Lazarus Secretarius

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Lazarus Secretarius (Lazarus the Secretary ) was a Hungarian cartographer who compiled a map of Hungary (the Tabula Hungarie ) that was printed in 1528. This map is part of the UNESCO World Document Heritage . Little is known about his life.

Act

The nickname of Lazarus Secretarius refers to the fact that he was secretary to Tamás Bakócz , the Archbishop of Esztergom and thus Primate of Hungary, who was Chancellor of the Kingdom of Hungary and responsible for Hungary's foreign policy until his death in 1521 . With this, the need for an exact map of Hungary was probably also clear for Lazarus. This came about in collaboration with his teacher Georg Tannstetter , with whom he had studied in Vienna . Lazarus had "put together" the map ( congesta ), and Tannstetter had then revised and expanded it ( revisa auctiorque reddita ). This means that the shares of the two cartographers are not precisely identified. In Hungary in particular, people sometimes simply speak of the "Lazarus card".

Equation with Lazarus Rosetus

In historical literature, Lazarus Secretarius is often equated with a Lazarus Rosetus . A contemporary named Lazarus Rosetus was Dean and Canonicus of St. Severin (Cologne) . A document from 1519 shows him as a judge and curator of the rights and privileges of the Karthauser. It is believed by some that these two Lazarus' living at the same time refer to one person, but it is also possible that there were several scholars with the name of Lazarus Rosetus at the same time. It is noticeable that the Lazarus on the map of Hungary is only referred to by the name Lazarus, while the other participants are named by their first and last names (like Georg Tannstetter). If his surname had been Rosetus, it would have been natural to use his surname as well. It looks like that instead of a - non-existent - surname a more detailed identification is made through its function as "Secretarius". It is also strange that those historians who equate him with Lazarus Rosetus do not agree on what the first and last name should be. Some call him "Lazarus Rosetus", others "Rosetus Lazarus" - as if Rosetus had been his first name. This disagreement suggests that the aforementioned identification does not have a fixed source base, but is based on guesswork.

literature

  • Lajos Stegena (ed.): Lazarus Secretarius. The first Hungarian mapmaker and his work. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1982.

Remarks

  1. ↑ About László Bendefy: Regiomontanus in Hungary . In: Günther Hamann (Ed.): Regiomontanus studies . (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class, Meeting Reports; 364), Vienna 1980, p. 251.
  2. ↑ State Archives Basel-Stadt: Karthäuser document no. 442_1
  3. ↑ About Bendefy: Regiomontanus , pp. 243-250.
  4. ↑ About Christian Rother: Transylvania and book printing in the 16th century . Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2002, p. 383.
personal data
SURNAME Secretarius, Lazarus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH 15th century
DATE OF DEATH 16th Century