SLIDE 252
TITLE: Toscanelli's World Map
DATE: 1474
AUTHOR: Paolo Toscanelli
DESCRIPTION: Long ago, Aristotle had said: "The regions round
the Pillars of Hercules are in connection with the regions round India,
and between them there is nothing but sea." Strabo believed that by
sailing with an easterly wind in the western ocean one "could reach
the Indies". About 120 A.D the Roman philosopher Favorinus wrote that
the same ocean which the Greeks knew as the Atlantic Sea was known in East
Asia as the Great Sea. Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus put forward similar
views in the 13th century. In the 1470s, Paolo Toscanelli (1397-1482), the
Florentine physician and cosmo-grapher, was the earliest known medieval
supporter of a westward voyage from Europe to the Far East to portray his
theories cartographically. He contended that the Far East could be reached
more directly by sailing west than by rounding the Cape of Good Hope and
crossing the Indian Ocean. Toscanelli accepted Marco Polo's earliest claim
of the elongated Asian continent.
One of his friends was Fernan Martinez de Roriz, a Portuguese canon who
later became King Alfonso's confessor at the Court in Lisbon. It is probable
that some time about the beginning of the 1470's, the canon had come to
discuss geographical questions with the King, or with Crown Prince João,
who was more interested in geography, and then happened to mention Toscanelli's
theory about a passage to India across the ocean to the west. At that time
the Portuguese believed that they had already reached the southern extremity
of Africa, and that the way to the riches of India already lay open before
them. But then came the disconcerting news that once past the Cameroons
the coast again turned south. and continued to do so for mile upon mile;
it seems almost as if all hope of ever being able to circumnavigate Africa
was abandoned. It was in this situation that the King instructed his confessor
to write to Toscanelli and ask him to explain his plans more clearly. Toscanelli
answered at some length, enclosing a map of the sea which divided Europe
from Asia. The following is a translation of this most important document
in its entirety:
To Fernam Martins, Canon of Lisbon, Paulus the Physician [i.e. Toscanelli]
sends greetings.
It pleased me to hear of your intimacy and friendship with your great and
powerful King. Often before have I spoken of a sea route from here to India,
the land of spices; a route which is shorter than that via Guinea. You tell
me that His Highness wishes me to explain this in greater detail so that
it will be easier to understand and to take this route. Although I could
show this on a globe representing the earth. I have decided to do it more
simply and clearly by demonstrating the way on a nautical chart. I therefore
send His Majesty a chart. drawn by my own hand, on which I have indicated
the western coastline from Ireland in the north to the end of Guinea, and
the islands which lie along this path. Opposite them, directly to the west,
I have indicated the beginning of India, together with the islands and places
you will come to; how far you should keep from the Arctic Pole and the Equator;
and how many leagues you must cover before you come to these places, which
are most rich in all kinds of spices, gems and precious stones. And be not
amazed when I say that spices grow in lands to the west, even though we
usually say the east; for he who sails west will always find these lands
in the west, and he who travels east by land will always find the same lands
in the east.
The upright lines on this chart show the distance from east to west, whereas
the cross lines show the distance from north to south. The chart also indicates
various places in India which may be reached if one meets with a storm or
head-wind, or any other misfortune.
That you may know as much about these places as possible, you should know
that the only people living on any of these islands are merchants who trade
there.
There are said to be as many ships, mariners and goods there as in the rest
of the world put together. especially in the principal port called Zaiton
[Marco Polo's Zaitum] where they load and unload a hundred great
ships of pepper every year, not to mention many other ships with other spices.
That country has many inhabitants, provinces, kingdoms and innumerable cities,
all of which are ruled by a prince known as the Grand Khan, which in our
language means 'The King of Kings', who mainly resides in the province of
Cathay. His forefathers greatly desired to make contact with the
Christian world, and some two hundred years ago they sent ambassadors to
the Pope, asking him to send them many learned men who could instruct them
in our faith; but these ambassadors met with difficulties on the way, and
had to turn back without reaching Rome. In the days of Pope Eugenius, there
came an ambassador to him, who told him of their great feelings of friendship
for the Christians, and I had a long conversation with the ambassador about
many things: about the vast size of the royal buildings, about the amazing
length and breadth of their rivers, and about the great number of cities
on their banks - so great a number that along one river there were two hundred
cities with very long, wide bridges of marble which were adorned with many
pillars. This country is richer than any other yet discovered, and not only
could it provide great profit and many valuable things, but also possesses
gold and silver and precious stones and all kinds of spices in large quantities
- things which do not reach our countries at present. And there are also
many scholars. philosophers, astronomers and other men skilled in the natural
sciences, who govern that great kingdom and conduct its wars.
From the city of Lisbon to the west, the chart shows twenty-six sections,
of two hundred and fifty miles each - altogether, nearly one-third of the
earth's circumference before reaching the very large and magnificent city
of Kinsai. This city is approximately one hundred miles in circumference,
possesses ten marble bridges, and its name means 'The Heavenly City' in
our language. Amazing things have been related about its vast buildings,
its artistic treasures and its revenues. It lies in the province of Manji,
near the province of Cathay, where the king chiefly resides. And
from the island of Antillia, which you call the Island of the
Seven Cities, to the very famous island of Cipangu are ten sections,
that is 2,500 miles. That island is very rich in gold, pearls and precious
stones, and its temples and palaces are covered in gold. But since the route
to this place is not yet known, all these things remain hidden and secret;
and yet one may go there in great safety.
I could still tell of 'many other things, but as I have already told you
of them in person, and as you are a man of good judgement, I will dilate
no further on the subject. I have tried to answer your questions as well
as the lack of time and my work have permitted me, but I am always prepared
to serve His Highness and answer his questions at greater length should
he so wish.
Written in Florence on the 25th of June. 1474.
It is clear that Toscanelli obtained most of his information about "Furthest
India" from Marco Polo's book, but he also mentions that an "ambassador''
visited Pope Eugenius. Poggio Bracciolini, the Papal Secretary who wrote
about Nicolo Conti's travels in India, adds at the end of Conti's narrative:
"There came a man from the northern parts of Upper India to the Pope,
wishing, on the instructions of his Nestorian Patriarch, to learn of the
Christians in the countries of the West. He told of the Grand Khan and of
his dominion over nine powerful peoples." This man was probably the
ambassador mentioned by Toscanelli, and we shall have to presume that Conti
and other travellers who are unknown to us today gave Toscanelli further
valuable information. Toscanelli probably based his very exaggerated idea
of the size of the world on what Marinus of Tyre had said; this was later
to have some very remarkable consequences, for Christopher Columbus corresponded
with Toscanelli during this time. He sent Columbus an encouraging reply
along with a copy of a letter and map that he had prepared at the request
of Afonso, King of Portugal, outlining his ideas. The map by Toscanelli
depicted the intervening ocean which Pierre d'Ailly described in his Imago
Mundi as "the sea is little between the farthest bound of Spain
from the east and the nearest of India from the west" and that "this
sea is navigable in a few days if the wind is favorable" Slide
#238. Toscanelli sent the letter and maps (or charts) to the King of
Portugal in 1474 and to Columbus before 1481. These documents deeply affected
the course of Columbus's life and the history of the world. Although Toscanelli's
letter has survived, his historic map was lost; but the map can be reconstructed
from the text of his letter and from two surviving cartographic works embodying
his ideas. These are the 1490 world map of Henricus Martellus (Slide #256) and the 1492 Nuremberg globe of Martin Behaim
(Slide #258), the only two extant non-Ptolemaic world
maps of the 15th century to be graduated in latitude and longitude and so
to convey a precise estimate of the width of the ocean between westernmost
Europe and easternmost Asia.
To Toscanelli the goal was Marco Polo's Cathay [China], and within
the intervening ocean he was aware of no considerable land other than the
two large islands of Antillia and Cipangu [Japan]. The former
is only on the Martellus map of 1490, while both islands are shown on the
Behaim globe. The scholar G.R. Crone suggests that the belief that the east
could be reached by the west was being reconsidered in geographical circles
before the second half of the 15th century, possibly in the 14th.
Taking his departure from a port of the Iberian Peninsula and sailing down
into the zone of the northeasterly trade winds, according to Toscanelli
a navigator could then lay a course west or southwest on which he would
find Antillia lying across his bows. These were in fact the courses
set by Columbus in the late summer of 1492, and Antillia was the
first land which he expected to sight on his westward passage from the Canaries,
based upon the Toscanelli's reference in his letter to Columbus to "the
island of Antillia which is known to you", in the latitude of Cipangu.
A mapmaker who thought in terms of a globe could locate Antillia somewhat
further west than might be suggested by an ungraduated mappamundi
or portolan chart in which it was drawn at the left-hand edge of
the parchment. Toscanelli (as he told Columbus) supposed Antillia
to lie 35 degrees west of his prime meridian through the Canaries; and it
is in just this longitude, a little north of the equator, that Martin Behaim
lays down, in his globe of 1492, the Island of St. Brendan, with
an outline very like that of Antillia in the 15th century charts
and in the Vinland map (Slide #243). Behaim
gives it the name Insula de sant brandan. This apparent association of Antillia
and St. Brendan in Behaim's mind echoes that in the Vinland
mapWe must note, however, that the globe also shows Antillia, as
a triangular island lying on the Tropic of Cancer (thus nearly due west
of the Canaries) and about 10 degrees east of his St. Brendan's Island.
This concept is not, in substance, different from that expressed in the
relevant part of the Vinland map and there copied from a model similar
to Bianco's world map of 1436 (Slide #241) in which
the design is compressed within the limits of the available space at the
extreme left of the vellum sheet. Columbus made copious notes on all reports
of land or islands in the west that came to his notice, and those were gathered
together in the biography by his son Fernando. All the evidence which he
could collect indicated that both his objective and the best route thither
lay in tropical latitudes. Like Toscanelli, he took Antillia to lie
on or near the Tropic of Cancer; and if (as we suppose) the world maps he
consulted included ones like those by Henricus Martellus in 1489 and 1490,
which reflects Toscanelli's views, he could see that a course along the
same parallel would bring him to Cipangu and to Mangi, the
"cape of Asia". Toscanelli allowed 85 degrees of longitude between
the Canaries and Cipangu, Martellus indicated 90 degrees and Behaim
showed 110 degrees on his globe.
LOCATION: (originals lost, exists only as a reconstruction)
REFERENCES:
Brown, L.A., The Story of Maps, p. 155.
*Hapgood, C.H., Maps of Ancient Sea Kings, p. 50.
*Landström, B., Bold Voyages and Great Explorers, pp. 200-205.
Nebenzahl, K., Atlas of Columbus, pp. 2, 15, 19, 61.
Skelton, R.A., The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, p. 154-155,
234, 237.
*Woodward, D., "Maps and the Relationship of Geographic Space",
Circa 1492, pp. 83-87.
* illustrated