Münster’s Cosmographia

Wikipedia:

Sebastian Münster (20 January 1488 – 26 May 1552) was a German cartographer and cosmographer. He also was a Christian Hebraist scholar who taught as a professor at the University of Basel. His well-known work, the highly accurate world map, Cosmographia, sold well and went through 24 editions. Its influence was widely spread by a production of woodcuts created of it by a variety of artists.

. . .He left the Franciscans for the Lutheran Church in order to accept an appointment at the Reformed Church-dominated University of Basel in 1529. He had long harboured an interest in Lutheranism, and during the German Peasants’ War, as a monk, he had been repeatedly attacked. A professor of Hebrew, and a disciple of Elias Levita, he edited the Hebrew Bible (2 vols. fol., Basel, 1534–1535), accompanied by a Latin translation and a large number of annotations. He was the first German to produce an edition of the Hebrew Bible.

. . .He released a Mappa Europae (map of Europe) in 1536. In 1537, he published a Rabbinical translation of the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew which he had obtained from Spanish Conversos. In 1540 he published a Latin edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia with illustrations. The 1550 edition contains cities, portraits, and costumes. These editions, printed in Germany, are the most valued of this work. Other writings that followed are Horologiographia (a treatise on dialling – constructing sundials, Basel, 1531), and Organum Uranicum (a treatise on the planetary motions, 1536).

His Cosmographia of 1544 was the earliest description of the world in the German language. It had numerous editions in different languages including Latin, French, Italian, English, and even Czech. The Cosmographia was one of the most successful and popular works of the 16th century. It passed through 24 editions in 100 years.

Wikipedia:

The Cosmographia (“Cosmography”) from 1544 by Sebastian Münster (1488–1552) is the earliest German-language description of the world.

It had numerous editions in different languages including Latin, French (translated by François de Belleforest), Italian and Czech. Only extracts have been translated into English. The last German edition was published in 1628, long after Munster’s death. The Cosmographia was one of the most successful and popular books of the 16th century. It passed through 24 editions in 100 years. This success was due to the notable woodcuts (some by Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Manuel Deutsch, and David Kandel). It was most important in reviving geography in 16th-century Europe. Among the notable maps within Cosmographia is the map “Tabula novarum insularum”, which is credited as the first map to show the American continents as geographically discrete.

An excerpt from, “Lecture | March 6, 2025, 6pm | Sebastian Münster’s Cosmography: Making Maps and Imaging Germany” idw: 

Maps belong to the oldest forms of human communication and thus represent an important historical record of space. Yet, maps are much more than just a visual presentation of a territory during a certain period of time, but a reflection on historical, political, religious and cultural contexts in which they were compiled.

Sebastian Münster’s “Cosmographia”, first published in 1544, became the most influential cosmography of the 16th century, making complex geographical knowledge accessible to a broad audience.

In 1992, Zsolt G. Török (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) published a new edition of Münster’s New World map, analysing the production of his woodcut illustrations. Initially seen as a mere compiler of lost maps, Münster should be recognised as a pioneering mapmaker. His “Cosmographia” remains captivating to both historical and modern audiences. This raises key questions: How did a scholarly description of the whole world become a commercial success? How did Münster, a reserved scholar, transform cosmography into a popular text for the German public? How can we evaluate his influence?

An excerpt from, “Lines of Latitude: Sebastian Münster and his Cosmographia (1544)” By Heiko Muhr, Berkeley Library, October 8, 2020:

Sebastian Münster, Hebrew scholar and theologian, was a curious man, a seeker and a risk taker. First a professor of Old Testament Studies, Münster reinvented himself. In 1536, he accepted a teaching position in mathematics at the University of Basel, in Switzerland.

. . .But there was something else in the Cosmographia that rightfully fascinated readers: Four maps which struck a mortal blow at the medieval world view that ordered the physical world based on religious ideas. For centuries, medieval mappae mundi [= world maps] had depicted the known world, Asia, Africa and Europe, arranged in a Jerusalem-centered T-O design. Separate maps of individual continents were extremely rare in the European Middle Ages.

An excerpt from, “First Map of The New World (Die New Welt): Sebastian Munster 1550″ The Antiquarium:

Munster presented a remarkably advanced outline of the American continents, especially considering that less than fifty years had elapsed since the first voyage of Columbus. He depicted the New World as one landmass and confirmed Waldseemuller’s christening of the continents after Vespucci by appending the name “American” in South America. He clearly had firsthand reports of recent explorations at his disposal, and his delineation of North America followed closely the exemplar of Giovanni da Verrazzano after his voyage of 1524. The Italian navigator, when sailing off the coast of what is now the Outer Banks of North Carolina, mistook Pamlico Sound for the Pacific ocean, a tantalizingly short distance across a narrow neck of land. This so-called Sea of Verrazzno was shown by Munster nearly cutting North America in two, and in turn opened into a mythical strait connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific. This depiction, along with the place names “Francisca” and “Terra Florida,” apportioning the continent between the French and the Spanish, appeared here on a printed map for perhaps the first time and must have contributed substantially to the wide currency of Verrazzano’s ideas. Munster also knew definitely of Magellan’s discoveries since he appended that explorer’s name to the straits south of the mainland. Although Munster presented a good delineation of the Gulf of Mexico, he mistakenly showed Tucatan as island, and his rendering of Temistitan (Tenoxtitlan, or Mexico City) gave it an erroneous connection with the Gulf. Interior details to the north were nonexistent.

Munster interestingly combined the factual material he had at hand with the folklore and myth he must have derived in part from Solinus. The “Regio gigantum” (region of the giants) in South America, the archipelago of 7,448 islands near Japan, and the depiction of the cannibal’s hut complete with dismembered leg are all examples of this influence.

Video Title: Sebastian Munster’s 16th-century map of the New World. Source: Neatline Antique Maps. Date Published: May 24, 2021.