the dramatic figure of Amerigo
Vespucci. So Claudius Ptolemy was brushed aside and a little book, Cosmographiae
Introductio was written and
published instead. The book consisted of four parts. The first was Waldseemuller
outline of the principles of cosmography according to the best tradition,
dealing with geometrical theorems, definitions of the globes, circles, axes
and climata; the divisions of the earth, the principal winds, the seas and
islands and the various distances from place to place. But in addition to the
old routine facts he made a proposal in his text which was a new idea.
Commencing on the new territories described by Vespucci in his Quatuor Navigationes, referred to as the fourth continent (quarta
orbis pars), Waldseemuller
suggested that it be christened America in honor of the (alleged) discoverer.
Moreover, he followed up his proposal by printing the name America in the region
of South America on the two maps made to accompany his Introduction
to Cosmography.
Sold all his maps
Waldseemuller compiled a large map: Universalis Cosmographiae Descriptio in Piano, which was supposed to comprise the third part of the Cosmographiae, but it is doubtful whether a copy was ever bound up with the book. It was printed from twelve wood blocks on stout paper and each sheet measured 18 by 24 1/2 inches. Pasted together they would make a map of about 36 square feet. Here was another problem for map publishers to solve. The text, printed in octavo size, was written to explain, among other things, the large-scale map. In order to bind the two together, each sheet would have to be folded at least once and probably twice, making a cumbersome volume and weakening the map sheets at the folds. Yet if the book were bound separately, the map would lack a protective covering and inevitably the two would become separated, if not lost.
The little book and the big map were popular. Two editions were published the first year (1507), one in April and a second in August. In 1508 Waldseemuller wrote his copartner Ringmann that the map had been sold far and wide, and in a later publication he stated that 1000 copies had been sold. Both text and map were reprinted and “adapted” many times, and each reprinting drove home the suggestion that the New World should bear the name America. Such is the power of the printed word that by the time Waldseemuller became convinced that Amerigo Vespucci was not the man to honor, it was too late to do anything about it. He deleted the name America in his later map publications, but offered no substitute in its place. The name persisted, and in 1538 Gerard Mercator clinched the matter on his large-scale map of the world. Carrying the idea a step further, according to the latest discoveries and his own inclination, Mercator sub-divided the New World into “North America” (Americae pars septentrionalis) and “South America” (Americae pars meridionalis). And so it is today.