Cusanus card
The 15th century Cusanus maps are the oldest modern maps of Central Europe . The best-known edition is the Eichstätter edition of the Cusanus map (dated 1491), which was printed as a copper engraving with the title parva Germania tota tabella (small table of all of Germany). There are also later reprints and a hand-drawn copy before 1490 as a unique specimen. The text of the Eichstätter edition accompanying the card names Cardinal Nikolaus von Kues (1401–1464, Latinized: Cusanus) as the author of the card , who had long since died when the card was printed. The Cusanus maps belong "with their environment to the most complicated chapters of German cartography".
Lore
A hand drawing or even a mention of the map in the writings of Nikolaus von Kues or his contemporaries have not survived, so it is not certain what contribution Nikolaus von Kues himself made to the map. If the map basis comes from him, it can be dated to around 1450. The Cusanus maps appear with a hand-drawn copy by the cartographer Henricus Martellus Germanus in Florence before 1490, the Eichstätter edition (dated 1491), of which three copies are known, and later reprints and imitations. The Schedelsche Weltchronik printed in 1493 contains a map of the Cusanus type executed as a woodcut.
Legend
The text accompanying the Eichstätter edition gives a brief description of the origins of the Cusanus cards. At the top of the card are three lines of text in Latin verses. The verses read in German translation:
“Because all of Germania is drawn on this little board
And the side of Italy that looks towards the icy Alps
and the savage peoples of the Sarmatians and the tribes near the deep Adriatic,
and the realm of old Pelops, and where the cold Ister (Danube) divides the Pannonian realms,
(because it) also comes across something to the Lycaonian regions,
and to the waves of the sea that the Rhodan whips,
finite many cities and spots are designated by points,
so thank Nicholas of Cusa,
who once clothed with the purple of Tire
and was a great ornament of the Roman Senate
and let the places not explored by any of the earlier be buried in humble ore.
Eichstätt in the year of salvation 1491.
Completed on July 21 "
The print mentions Nikolaus von Kues (1401–1464), who had long since died at the time the map was printed, as the originator, Eichstätt as the place of completion and July 21, 1491 as the completion date. have stayed in Eichstätt. How a cartographer, printer or engraver from Eichstatt was involved in the map around 1491 is unknown.
Map image
The map is north and has a trapezoidal shape. It extends south-north from the 41st to the 61st degree of latitude and in the west-east direction from the 23rd to the 61th degree of longitude of the old census. The map image resembles older maps from the Germania magna of the Geographike Hyphegesis by Claudius Ptolemy , which at that time was a standard work in the field of geography and cartography, but goes far beyond that. The map shows the geography of Central and Eastern Europe without political borders. The western, northern and southern borders of the map coincide with the expansion of the Holy Roman Empire in the 15th century. In the west to it ranges Meuse-Saone-Rhone line, in the north it includes parts of North and Baltic Sea with a, in the south are imperial Italy and the Papal States with the city of Rome included, as well as South-Eastern Europe with Konstantin Opel . In the east, the map extends to an imaginary line from Novgorod to Crimea .
At the edge of the map the climatic zones according to Ptolemy are shown and labeled. The layout and the map image are so similar in details to the edition of Ptolemy's Cosmographia published in Rome in 1478 that the map should be made in Italy and probably even in the same workshop, i.e. in Rome. The writing is stamped into the copper block using a process common in Italy, just as it was on the maps from 1478.
The map image is flawed in detail. It shows Xanten on the Lippe, the change in direction of the course of the Rhine near Basel is missing, so the Upper Rhine with Lake Constance extends in a north-south direction and Switzerland and the Alps are shifted to the west. The central region of the map is mapped much more precisely than the peripheral regions.
literature
- Otto Henne am Rhyn: Cultural History of the German People , First Volume, Berlin 1897, p. 421.
- Peter H. Meurer : On the systematics of the Cusanus cards. Considerations from the perspective of regional studies in the Rhineland . In: Kartographische Nachrichten 33, 1983, pp. 219-225.
Web links
- Peter Mesenburg on the Cusanus card
- Digitized at spk-digital.de
- Digitized at bridgemanart.com
- Digitized at gallica.bnf.fr
supporting documents
- ^ Peter H. Meurer : To the systematics of the Cusanus cards. Considerations from the perspective of regional studies in the Rhineland . In: Kartographische Nachrichten 33, 1983, pp. 219-225.
- ↑ Otto Henne am Rhyn: Kulturgeschichte des Deutschen Volkes , first volume, Berlin 1897, p. 421.
- ↑ Tony Campbell: Letter Punches: a Little-Known Feature of Early Engraved Maps . Print Quarterly, Volume IV, Number 2, June 1987, pp. 151-4. Online ( Memento of the original from November 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ^ Peter Mesenburg on the accuracy of the Cusanus map
