Read Ebook: The Leardo Map of the World 1452 or 1453 In the Collections of the American Geographical Society by Wright John Kirtland Hoen Albert Berthold Contributor

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THE LEARDO MAP OF THE WORLD 1452 OR 1453

The notes will be found on pp. 21-28.

The Calendar and the Inscription Beneath It

The calendars encircling Leardo's three maps constitute exceptional additions. Of these calendars, the one on the Society's map is the most interesting. The inscription in the panel below the circles, in part an explanation of the calendar, is somewhat awkwardly phrased in the Venetian dialect of the fifteenth century, but, although it lacks the beginning of each line, the meaning is fairly clear, especially when certain of the missing lines are reconstructed from the corresponding inscription on the map in Vicenza.

This passage is followed by a statement that the map shows how the land and islands stand in relation to the seas and how the many provinces and mountains and principal rivers are distributed on the land. Then, on the asserted authority of Macrobius, "a very excellent astrologer and geometrician," figures are given for the dimensions of the earth and of various heavenly bodies. These are quite fanciful, bearing little relation to the corresponding figures actually cited by Macrobius.

The second circle shows the names of the months, beginning with March, which was officially reckoned the first month of the year in the Republic of Venice until as late as 1797; it also tells the day, hour, and minute when the sun enters each of the twelve signs of the zodiac.

The seventh circle gives the dominical, or "Sunday," letters; these are indicated opposite the days of the month on which Sunday falls in the years designated by the seven first letters of the alphabet. If we know the dominical letter for any particular year, we may thus determine the days of the week. Leardo, however, does not specify the years to which the dominical letters in his calendar refer.

The eighth and ninth circles give the lengths of the days in hours and minutes. From this we see that the vernal equinox fell on March 11, inasmuch as the calendar was constructed before the Gregorian reform. Finally, in the tenth circle saints' days and other religious festivals are shown.

The Map Disk

It should be noted first that east is at the top of the map and Jerusalem at the center; hence the long axis of the Mediterranean runs vertically up the southern half of the disk.

Vignettes of castles, walled towns, and churches stand for cities, kingdoms, and regions. In most cases the names have been written upon the vignettes themselves; since the latter are also colored pink or green, the letters are frequently obscured and quite illegible. Many towns and districts are shown by red dots beside which the names are written in ink, once black but now faded with age. These names were inserted after the vignettes were drawn, for in many instances they are tilted or compressed to fit the available space. The draftsman did not venture to write any name to the left of the dot to which it belongs; as he could not write on the blue of the seas, he was obliged to invert the map in the case of places on south-facing coasts. Names of islands and seas, which had to be written on water surfaces, are inclosed in small yellow panels. The names of the continents, the two inscriptions relating to the polar and equatorial deserts, and the words "Terrestrial Paradise" are in red capitals; but all other names are in minuscule, usually without an initial capital. Besides place names there are a few longer legends.

Winds blowing from the four cardinal and four intermediate points of the compass are shown by eight faces around the edge of the disk. Those to the north, northwest, and northeast are blue, suggesting cold blasts from these quarters; the other faces are ruddy.

Although decorative, the Leardo map lacks many of the pictorial elements--animals, birds, preposterous monsters--that enliven the blank spaces on other medieval maps. With the exception of the eight wind faces and the symbolic figures of the evangelists no living creatures, whether animals or men, are graphically represented.

Sources of Leardo's Geography

Briefly stated, the sources of Leardo's geography are to be sought in the information accumulated by the Greeks and Romans, as added to and altered during the early Middle Ages by the Church Fathers on the basis of the interpretation of the Bible and as later augmented by the work of medieval travelers, merchants, and sailors.

In its orientation, with east and the Terrestrial Paradise at the top and with Jerusalem at the center, the map follows the Christian tradition of the earlier Middle Ages. Other features reflecting the influence of the Scriptures are Noah's Ark resting on top of Mt. Ararat, Mt. Sinai, the exaggerated length of the River Jordan, and an inscription in the far northeast referring to Gog and Magog.

Later medieval contacts between Europe and remote lands are revealed in names derived from Marco Polo and possibly from other Western travelers who had visited the Orient, as well as in the Arabic names in Asia and Africa.

Medieval navigators' charts also influenced Leardo. Towards the close of the thirteenth century sailors in the Mediterranean--particularly Italians and Catalans--began making marine maps that far surpassed all earlier maps in the accurate delineation of coast lines. The majority of these show the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Europe and of north Africa but little of the interior of the continents and nothing of the farther parts of Asia. Some, however, were used as the basis for maps of the world. On the latter the shore lines were derived from the navigators' charts, and the remaining regions were compiled from other sources. The Leardo map belongs in this category.

Among the existing maps dating from the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries our Leardo map is very closely related to the group of maps drawn by the famous Catalan cartographers of Majorca in the Balearic Islands. In its general outlines it is so strikingly like a Catalan map of about 1450 now preserved in the Este Library at Modena that we must assume a common cartographic ancestor at no great distance back. There are, however, certain legends on the Este map that Leardo does not give, particularly the long inscriptions and a multitude of place names on the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. Leardo's map, on the other hand, has features not shown on the Este map. These are of two sorts: place names in Asia and Africa, the counterparts of which may be found on other Catalan and Italian maps of the period; and river, mountain, and province names taken directly from Ptolemy. There are also not a few names whose origins or counterparts on other maps I have been unable to trace.

The Known World According to Leardo

The numbers in parentheses correspond to the reference numbers in the Appendix and on the key maps at the end of the book.

In the Appendix I have tried to identify as many as possible of the names and other features shown on the Leardo map with existing places, or at least with corresponding features on other maps of the period. Here I propose to conduct the reader on a rapid sight-seeing tour around the map, pointing out some of the most interesting details only.

Asia

In the extreme north there is a large structure which looks like an Italian church with its campanile . The legend beneath, suggested ultimately by a passage from Marco Polo, runs about thus: " the sepulcher of the and they do this when he comes to be carried for interment: he comes accompanied by many armed men who kill those whom they find on the roads, and they say that the souls of these are blessed because they accompany the soul of the Grand Khan to another life." Marco Polo adds that at the time of the funeral of Mangou Khan 20,000 persons were thus slain! The actual place of burial of the Mongol Khans was in Cathay, far away from northern Russia where Leardo, following the model of Catalan maps, draws it. European cartographers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries seem to have known and cared little about the relative positions of places in Asia; as Italian merchants by this time had established contacts with the Mongols in southern Russia, what was more natural than to place the Mongol overlord's tomb in the hinterland of the Black Sea? Here there was more available space than in the Far East, and here on Leardo's map the Grand Khan's tomb could be made symmetrically to balance Prester John's palace across the map in Africa .

South of the sepulcher we see the River Volga flowing into the northwestern corner of the Caspian . A branch from the east , perhaps the Kama, joins the Volga where the latter bends at a right angle to the south. East of the lower Volga is a "desert of thirty days" , Polo's mysterious demon-haunted desert of Lop, where the traveler hears ringing bells and other uncanny sounds . Like the Grand Khan's tomb, this desert is also wofully misplaced, since the actual desert of Lop lies in eastern Chinese Turkestan. The responsibility is not Leardo's, however, for the Lop desert is in the same place on the Catalan Atlas of 1375 and on the Este map.

Farther east, beyond a row of six castles representing towns on the borderlands of China , we come to a gulf of the encircling ocean and to a great system of mountains. The gulf , which contains three islands, appears in almost the same position and form on the Este map, where there is a legend explaining that on the islands griffons and falcons are found and that the natives are not allowed to kill them without the permission of the Grand Khan of the Tatars. This is also from Marco Polo, who writes that the islands where the gerfalcons are bred lie so far north that the North Star is left behind you in the south! The mountains southeast of the gulf make an enclosure shaped something like a ? . Inside the northern half of this ? a legend tells us that "this is the province of Gog and Magog, where many tribes of the Jews were shut in" , referring to the medieval tradition that Alexander the Great enclosed Gog and Magog--the terrible hordes of Antichrist--within the Caspian Mountains. On many maps the mountains of Gog and Magog in the Far East are named thus. Leardo, however, places "M^o Gaspio" north of the Caspian Sea somewhat nearer the position at which Ptolemy had placed them. To the mountains of Gog and Magog he assigns names derived from Ptolemy's northeastern Asia. Running westward from the southern basin formed by these mountains Leardo has added a river , the Oechardes of Ptolemy. Near the point where this river emerges from the mountain rim we see a red spot labeled "Iron gate" and, immediately to the west, two short red marks, "Statues of Alexander" . The iron gate was built by Alexander in the wall enclosing Gog and Magog, and the statues represent trumpeters set up by Alexander to keep guard over these unclean hordes. On the Catalan maps the trumpeters themselves are shown with their trumpets.

Immediately west of the statues appears "Mount Tanacomedo" , an amusing instance of Leardo's carelessness; he has here evidently copied "Montana Comedorum" from a Ptolemaic map, combining the last part of the first word with the first part of the last! At the extreme eastern edge of the world disk we see the Terrestrial Paradise surrounded by an enormous wall to keep out curious intruders. The River Indus flows southwestward to a great delta near the entrance of the Persian Gulf . Many of the place names in India correspond with those of the Catalan maps and in turn were derived from Marco Polo. The scene of St. Thomas' mission and of the early introduction of Christianity into India is indicated by the inscription: "Here preached St. Thomas" .

But the majestic river floated on ... Right for the polar star, past Orgunj?, Brimming, and bright, and large.

The Tigris and Euphrates join, reaching the Persian Gulf as a single stream flowing between two large edifices that represent Susiana and Babylonia . To the east of the Tigris a nameless river having its headwaters in a large lake also enters the Persian Gulf. This same stream on the Catalan Atlas and on the Este map rises in a double source, two bodies of water that have been identified with Lakes Van and Urmia. Leardo connects the Euphrates with the Mediterranean through the Orontes and with the Red Sea through the Jordan .

The most prominent feature in Arabia is Mecca , a large domed and towered building in good Italian Renaissance style and presumably representing a mosque. Several corrupted Turkish place names along with classical names appear in Asia Minor.

The Indian Ocean is filled with yellow and red islands. A legend asserting that pepper and spice are found in these islands comes from Marco Polo's description of the East Indian archipelago. The largest of all the islands, lying off the coast of India, is marked Taprobana and probably represents Sumatra.

Africa

Leardo's Africa, like that of the Este map, has a very unusual shape. Two gulfs reach inland from the Indian Ocean and from the Atlantic, partially cutting off the southern extremity of the continent. On the Este map the eastern gulf is not as prominent as that of Leardo's map, but the western is even deeper. Kretschmer suggests that these features have sprung from a combination of the ancient doctrine of a vast austral continent with Ptolemy's theory that the Indian Ocean is surrounded by land. Certain Arabic maps show an eastward projection of Africa like those of the Este map and Leardo, although they do not indicate anything corresponding to the western gulf.

Like most medieval cartographers, Leardo makes the Nile rise in West Africa . In this he follows Herodotus, Pliny, Mela, and other ancient authorities. Ptolemy, however, seems to have had a more correct view, placing the sources of the river in the Mountains of the Moon in eastern Africa. Nothing daunted, most of the fifteenth-century cartographers who used the writings of Ptolemy boldly transferred the Mountains of the Moon to West Africa to suit their theory of the river's course. Thus, on the Leardo map we see the Montes Lunae on the north coast of the West African gulf. Thence four streams flow north into a lake, out of which the Nile makes its way eastward and another stream flows westward into the Atlantic. The latter stream represents, perhaps, a combination of Niger and Senegal, of which some faint knowledge may have been gained through traders who had crossed the Sahara. The lower Nile is joined by the River "Stapus" , doubtless the Astapus of Ptolemy or the modern Blue Nile. On the Este map this tributary rises in the Terrestrial Paradise, there placed in East Africa.

To the mountain range of North Africa, the Carena of the Catalan maps, Leardo has added Ptolemaic names .

The Mediterranean

The outlines of the Mediterranean and Black Seas are more correct than any other features which Leardo draws. This, of course, is due to the fact that they were derived ultimately from the portolan charts. Leardo preserves the faulty orientation of the Mediterranean characteristic of the latter. If we assume that the perpendicular line extending from the wind-blower off the west coast of Spain through Jerusalem to the wind-blower east of the Terrestrial Paradise is intended to run due east and west, we see that the axis of the Mediterranean with the adjoining shores has been turned counter-clockwise some twelve degrees. This is probably because of failure on the part of the makers of the original portolan charts to take into consideration the declination of the compass.

Leardo's place names along the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts are all derived from the portolan charts, although Leardo wrote names only where it was easy to do so without crowding. The least successful portion of Leardo's Mediterranean coast is that of Spain: the shore is here unduly elongated as compared with that of the Este Catalan map, Barcelona and Ampurias being placed too far northeast on what ought to be the French shore line.

Europe

As on the Catalan maps, the geography of northwestern Europe is badly distorted. The Seine , Rhine , and Elbe all flow parallel with one another but slightly to the south of west. The course of the Danube with its southern branches is more true to nature. The Baltic Sea and Scandinavia are drawn much as on the Este map.

NOTES

As much of this digit as remains might be the upper part of either a 2, a 3, or a 7. Since the Easter calendar begins with 1453 the date could hardly be earlier than Easter, 1452. For the same reason, it is not likely to have been as late as 1457, the only possible date after 1453. On the Vicenza Leardo map the Easter calendar begins with the year in which the map is dated, 1448; on the Verona map of 1442 the calendar begins with the preceding year, 1441. A discrepancy of four years between the beginning of the calendar and the date of the map, however, is most improbable.

Figs. 2 and 3--Passages from mid-eighteenth century manuscripts in the Library of St. Mark's, Venice, in which reference is made to a map by Giovanni Leardo, dated 1447. See note 4.

Although the Society's map is not, perhaps, one of the great, outstanding monuments of medieval cartography, the assertion of Theobald Fischer that the Leardo maps of 1448 and 1452 were "von geringem Wert," seems too harsh.

There follows a transcription of this legend. Missing passages supplied from the Vicenza map as transcribed on Santarem's reproduction are given in square brackets:

Leardo's Times Actual Times

The discrepancies are too great and too variable to enable us to come to any very definite conclusions as to the place or manner of origin of Leardo's figures.

The dominical letter for 1453 was G.

On the basis of certain of the figures given by Leardo for the lengths of the days at about the times of the solstices, I have estimated that this table was worked out for about lat. 42? 45? N, which is more nearly the latitude of Orvieto than that of Venice . , Washington, 1918: Table 87, "Duration of Sunshine at Different Latitudes," and Table 88, "Declination of the Sun for the Year 1899." The difference in the declination of the sun for 1452 and 1899 is negligible.) Dom B?venot writes: "I fancy day lengths were reckoned roughly for degrees. Here in Weingarten about 1490 they used tables drawn up for lat. 45? N, though the place is actually 47? 40?."

I am indebted to Dom B?venot for the following comment:

See Appendix, Nos. 305, 619.

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