✓
MARTIN BEH AIM
HIS LIFE AND HIS GLOBE
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
Only Five Hundred and Ten Copies of this work have been printed , of
wpjch this Copy is Number
>
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■
MARTIN BEHAIM.
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Fiom a ‘Porhail in ihe possession of the family.
BEHAIM
MARTIN
HIS LIFE AND HIS GLOBE
BY
E. G. RAVENSTEIN, F.R.G.S.
First V ictoria Gold ^Medallist of the Royal Geographical Society
WITH A FACSIMILE OF THE GLOBE PRINTED IN COLOURS ELEVEN MAPS AND SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
GEORGE PHILIP & SON, LTD., 32, FLEET STREET
Liverpool: PHILIP, SON & NEPHEW, Ltd., 45-51, South Castle Street
1908
[A/l rights reserved]
I
<&/ v /U r ( f oil O
CONTENTS
Introduction .
THE LIFE.
I. Old Nuremberg ....
II. The Behaims of Schwarzbach
••••••••#
III. Early Years, 1459-1476 .............
IV. In the Netherlands, 1476-1484 ..........
Martin Behaim at Mechlin, Martin Behaim at Antwerp, 8; A Supposed Visit to Lisbon, 1481 or 1483, A Dance at a Jew’s Wedding, Departure from Antwerp, 1484, 9.
V. Behaim in Portugal .............
Germans at Lisbon, 10 ; German Brotherhoods, Martin Behaim ’s Private Life, 11.
VI. The Junta dos Mathematicos . .
Joao de Barros and the ‘Junta,’ 12; The Astronomical Expedition of Jose Vizinho, 1485, Behaim as an Astronomer, 13 ; The Astrolabe, 15 ; The Meteoroscope, The Cross-Staff, 16 ; The Quadrant, The Nocturnal, Sundials, 17 ; The Ephemerides, 18.
VII. Behaim’s African Voyage, 1484-1485 ..........
Portuguese Voyages of Discovery, 1472-82, 20 ; Diogo Cao’s First Voyage, 1482-84, Diogo Cao’s Second Voyage, 1485-86, 21 ; The Voyage of Bartholomeu Dias, 1487-88, 22; Minor Expeditions, Joao d’Aveiro and Benin, 1484-85, 23.
Behaim’s Own Accounts of his Voyage: The Story as told on the Globe, The Story as told in the ‘ Liber chronicorum,’ 24 ; A Summary of the two Accounts, Behaim’s Account Examined, Grains of Paradise, Pepper and Cinnamon, 25.
The Globe and Contemporary Maps, 26 ; Lower Guinea, The Southern Extremity of Africa, Upper Guinea, 27 ; The Guinea Islands, Insula Martini — Anno bom, 28.
Conclusion, 29.
VIII. Behaim’s Knighthood, 1485 ............
IX. Behaim and Columbus .............
X. Behaim and Magellan .............
XI. Behaim and the Discovery of America ..........
XII. A Visit to Nuremberg, 1490-1493 .........
Object of the Visit, Business Transactions, 41 ; Behaim’s Globe, 42 ; Martin Behaim’s Family Relations, 42.
XIII. A Mission to Flanders, 1493 ............
Flanders in 1493, Perkin Warbeck, 43 ; Behaim’s Account of his Mission, D. Jorge, the son of King John II., 44 ; Maximilian, the King of the Romans, and his son Philip, Conclusion, 45.
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( Vi )
PAGE
XIV. Fayal and the Azores ............. 46
The discovery of the Azores, Nomenclature of the Azores, 46 ; The Colonization of the Azores,
47 ; The Hurters of Flanders, Joz d’Utra (Josse van Hurter) as Capitao donatorio, 48 ; The Privileges of a “ Captain donatory ” or Governor, The Peopling of Fayal, Joz d’Utra and his descendants, 49 ; Martin Behaim in Fayal and his family, A projected Voyage of Discovery,
1486, Martin Behaim ’s Prophecies, 50.
XV. The Death of Behaim ............. 51
Wolf Behaim ’s Death at Lisbon, The Death of Martin Behaim, 51 ; Memorials at Nuremberg,
The Monument of Behaim, 52.
XVI. Martin Behaim the Younger, 1489-1520 ......... 53
Young Martin charged with Manslaughter, 53 ; A proposed Visit to Nuremberg, Young Martin at Nuremberg, 54 ; Law Proceedings, Sent to a Schoolmaster, 55 ; Return to Portugal, 56.
THE GLOBE.
XVII. The History of the Globe ............ 57
Contemporary Globes, 57 ; George Holzschuher’s Suggestion, Behaim’s Qualifications, The Manufacture of the Globe, 58 ; Repairs of the Globe, A General Description, 59.
XVIII. Facsimiles of Behaim’s Globe ........... 60
Facsimiles in Solido, 60 ; Pseudo-Facsimiles in Plano, 61 ; My own “ Facsimile,” 62.
XIX. The Sources of Behaim’s Globe ........... 62
Ptolemy, Isidor of Seville, 62 ; Marco Polo, 63 ; His route plotted and result with reference to the supposed extent of the habitable world, 64 ; Sir John Mandeville, Portolano Charts, 65 ; Toscanelli, Portuguese Sources, 66 ; The islands of the Atlantic as delineated by Behaim and by Portuguese Pilots, A Map of Western Africa from Materials available in 1492, 68 ; Miscellaneous Sources, Sources not traced, 69 ; Conclusion, 70.
XX. Nomenclature of the Globe and Commentary ........ 71
How the Town Council of N iirnberg ordered the Globe to be Made, The Authorities consulted,
The Story of Behaim’s Voyage, 71 ; Equator, Parallels and Ecliptic, The Meridian, 72 ; The Artificial Horizon, 73.
The Ocean, 73.
The Islands of the Atlantic, Iceland, British Isles, 74; Insula de Brazil, The Azores, 75;
Madeira, Canary Islands, Cape Verde Islands, 76 ; Antilia, St. Brandan’s Island, 77.
Continental Europe, Scandinavia, 77 ; North-Eastern Europe, Hungary and the Lower Danube, Germany, 78 ; France, Portugal, Castile and Aragon, Italy, 79 ; The Balkan Peninsula, Little Tartary, 80.
Asia : Asia Minor, Armenia, Syria, 81 ; Babylonia, Arabia, Persia, 82 ; India Intra Gangem, 83 ;
India Extra Gangem, The Country of the Sinae, India, 84 ; Further India, 85 ; The Indian Ocean and its Islands, Taprobana, Ceylon, 86 ; Java Minor, Java Major, Pentan, 87 ; Nekuran, Angaman, Islands of the Satyrs, Candyn, The Magnetic Island, 88 ; Silver, Gold and Pearl Islands, Cipangu, The Indian Spice Trade, 89.
Inner Asia : Western Turkistan, Tarim (Eastern Turkistan), 90 ; Tartary, 91 ; Cathai, Mangi, 92. Ophir and Havilah, St. Thomas, 94 ; Appolonius of Tyre, The Three Holy Kings and Prester John, 95 ; The Romance of Alexander, 96.
Africa : Ptolemaic Nomenclature, 96 ; Egypt, 97 ; Barca and Tripoli, Tunis, Buja, Oran and Tlemsen, Fez and Morocco, The West Coast of the Sahara, 98 ; Senegambia, Upper Guinea,
99; Benin, The Guinea Islands, 100 ; Inner Guinea, 101 ; The Sahara, Abyssinia and Nubia, Lower Guinea, 102; River Congo to the Cape, Behaim’s “Furthest,” 103; Inner Tropical South Africa, Zanzibar, 104 ; Madagascar, Scotra, 105.
( vii )
PAGE
APPENDIX . 107-116
Letters of Martin Behaim to his Uncle Leonhard.
1. Mechlin, April 17, 1477, 107.
II. Mechlin, October 13, 1477 (with Facsimile), 107.
III. Frankfurt, September 17, 1472, 108.
IV. Antwerp, June 8, 1479, 109.
V. Legal Documents referring to a Dance at a Jew’s Wedding, 1483, 110.
VI. Legal Documents concerning Bonds signed by Behaim at Antwerp, May 4, 1484, 110.
VII. Statement of Expenses incurred in the Manufacture of the Globe, 1492, 111.
VIII. Dr. H. Schedel’s Remarks on the Globe, 112.
IX. Letter of Dr. H. Monetarius to King John of Portugal, July 14, 1493, 113.
X. Martin Behaim to his Cousin Michael, March 11, 1494, 113.
XI. Valentin Ferdinand’s Account of Fayal and Pico, 114.
XII. Two Letters addressed by the Town Council of Nuremberg to King Manuel of Portugal,
June 7, 1518, and May 12, 1521, 115.
XIII. Letter of Albrecht Diirer to Michael Behaim, 116.
INDEX .
117
ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate 1. Portrait of Martin Behaim. ( From a 'painting in the possession of the family). . Frontispiece
„ 2. The arms of Behaim. {From a block engraved by Albrecht Diirer in the possession of Freiherr
von Behaim ) ..............
„ 3. The house in which Behaim was born. {From a photograph by F. Schmidt ) ....
„ 4. Behaim’s monument at Nuremberg. {From a photograph by the same ) .....
„ 5. The Globe at Nuremberg in 1904. {From a photograph taken by the kind permission of
Freiherr von Behaim in 1905) ...........
6. Facsimile of a letter written by Martin Behaim, dated Mechlin, October 13th, 1477, now in the family archives at Nuremberg ..........
In Text. 7. The Arms of Portugal in 1484 and 1485 ..........
„ 8. The Padrao of Cape Cross, 1485 ...........
9. Rock inscriptions on the Lower Congo relating to Cao’s voyage of 1485-1486
10-17. Illustrations of astronomical instruments (astrolabes, quadrant, cross-staff, back-staff, sundials, etc.) ......•••••••
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57
107
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.15-18
( viii )
COLOURED MAPS
i
(At end of Volume.)
PAGE
1. The World as known to Christian Europe in 1492 ........ to follow 116
2. The Sources of Behaim’s Globe, with six insets „
Insets (1) and (2) : Scandinavia and Head streams of the Nile, from the Ulm edition of Ptolemy, 1482 ; (3) Antilia according to Gracioso Benincasa, 1488; (4) Cipangu according to Behaim, 1492; (5) and (6) Eastern Asia and Central Africa, according to Waldseemiiller, 1507.
3. The Route of Marco Polo, plotted from his narrative .........
Inset : The travels of Marco Polo, according to the map in the Sala dello Scudo, Venice.
4. The Islands of the Atlantic (Azores, Canaries, Cape Verde, and Guinea Islands) according to Soligo
or A. Benincasa, Behaim, and modern maps ......... ,
5. Guinea and South-Western Africa, compiled from materials available in 1492
Insets : Eight maps of Martin’s island, Diogo Cao, or Annobom.
99
99
FACSIMILE OF BEHAIM’S GLOBE
On the scale of the Original. In 4 sheets, size 30 x 24 inches, folded in pocket inside end cover.
(Printed in colours by W. Griggs.)
Index-Map showing the arrangement of the sheets, page 123.
65 67 67 57 36
66
MAPS IN TEXT
Catalan Map of the World, 1375 .......
The World according to Fra Mauro, 1457 .....
The World according to Henricus Martellus Germanus, 1489 .
The Laon Globe, 14— ........
Ten Maplets illustrating the Discovery of South America, 1500-1517 The Mediterranean : Ptolemy amended .....
MARTIN BEHAIM.
HIS LIFE AND HIS GLOBE.
INTRODUCTION.
Martin Behaim has been credited with having greatly advanced the art of navigation and with having made extensive voyages of discovery under the Flag of Portugal, but is best known as the author of a remarkable globe, which was making at Nuremberg whilst Columbus was crossing the western ocean in search of the riches of the East. The story of his life and life’s work should conse¬ quently prove of great interest to students of the history of geography.
The materials for doing full justice to this subject are, unfortunately, very fragmentary, and there is little hope that the future will lead to the discovery of documents likely to shed additional light upon this matter. The legends upon the globe, supplemented by a short account in Hartmann Schedel’s ‘ Liber Chronicorum,’ 1 give us Behaim’s own version of a voyage along the west coast of Africa, when he claims to have commanded a Royal vessel ; but diligent searches in the archives of his family and of his native town have failed to bring to light information on a subject which interests us equally much, namely, his claim to be numbered among the great mathe¬ maticians and cosmographers of his age.
My own inquiries at Nuremberg have enabled me to supplement to a slight extent the information already gathered by Ghillany and Dr. Gunther, but neither the “ archive ” of the Behaim family, nor the search kindly undertaken by Lieutenant Hans von Imhof among old family letters still preserved by him, yielded anything
1 Dr. Hartmann Schedel (b. 1440, d. 1514) was an indefatigable collector of codices and inscriptions. He settled at Nuremberg in 1484. His library was sold in 1552 to Hans Jacob Fugger of Augsburg, and the bulk of it is now in the R. Library at Munich (R. Stauber, iiber die Schedel’sche Bibliothek in H. Grauert’s ‘ Studien u. Darstellungen a. d. Geb. d. Gesch.,’ VI., 1908). His famous chronicle was published in 1493.
calculated to throw light upon Behaim’s doings whilst in Portugal. Baron Holzschuher referred me for information to Gatterer’s ‘ Historia Genealogica Dominorum Holz- schuerorum ’ (Norimb., 1775), 2 but although that valuable work contains some details about George Holzschuher, who helped Behaim with his globe, it ignores the members of the family who resided at Lisbon.
Searches in the Torre do Tombo, the Record Office at Lisbon, were no more successful than at Nuremberg. Sebastiao Francisco de Mendo Trigozo tells us that when he proposed to write a Memoir of Martin de Bohemia he thought that the Royal Archives might yield some notices of which he stood in need, but that all his research proved unfruitful.2 3
Dr. Friedrich Ivunstmann, the tutor of Princess Amelia of Brazil from 1841-46, had free permission to search, but found nothing to aid him in his historical work.4
Prof. Carl von Reinhardtstottner, the learned author of a work on Camoens’ ‘ Lusiadas ’ (Strassburg, 1874), applied for information to the Ministerio da Marinha, on behalf* of Dr. S. Gunther, but was regretfully informed that they had nothing to offer him.5
I am myself indebted to my friend Captain Ernesto Joao de Carvalho e Vasconcellos and to Sr. Gabriel
2 Joh. Christ. Gatterer, a distinguished historian and geographer, was born at Lichtenau, near Nuremberg, in 1727. He died 1799.
3 ‘Mem. de Litt. Port.,’ VIII., 1812. 2nd ed., 1856, p. 365.
4 Ghillany, P. III. Kunstmann was born at Nuremberg, took Holy Orders, and died 1867. He is the author of ‘Die Entdeckung Amerikas’ (Munich, 1859), and of several papers dealing with the history of Portuguese explorations.
5 On Reinhardtstottner (b. 1847) see Manuel Bernaldes Branco, ‘ Portugal e os Estraneiros ’ (Lisbon, 1879), with portrait.
B
2
Pereira of the Bibliotheca Nacional for valuable informa¬ tion, but none bearing upon Behaim’s scientific labours.
It seems that the only official document discovered up till now which contains the name of Behaim is a Letter of Pardon — Carta de Perdao — of November 16, 1501, which King Manuel addressed to Fernao d’Evora, whom Joz d’Utra, jun., the Captain donatory, had sent in chains to Lisbon because he had “ found him with one of his sisters, the wife of one Martin de Boeme.”1
It is of course quite possible that documents referring to Martin Behaim may have existed formerly in the ‘ Casa da Mina e India,’ but like other documents of even greater interest they were either destroyed by fire or during the great earthquake of 1755, a loss now quite irreparable.
Not a single contemporary Portuguese writer mentions the name of Martin Behaim, not even Ruy de Pina 2 or Garcia de Resende, the authors of ‘ Chronicas ’of Joao II., who must have known him personally, if not intimately, if he really was such a persona grata with the King as is claimed on his behalf by all his biographers and by members of his own family.3
V alentin Fernandes, or Ferdinand,4 the German printer, who settled at Lisbon before 1490, and acted as interpreter to Hieronymus Monetarius during his visit to Portugal in 1494, must have had personal knowledge of his country¬ man Martin Behaim, and heard about his African voyage and his supposed scientific attainments. Yet in the valuable accounts of Portuguese explorations which he collected up to the year 1540, the name of Behaim is not to be found.
1 Published by E. do Canto, ‘ Arch, dos Azores,’ IX., p. 195.
2 Ruy de Pina’s ‘ Chroniqua do Key D. Joham II.’ was first published in the ‘ Collecgao de Livros ineditos,’ t. II. (Lisbon, 1792). The author was Chronista mor of Portugal and Chief Keeper of the Torre do Tombo. He enjoyed the confidence of Kings John II., Manuel and John III., and died 1521. Garcia de Resende’s ‘ Chronica do Rey Dom loam o II.’ was printed at Evora in 1554. Both chroniclers were present at the King’s death.
3 His brother Michael wrote to J. Pock on November 12, 1518, that Martin Behaim, “ when young, was much liked by the old King (John II.), but how his affairs ended when he grew old you may know better than I ” (Ghillany, p. 112).
4 Valentin Ferdinand was at first associated with Nicholas of Saxony. Among other works he printed a ‘ Livro das Viagens de Marco Polo ’ (1502). His accounts of Portuguese explorations are now in the Royal Library of Munich (Cod. Hisp., Cl. I., 27). The more interesting of the accounts referred to have been published by J. A. Schmeller, F. Kunst- mann, Gabriel Pereira, and S. Ruge (‘ Abh. d. phil. Cl. d. Akad. d. Wiss.,’ Munich, IV., VIII., IX. ; * Bol. da Soc. de Geograpliia,’ Lisbon, XVII. ; ‘ Revista Portug. Col. e Maritima,’ Lisbon, 1900, Nos. 32-36 ; ‘ 27 Jahresb. d. Vereins f. Erdk.,’ Dresden, 1901). A letter, describing a rhinoceros which Garcia de Noronha had brought from India in 1513, was written by Ferdinand to his “friends” at Nuremberg and is published by Count Angelo de Gubernatis (‘ Storia dei Viaggiatori Italiani,’ Livorna, 1875, p. 389). An engraving of this rhinoceros by Albert Diirer is to be found at the British Museum (Add. MSS. 5220, f. 19). Ferdinand was a squire (escudeiro) of Queen Leonor and (since 1503) official broker (corretor) of the German merchants.
Duarte Pacheco Pereira,5 another contemporary, the “ Achilles Lusitano ” of Camoens (Canto x., 12), and author of an 4 Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis,’ a sailing directory for the coast of Africa as far as the Rio de Infante, occasionally refers to Cao and other explorers, but not once mentions the name of Behaim.
As to Behaim’s “ correspondence with numerous men of learning,” it only existed in the imagination of Carlo Amoretti,6 the editor of Pigafetta’s account of Magelhaes’ voyage. Some of these letters would surely have come to light had they ever been in existence.
Joachim Lelewel, one of the foremost authorities on the history of maps, would have us believe that “ Behaim’s renown was great in Germany, even in his lifetime,” and that, though ignored in Portugal, “ his name, in Germany, was in every mouth, occupied numerous pens, and the echoes of his glory resounded in Italy and in Spain.”7 These assumptions are not supported by a single fact. Except in Schedel’s 4 Chronicle,’ already referred to, his name will be sought in vain in the writings of his contemporaries. Conrad Celtes,8 who visited Nuremberg repeatedly between 1490 and 1493, that is during Behaim’s stay in his native town, in his delightful book describing the Imperial city and its inhabitants, makes no reference either to the now famous globe or its author.
Even Dr. Hieronymus Miintzer or Monetarius, who gave Behaim a letter of recommendation to King John, in 1493, and who during a visit to Lisbon in 1494 was actually the guest of Behaim’s father-in-law, does not mention the name of his old acquaintance, either in his 4 Itinerarium ’ or in his 4 De inventione Africae.’9
6 Duarte Pacheco Pereira was born at Lisbon in 1450, served on the Guinea coast, 1482-83, went out to India with Cabral in 1500, and again with Affonso de Albuquerque in 1503 ; returned to Lisbon in July, 1505 ; was governor bf S. Jorge da Mina, 1520-22, and died 1533. He wrote his ‘ Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis ’ after 1505. It was published only in 1892 with an introduction by Raphael Eduardo de Azevedo Basto, Keeper of Records at the Toi’re do Tombo.
6 Carlo Amoretti, a learned priest, was born at Oneglia in 1741, was appointed head of the Ambrosian Library at Milan, and died in 1816. The ‘ Primo viaggio intorno al globo terraqueo’ was published in 1800.
7 ‘ Geographie du moyen age,’ t. II., p. 137 (Brussels, 1852). Lelewel was born at Warsaw in 1786, had to fly Poland after the insurrection of 1830, and died in Paris in 1864.
8 Conrad Celtes, or Pickel, a peasant’s son, was born at Wipfeld in 1459, won fame as a poet, patriot, geographer, and champion of Humanism. He died 1508. His ‘ De origine, situ, moribus et institutis Norimbergae libellus ’ (1495) was dedicated to the City Council, who awarded him 8 gulden (£4) as an honorarium, which he returned in disgust, whereupon the Council in 1502 sent him 20 gulden. On Celtes see B. Hartmann, ‘Konrad Celtes in Niirnberg’ (Niirnb., 1889), and L. Gallois, ‘Les Geographes allemands de la Renaissance ’ (Paris, 1890), pp. 173-180, where his merits as a geographer are dealt with.
9 Hieronymus Miintzer was a native of Feldkirch in Vorarlberg, studied medicine at Pavia, and settled at Nuremberg in 1478. When Nuremberg was invaded by the plague in August, 1494, he fled the town and started upon a tour which, in November, brought him to Portugal. At Evora (November 16-26) he was introduced to King John and dined
3
The earliest Portuguese writer who mentions Behaim is the famous historian Joao de Barros,1 and his statement in ‘ Da Asia ’ (Dec. I., lib. IV., c. 2) is indeed the only authority which connects him with the ‘ Junta dos mathematicos ’ appointed by King John II. It has been quoted, commented and enlarged upon by numerous later authors, and shall be fully dealt with by me in its proper place.
Almost equally controverted is the statement of Antonio Pigafetta,* 1 2 the historian of Magellan’s voyage, with respect to a chart showing a strait connecting the Atlantic with the South Sea, the authorship of which is ascribed by him to Behaim.
The only other early writer whom I need mention in this place is Dr. Gaspar Fructuoso,3 a learned Jesuit, the author of ‘ Saudadas da terra,’ where are to be found a number of anecdotes, collected locally, and of doubtful authority.
The modern authors whom I shall have to quote as illustrating the history of Martin Behaim are very numerous. Foremost among them are Alexander von Humboldt, Cardinal D. Francisco de S. Luiz Saraiva,4 Dr. Arthur Breusing,5 Ernesto do Canto,6 Oscar Peschel,7 Dr. Sophus Ruge,8 Dr. F. von
four times at the Royal table. He again left Lisbon on December 2, 1494, and was back at Nuremberg on April 15, 1495. He died in 1508. See Schmeller (‘ Abh. d. bayr. Ak.,’ 1847), and Kunstmann (ib., 1855). Dr. G. von Laubmann, who examined Miintzer’s MSS. in the Munich Library, informed Dr. Harrisse (‘ The Discovery of North America,’ p. 397) that the name of Behaim is not to be found in them.
1 Joao de Barros was born at Vizeu in 1496, was appointed governor of Elmina in 1522, and held the post of treasurer of the India House from 1532-63. He died in 1570. His official position gave him access to documents no longer available. Decada I., which alone concerns us, was published at Lisbon in 1552.
2 Pigafetta was born at Florence in 1480, came to Spain in 1519, and after his return from the first voyage round the world, returned to Italy in 1434. Ramusio, in 1536, first published an account of his voyage.
3 Gaspar Fructuoso, S.J., was born at Ponta Delgada, S. Miguel, of wealthy parents, studied at Salamanca and was appointed parish priest of Ribeira grande, S. Miguel, where he died in 1591. His ‘Saudadas’ were utilized by Antonio Cordeiro, S.J. (b. at Angra, Terceira, 1641, died at Lisbon 1722) in a ‘ Historia insulana’ (Lisbon, 1717). Manuel Pinheiro Chagas, ‘ Os descobrimentos Portuguezes e os de Colombus ’ (Lisbon, 1892), p. 164, speaks of this Cordeiro as “one of those historians who think it allowable to state what they know to be false as long as it redounds to the glory of their country.”
4 ‘ Obras completas do Cardeal Saraiva’ (Lisbon, 1875), t. V., pp. 180-3,
190-200, originally written in 1841.
6 A. Breusing was born at Osnabriick. From 1850 to his death in 1892, he was director of the Navigation School at Bremen ( Wolkenhauer, in ‘Verh. d. Ges. f. Erdk.’ 1892): ‘Geogr. Jahrbuch,’ XVI., 1893, p. 478).
6 ‘ Archivo dos Azores,’ 1878-94.
7 Oscar Peschel, one of the most fertile and original writers on geography, was born at Dresden, 1826 • was appointed Professor of Geography at Leipzig University, and died there in 1875.
8 S. Ruge, one of the foremost authorities on the history of geographi¬
cal exploration, author of ‘ Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen ’
(Berlin, 1881), was born at Dorum in 1831, held the post of Professor of
Geography at the Technical High School at Dresden, and died there
in 1903.
Wieser,9 Harry Harrisse,10 * Eugen Gelcich,11 and Her¬ mann Wagner.12
I shall now mention the biographies of Martin Behaim which have been published up to this time.
Passing over the worthless biographic notice in the ‘ Bohemia docta ’ of Bohuslav Balbinus,13 published posthumously in 1776, the frivolous panegyric of J. Chr. Wagenseil,14 and the equally worthless publications of his blind followers, which are dealt with at some length in c. IX, the earliest biographer deserving to be mentioned is Joh. Gabriel Doppelmayr,15 the author of ‘ Historische Nachrichten von den Niirnbergischen Mathematicis und Kunstlern ’ (Nurnb., 1730). He, too, accepts Wagenseil’s gross perversion of historic truth, but we are beholden to him for the first facsimile of the globe, which, though on a small scale, is accompanied by copies of the most important of its legends. Christoph Gotlieb von Murr’s 16 ‘ Diplomatische Geschichte des portugiesischen beriihmten Ritters Martin Behaims ’ (Nurnb., 1773, 2nd edition Gotha, 1801), is the work of a conscientious author, well qualified for his task by preceding historian and antiquarian researches. His work is largely based upon documents ; the claims put forward by Wagenseil on the false assumption that they would redound to Behaim’s honour, are finally refuted, and even though the author mistook the birth-year of Martin Behaim the father for that of the son — a most inexcusable error considering that he had free access to the family archives — his little book fully deserved the honour of being translated into French and Spanish.17 It supplied weapons to those who, in after years, stood up for
9 Wieser was born at Kufstein in 1840 and is Professor of Geography at the University of Innsbruck.
10 Harrisse, the author of numerous fundamental works dealing with Columbus and the discovery of America, was born in 1830, and is still indefatigably engaged upon his fruitful researches.
11 Gelcich, formerly director of the Nautical School at Lussinpiccolo, was born in 1854.
12 H. Wagner, Professor of Geography in the University, Gottingen, and the foremost authority on the History of Maps, was born at Erlangen in 1840.
13 B. Balbinus, S.J., was born at Koniggratz in 1621 and died at Prague in 1688. His ‘Bohemia docta,’ edited by Raphaele Unger, was published in 1776.
14 Wagenseil, a man of much learning and great reputation, born 1633 at Nuremberg, died 1705.
15 Doppelmayr was born at Nuremberg, 1671, and died 1759.
16 Murr, the historian, antiquary and critic, was born at Nuremberg 1733, and died at Altdorf, 1811.
17 The French translation was made by H. J. Jansen, and was published in the ‘ Recueil des Pieces interessantes concernant les Antiquites, les Beaux- Arts, les Belles-Lettres, et la Philosophie,’ t. I. et II. (Paris, 1727). It was reprinted in 1801, as an appendix to a French translation of Amoretti’s edition of Pigafetta. A third edition, revised by Murr himself, was published in 1802 at Strassburg and Paris. The Spanish translation is by D. Cristobal Cladera (‘ Investigaciones historicas,’ Madrid, 1796, pp. 173—218).
B 2
4
Columbus and Magellan, when their claims as “dis¬ coverers ” were called in question. Sebastiao Francisco de Mendo Trigozo,1 the author of a ‘ Memoria sobre Martin de Bohemia’ (‘Memorias de Litteratura Portugueza,’ t. VIII., 1812; 2nd ed. Lisbon, 1856) is almost wholly dependent upon Murr for his facts.
After a long interval Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany,2 a man of learning and from 1841-53 Chief Librarian of the Town Library at Nuremberg, presented us with a ‘ Geschichte des Seefahrers Ritter Martin Behaim ’ (Niirnberg, 1853), an ambitious work, to which is prefixed an Essay by A. von Humboldt on the oldest maps of the new continent and the name ‘ America,’ and which is illustrated by what claims to be an “ exact copy of Behaim’s globe on its original scale.” Ghillany did his work with much industry ; he dealt with Behaim’s life and controverted points of his history as fully as the materials at his command permitted, and it might be supposed that the last word had been spoken on the subject. Such, however, was not the case, as is proved by Dr. Siegmund Giinther’s3 ‘Martin Behaim’ (Bamberg, 1890), which made known new documents which shed much light upon certain periods of Behaim’s history, and thus produced a work at once popular and indispensable to the student of history. The account which Lucien Gallois renders of Behaim’s life and work,4 as we have a right to expect from its gifted author, is instructive, but fails to shed fresh light upon subjects in dispute ; the article in the ‘ Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie,’ by J. Lowenberg 5 is disappointing, if not worthless, and it seems a pity that this biography was not entrusted to a more painstaking writer ; whilst A. Reichenbach’s ‘ Martin Behaim, ein deutscher Seefahrer’ (Leipzig, 1869) may be a good ‘ Volksbuch,’ but cannot be appealed to as an authority.
In the work which I now venture to present to the public I shall deal with sufficient fulness with Martin Behaim’s private life, his supposed scientific attainments and his voyage along the coast of Africa, and I shall give equal attention to a full description of his globe, which is still preserved at Nuremberg, and which, whatever its defects, is one of the most valuable and interesting
1 S. F. de Mendo Trigozo wrote in 1812.
2 Ghillany was born at Ei’langen in 1807 and died in 1876. Already in 1842 he had published a pamphlet, ‘ Der Erdglobus des Martin Behaim vom J. 1492, u. der des Johann Schoener vom J. 1520,’ with a reduced facsimile of the Western Hemisphere by Heideloff, a drawing master.
3 S. Gunther, Professor of Geography at the Technical High School of Munich, is one of the great authorities on mathematical and historical geography. He was born at Niirnberg in 1848.
4 ‘ Les geographes allemands de la renaissance ’ (Paris, 1890), pp. 25-37. L. Gallois, Professor at the Ecole normale superieure at Paris, was b. 1857.
5 J. Lowenberg, a writer on the history of geographic exploration, was
born at Strzelno (Posen), and died at Berlin, 1853.
geographical monuments of the age immediately preceding the discovery of America. This globe, up till now, has not been fairly dealt with. Its legends, indeed, have in part been quoted and a few of its geographical names, but no real facsimile of it has ever been published, still less have the authorities been traced and analysed upon whom its delineation of the earth’s surface is based. The facsimile which I now present to the public may not be the best that could have been produced, but it is at all events on the scale of the original, and contains all its legends, names and miniatures not to be found in any of the pseudo-facsimiles published hitherto. In my work I also deal in some detail with the materials available in 1492 for compiling a map of the known world, thus enabling the reader to form some judgment of the skill with which the cartographers of that period have availed themselves of the materials which were at their disposal.6
In conclusion I feel it my duty to express my thanks to a number of gentlemen who have kindly given me their assistance. At Nuremberg my thanks are especially due to the Barons F. and W. Behaim, who not only allowed me to take photographs of the globe, of the portrait of their kinsman, and of a letter written by him, but also permitted to be printed from an original block by Albert Diirer a design of their coat of arms. They like¬ wise afforded to myself and my kind friend, Professor M. J. Rackl, repeated opportunities for examining the globe. Facilities for research were most courteously granted me by Dr. G. von Bezold, Director of the Germanic Museum, Dr. E. Mummenhof, Keeper of the City Records, and Dr. E. Reicke, city librarian. Dr. G. von Laubmann, Director of the Royal Library at Munich, and Sr. Gabriel Pereira, of the Bibliotheca Nacional, have most readily responded to my numerous inquiries for information. Dr. K. R. Scheppig, Director of the Anthropological Museum at Kiel, has generously placed at my service valuable information collected by himself for a work on Behaim upon which he is engaged. M. G. A. Marcel, Keeper of Maps at the Bibliotheque nationale at Paris, has afforded me every facility for making a copy of the real facsimile of Behaim’s globe in his charge. Among many others my thanks are due more especially to Sr. Raphael Eduardo de Azevedo Basto, chief of the Torre do Tombo, Consul-general H. Daen- hardt, and my friend Captain E. J. de Carvalho e Vascon- cellos at Lisbon ; the family of Count Mirbach of Schloss Harff, D. Jules Mees, Professor Albrecht Penck, Dr. Henry Vignaud and others.
6 The present work supersedes as a matter of course the author’s essay, 1 Martin de Bohemia,’ 8vo, pp. 68, published in the ‘ Bibliotheca da Revista Portugueza colonial e maritima,’ Lisbon, 1900.
KqI. flayer. fiofbudrtruckerei fl. 9. 1). flielinysflieb, fflutnbecn.
THE
LIFE.
I. OLD NUREMBERG.
Nuremberg by the middle of the fifteenth century had grown from a small village nestling at the foot of the sandstone rock crowned by the castle built by the Emperor Conrad II. into one of the most famous and wealthiest cities of the Empire.1 Her merchants were the rivals of those of Augsburg and Frankfurt, and much of the profitable spice-trade, of which Venice still enjoyed an almost undisputed monopoly, passed through their hands. They had branch establishments in Italy, France and the Low Countries. The artisans of the city were renowned for their skill and ingenuity. Noble churches and striking civic buildings, which are still the delight of visitors to the old Imperial city, existed even then, and bore witness to the piety, taste and prosperity of its citizens. And the ensuing century brought to the front quite a number of men — natives of Nuremberg or residents — whose reputations, after the lapse of more than four centuries, are still green among the living. Promi¬ nent among these were Adam Krafft (1430-1507), whose statues, renovated, still adorn the road to the cemetery of St. John ; Michael Wolgemut (1434-1519), and his more famous pupil Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528), one of whose designs, thanks to the kindness of Baron Behaim, ornaments this volume ; Peter Vischer (1455-1529), the sturdy sculptor and founder; Veit Hirschvogel (1461- 1525), the painter on glass ; Johannes Muller of Monteregio (Konigsberg), the most famous astronomer of his age, who, though not a native of Nuremberg, resided in that city from 1471-75, and would have returned to it had not death carried him off prematurely at Rome, in 1476 ; Bernhard Walther (1430-1504), the wealthy mer¬ chant, who built an observatory for his friend and teacher Johannes Muller; Willibrand Pirkheimer (1470-1530), the learned statesman, warrior and patron of artists and men of science; Johann Werner (1468-1528), the astronomer; Hans Sachs (1494-1576), the M eister singer ; Anthoni Koberger, who, between 1470 and 1513, printed and published 276 books, and many others of less note.
And Nuremberg was not only the centre of a far- reaching commerce, the seat of flourishing industries and of the arts ; the city was likewise politically one of the
1 In 1449 Nuremberg had 45,307 inhabitants, of whom 25,085 were “ residents.”
most important in all Germany. The Imperial Parlia¬ ment or Reichstag had met there repeatedly ever since 1073 ; the Emperors frequently took up their quarters in its Burg ; and in 1424 the city authorities were entrusted with the custody of the crown jewels, which remained there up to 1796, when they were removed to Vienna.
The government of the city was frankly oligarchical, for, with the exception of eight representative craftsmen, admitted after an insurrection in 1349, only members of about fifty families were eligible for seats on the City Council or Rat. These patrician families or Geschlechter owed their privilege to the wealth acquired by trade or commerce ; and a personal dignity at first conferred upon individuals of merit by their fellow-citizens in course of time became hereditary.2 It must, however, be admitted that they exercised the powers usurped by them with honesty, fairness, and business capacity, which is more than can be said of the popularly elected Councils of certain of our modern cities, notorious for their extrava¬ gance, mismanagement and even corruption.
II. THE BEHAIMS OF SCHWARZBACH.
The Behaims of Schwarzbach, in the fifteenth century, already occupied a prominent position among the Ge¬ schlechter or Patricians of Nuremberg. The founder of the family is supposed to have left his native place of Schwarzbach in the Bohemian district of Krumlau, in consequence of the persecution suffered by the Christian inhabitants after the death of Duke Wratislaw in 916. This tradition is confirmed, to some extent, by the family name, for Behaim, or Beheim, merely means “ Bohemian,” the modern “ Boehm,” whilst the wavy bend sable , which crosses the family shield diagonally, is clearly intended to
2 The Bat or City Council included 48 members, viz., 26 Burgomasters (13 Batmannen, Consules or Councilmen, and 13 Schoffen, Assessors), 7 alte Herren (“old gentlemen”; aldermen or septem viri), 7 alte genannte (seniori), and 8 representatives of craftsmen. The Kleine Bat (Senatus) included 3 oberste Hauptleut (Captains or triumviri), 2 Losunger, who had charge of the finances and were the real, heads of the city, and the 7 alte Herren. In addition to these privileged families there were those entitled to the title of Erbar (honourable or worshipful), related by marriage to the Geschlechter ; merchants and manufacturers, land or houseowners, and members of the learned professions ; shopkeepers, and handicraftsmen.
6
represent the Schwarzbach or “ Black beck. 1 At Nuremberg the Behaims engaged in trade, acquired wealth, gained admission among the patrician families and assumed a coat of arms. As early as 1332, a member of the family, one Albrecht Behaim, a grocer, was elected one of the burgomasters of the city, and occupied that honourable position until 1342. The Senate of Nurem¬ berg was consequently fully justified when, in a letter addressed to King Manuel on June 7, 151 8, 2 on behalf of Martin Behaim’s son, it spoke of “ familia Bohemorum in civitate nostra Nurembergensis ultra ducentos annos honestissime et egregie perdurasse.” In a second letter the senate, as if doubtful whether the king would recognise the members of Patrician families as “ noble¬ men,” added that the family held likewise several feudal estates outside the city. These estates included two male fiefs at Riickersdorf, near Lauf, on the Pegnitz, and at Kurssendorf (Kurzendorf), a few miles to the south of Ansbach, as also a grange at Katerbach, to the north of Ansbach conferred by the Bishop of W iirzburg.3
Martin Behaim,4 the father of the “ Navigator,” was the younger son of Michael Behaim (b. 1400) and of E. Hirschvogel. He was bom on November 10, 1437, 5 * married, in 1458, Agnes, the daughter of Wilhelm Schopper and Mistress Muffel, was elected Senator in 1461, and died on August 6, 1474. He was a general merchant, and in his younger years business had taken him as far as Venice. His wife survived him thirteen years and died on July 8, 1487. She had borne her husband seven children, of whom Martin, the subject of this history, was the eldest and cannot therefore have been born earlier
1 The following is a description of the coat of arms of the Behaims : — Shield gules and argent, party per pale, and charged with a wavy bend sable. Orest : a white phoenix, rising, with black collar. I am able — thanks to the kindness of Baron Behaim — to present the readers with a design of this coat by Albert Diirer, together with a copy of the letter written by the famous artist (see Appendix XIII.).
2 The Behaims of Schwarzbach had no doubt done excellent service in the government of their city, but none amongst them had won distinction in art, science or literature, whilst several namesakes of theirs, not belonging to the family, had done so. Dr. Christoph Scheurl (whose interesting autobiography is published in the ‘ Mittheilungen d. Y ereins fur die Geschichte Niirnberg’s,’ Y.) in an obituary on Dean A. Kress (1513), who was succeeded by a nephew of the famous architect Hanns Behaim, had the temerity to dwell upon this point, whereat the Town Council felt highly indignant, severely reprimanded him, and ordered this obituary to be suppressed (G. W. K. Lochner, ‘ Allgem. Deutsche Biographie.’) G. W. Lochner was born 1798, and died 1882.
3 For the two letters of the Senate, see Appendix XII. The three feudal estates are mentioned by Lochner, ‘ Selecta Archivalia,’ I., 243, and Gunther, p. 7.
4 The numerous MS. “ genealogies ” to be found at Nuremberg abound in discrepancies and obvious mistakes, nor is J. G. Biedermann’s ‘ Geschlechtsregister des hochadligen Patriciats in Niirnberg ’ (Baireuth, 1745) always to be trusted.
5 Ghillany (p. 17) opines that he must have been born earlier, say in
1430, as there are still extant letters written by him between 1455 and
1457, when he was travelling and collecting debts due to the firm. He
publishes two of these letters, and thinks he must have been older than
eighteen when entrusted with such duties. However, 1437 is the date
given in all genealogies and in the ‘ Familienbuch.’
than 1459. 6 Among the executors of her last will and testament is to be found the name of Bartholomew von Eyb, whom I shall have occasion to refer to later on, in connection with Martin’s commercial training. Both parents were buried in the church of the Dominicans.
In what follows I shall give some information on the children of Martin Behaim and Agnes Schopper.
Martin Behaim, the eldest of the three sons, was pro¬ bably born in 1459, and will be fully dealt with later on.
Stephan, the second son, was born about 1460, married Margareta Ortolph in 1500, and died in 1511. He was Assessor of the City Court and of the Court for matri¬ monial causes. He left two sons, of whom his brother Michael writes in 1518 that the elder was intended for the priesthood, whilst the younger was not very robust ( notvest ).7 His widow married Hans von Obernitz, who subsequently held the post of Imperial bailli or Reichs- schulteis.
Michael, the third son, is stated to have been born in 1474. He married Catherina Lochner in 1495, was knighted (probably by the Emperor Maximilian), elected a member of the Senate in 1502 and died in 1522. He had no children, a fact which he deplores in a letter to Jorg Pock, written in 1518. His widow died in 1527. It was Michael who at the request of the Emperor Maximilian, during a visit to Nuremberg in November, 1500, consulted the antiquary Sebald Schreyer why an eagle on one of the ceilings of the Burg was painted yellow instead of black as usual.8 Michael took a friendly interest in the son of his brother Martin.9
Wolf or Wolf rath, the youngest of the brothers, and hence occasionally referred to as Wolflein — Little Wolf — spent most of his life abroad. Between 1491 and 1496 he was at Lyons, in the service of the Tucher, and subse¬ quently at Geneva. Letters from him during this period are still extant, but they only contain two incidental references to his brother Martin, which shall be quoted in due course. On February 2, 1503, whilst on a visit to Nuremberg, he rode in a tournament, and was awarded the seventh prize. In 1505 or 1506 he came to Lisbon, as agent of his maternal uncle Hirschvogel, and died there on March 20, 1507, a bachelor. He was buried in the church of Sta. Maria da Conce^ao, by the side of Paulus Imhof or Incurio,10 a fellow townsman. Wolf seems to have dabbled in science, for genealogists refer to him as “ astrologus.”
6 Murr (p. 45), who saw the letters referred to above, erroneously assumed them to have been written by Martin the son, and thus was led into making serious mistakes as to^ dates. The subject is fully discussed by Ghillany, pp. 10, 25.
7 Michael to Jorg Pock (Ghillany, p. 112).
8 Ghillany and C. Heideloff, ‘ Der deutsche Adler und die deutschen Farben,’ Stuttgart, 1848, p. 9.
9 For letters written by him in 1507 (to his nephew) and in 1518 (to Jorg Pock), see Ghillany, pp. 107-113.
10 According to Pock’s letter of March, 1519 (Ghillany, p. 114), but see c. xv.
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THE HOUSE IN WHICH BEHAIM WAS BORN, From a ‘Photograph by F. Schmidt.
7
Ursula, though stated to have been bom as late as April, 1473, seems to have been the eldest of the three sisters. In 1489 she married Ulrich Futterer, a wealthy merchant, who left her a widow in 15*24. She survived him until October 29, 1529.
Elsbeth, said to have been born in 1466, became a nun in the convent of Sta. Clara, and died in 1536.1
Magdalena entered the convent of St. Catherine in 1482, and died there in 1538. Her aunt, Anna Schopper, likewise lived in this convent, which had been founded in 1380, and the chapel of which is still used as a place of worship.
Among other members of the family are the following : —
Leonhard, the elder brother of Martin’s father, born about 1432. He married Ivunigunde Volkamer in 1455 and died in the family mansion in Zistel Street,2 on December 1, 1486. His wife, born in 1438, died in 1488 (or 1496). He was a member of the Senate. After his brother’s death he took an active interest in the widow and orphaned children. Martin Behaim addressed this uncle as Vetter or cousin, and kept up a desultory corre¬ spondence with him for twenty-four years.
Michael, a son of Leonhard, was born in 1459. He was therefore of the same age as his cousin Martin. He, too, was intended for a commercial career, for in 1478 he was sent to Vienna, into a grocery business ; 3 but later on he settled at Nuremberg, where he married, and held several municipal offices, and, like other members of the family, advanced to the dignity of Senator. He died in 1511, his wife, nee Winter, surviving him until 1519. Martin Behaim, during his visit to Nuremberg, 1490-93, resided with this Michael, and Wolf corresponded with him up to the time of his death, in 1507.
Frederick, a son of Michael, born 1491, married an Imhof, and died in 1533.
III. EARLY YEARS, 1459-1476.
The house in which Martin Behaim was born has under¬ gone many alterations since the fifteenth century, but its windows still look out upon the spacious market-square, the scene of sports and tournaments in Behaim’s day, and the eyes dwell with delight upon the richly-carved front of St. Mary’s Chapel, the brightly-coloured “Beautiful Fountain,”4 and quite a number of gabled
1 This convent was founded in 1380, and is at present used as a municipal pawnshop.
2 Now No. 4 Albert Diirer Street, a house of business.
3 See Martin Behaim’s letter of September 17, 1478. The letters, written between 1455—7 and published by Ghillany, pp. 101—2, are by Martin’s father.
4 The “ Schone Brunnen ” with its numerous statuettes is stated to have been erected between 1385 and 1396. It has recently been restored and regilt.
houses. Illustrated inscriptions in German inform the beholder that “ Martin Behaim the Navigator, and Maker of the famous globe, was born in this house about the year 1459,” and that “ In front of this house were exhibited to the people, on the second Friday after Easter, from 1425 to 1520, the Imperial Crown Jewels and relics.”5 These Crown Jewels had been entrusted to the keeping of Nuremberg by the Emperor Sigismund of Brandenburg, and up to 1796 were kept in the Church of the Holy Spirit,6 when they were appropriated by the Emperor Franz II. and carried to Vienna, where they still are.
Young Martin was intended to follow a commercial career, and he received, no doubt, the most perfect education suitable to his future which the Nuremberg of those days afforded. We might thus assume him to have attended the best of the four grammar schools connected with the parish churches, namely, that of St. Sebald, where the scholars spent four hours daily in learning reading, writing, Latin, and Logic, and two in choir practice.7 It is possible, however, that like other boys of “ good ” family, he attended a select private school, and may even have been allowed the luxury of a Hofmeister, or tutor, who accompanied him to school and superintended his lessons and general conduct when away from it.8 His commercial training he received, as a matter of course, in his father’s business, after whose death, in 1474, the interests of the youth were looked after by his uncle Leonard, and by Bartels (Bartholomew) von Eyb, a friend of the family and one of the executors of the last will and testament of his mother.
As a result of this course of instruction young Martin gained a competent knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic, as also a fair acquaintance with Latin, and, as a matter of course, with commercial affairs, but if he really and truthfully boasted at Lisbon, as asserted by Joao de Barros,9 of having been a pupil of Regio¬ montanus, we should expect him to have been likewise
5 Martin Behaim der Seefahrer und Verfertiger des beriihmten Globus wurde in diesem Hause geboren um das Jahr 1459.
Vor diesem Hause wurden von 1425 bis 1520 am 2 Freitag nach Ostern die Beichskleinodien und Heiligthumer dem VolJce gezeigt.
The illustrative designs are plainly visible in our illustration. For an illustrated description of the Crown jewels see Murr, ‘ Beschreibung der samtlichen Reichskleinodien oder Heiligthumer welche in Niirnberg aufbewahrt werden,’ Niirnberg, 1790.
6 The Heilige Geist or Spitalkirche was built 1333-41.
7 According to Heerwagen (‘Zur Geschichte der Niirnberger Gelehr- tenschulen,’ Niirnberg, 1860) the four grammar schools attached to the churches of S. Sebald, St. Lorenz, St. Egidia, and Holy Trinity were attended, about 1485, by 245 paying pupils, and there were 4 school¬ masters, 4 cantori, 7 baccalaurei, and 3 locati or caretakers. In 1485 the Town Council reformed these schools. The fees were reduced and the choir practices restricted to Sunday.
8 Dr. Giinther refers for authority for such a statement to the auto¬
biography of Christoph Scheurl, a contemporary of Behaim, published by Prof. Chr. G. A. von Scheurl (b. 1811, d. ), one of his descendants, in
the ‘ Mitth. d. Vereins fiir die Geschichte Niirnberg’s,’ Heft V., p. 13.
9 ‘ Da Asia’ (Lisbon, 1778), t. I., P. L, p. 282.
8
a good mathematician and astronomer. Johannes or Hans Mueller of Konigsberg in Franconia, according to Conrad Celtes,1 facile princeps among the mathematicians and astronomers of his age, resided at Nuremberg from the spring of 1471 to July 1475, when, unhappily, he accepted an invitation to go to Rome in order that he might advise on the proposed reform of the Calendar.2 Martin, at that time, was between twelve and sixteen years of age, and might well have profited from the instructions of so gifted a teacher. But as Regiomontanus never taught or lectured in public whilst at Nuremberg,3 such knowledge as Behaim is assumed to have possessed can only have been obtained by private intercourse, or in the course of occasional visits which he paid to the observatory and workshop which the great astronomer owed to the liberality of his wealthy patron and pupil Bernhardt Walther.4 At all events it may be granted that Martin Behaim personally knew Regiomontanus, for that astronomer was a popular figure in Nuremberg of whose residence among them the citizens were not a little proud. We doubt, however, whether Behaim was justified when he spoke of himself as a “ disciple ” of the great master. At all events, even if there was the slightest claim to such a distinction he profited little by the instruction received, as will appear in the course of our essay.
IV. IN THE NETHERLANDS, 1476-84.5
Martin Behaim at Mechlin, 1476-79.
On the termination of his apprenticeship, in 1476, young Martin was sent abroad in order that he might improve his technical and commercial knowledge. He was first placed with Jorius van Dorpp, a cloth- merchant of
1 ‘ De origine, situ, moribus et institutis Norimbergae libellus,’ Norimb., 1492, c. vi. See p. 2, Note 8.
2 He died at Rome, July 6, 1476. See Gunther's Biography in the ‘ Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie.’
3 It was Pierre de la Ramee (Petrus Ramus), the great French scholar and opponent of Aristotelian dialectics, who in his * Scholae mathematicae,’ 1569, mistakenly credited the Town Council of Nuremberg with having engaged Regiomontanus to deliver public lectures both in Latin and in German. G. H. Schubert, * Peurbach und Regiomontanus ’ (Erlangen, 1840), p. 35, speaks of this as a ‘well-authenticated tradition,’ but F. C. Hagen, ‘Programm der Handelsschule, 1888-9,’ proves that the first public teacher was only appointed in 1477. On this subject consult S. Gunther, ‘ Geschichte des mathem. Unterrichts im deutschen Mittel- alter,’ Berlin, 1887. Petrus Ramus was born 1515, and died one of the victims on the night of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572.
4 Bernhardt Walther (b. 1430, d. 1504), fitted up for his friend an observatory, a workshop for making astronomical instruments and globes, and a printing office from which were issued the famous ‘ Ephemerides ’ (1474) and other works.
5 The letters written by Behaim from Mechlin (April 1 7 and October
13, 1477), Frankfurt (September 17, 1478), and Antwerp (June 8, 1479), as well as the important legal documents drawn up at Nuremberg on
February 13, 1489, will be found in the Appendix, pp. 107-111. There
are no documents for the years 1480, 1481 and 1482.
Mechlin, with whom he remained for over a year. Mechlin was a dull place, but even then famous for its lace and cloth, and boasted of an ancient cloth hall and a cathedral, built out of the offerings of pilgrims who flocked thither to win the indulgences promised to worshippers at the shrine of St. Rombold. Whilst at Mechlin he witnessed, on April 13, 1477, the arrival of the ambassy of Frederick III., King of the Romans, which was to solicit the hand of Mary, daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold,6 for his son Maximilian. The nuptials took place in due course on August 19 at Ghent. The people, so Behaim tells us, had looked forward to this event with “ much gladness,” for they hoped that Maximilian would at once take the field and drive the French out of Artois, Hainaut and Flanders, which they had invaded in the beginning of the year, and where they had burnt villages, sacked towns, and committed untold-of atrocities. They were doomed to disappointment. A truce was indeed agreed upon at Lens (September 18, 1477), but its terms were little respected by the French. Behaim, writing from Mechlin on October 13, 1477, tells us that whilst the country was being laid waste, “ the young gentleman of Austria lay at Brugge with his fair wife.” He adds that the public treasure had been expended by the late Duke in continuous wars, that no measures had been taken to meet the French in the field, and that all the world grumbled. As to himself, however, his uncle need fear nothing, as the French were still 16 miles 7 from Mechlin, and would have to capture four big towns before they could appear before its walls.
Visits to the Fairs at Frankfurt were included in the scheme of Behaim’s commercial education. The first of these visits was to have been paid at Easter 1477, but as the roads were not safe at that time for travellers, Jorius van Dorpp preferred to sell his cloth direct to a German merchant at Antwerp. Later in the year Martin, by desire of his mother, visited the autumn fair, when he was initiated by his fatherly friend, Bartels von Eyb, into the mysteries of buying and selling.8
Martin Behaim at Antwerp, 1479-84.
He was once more at Frankfurt in the following autumn, and in a letter written to his uncle Leonhard, on September 18, 1778, he suggested a removal from Mechlin,
6 Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, fell before Nancy on January 5, 1477. On Maximilian’s marriage, see U. Legeay, ‘ Histoire de Louis XI.’ (Paris, 1874, II., p. 279), and Kervyn de Lettenhove, ‘Histoire de Flandres ’ (Bruges, 1874, IV., p. 159). The ambassy was headed by the Electors of Treves and Mayence, and among its members were the Markgraves of Brandenburg and Baden, Duke Louis of Bavaria, and others. The ambassadors were attended by George Hesler, the Chancellor of the Empire, and by five or six hundred spearmen.
7 An exaggeration, if the ordinary German miles are meant. The French, at the time, were certainly at Tournai, which they had occupied on May 23, and which is no more than 12 German miles from Mechlin, as the crow flies.
8 See his letter of October 13, 1477. Appendix II.
9
expressed a desire to be placed with good (fromme) people engaged in commerce, declared his willingness to be bound for three years, and promised to shirk no drudgery as long as it would help him in his business career. This question of a change was no doubt considered by his mother, his uncle and by Bartels von Eyb, the friend and adviser of his mother, for early in the following year, if not before, we find our young merchant transferred to the cloth-dye- house of Fritz Heberlein, a Nuremberger established at Antwerp. That city, in the course of the fifteenth century, had grown into the most important seaport of the Netherlands, partly in consequence of the decay of Brugge, due to the silting-up of the Zwyn, which up till then had permitted sea-going vessels to sail up to that city, but more especially owing to the Scheldt having excavated for itself a more direct course to the sea which enabled vessels of the largest burden to proceed up to the wharves of the town. To judge from a letter which young Martin wrote to his uncle Leonhard on June 8, 1479,1 he was well pleased with his stay there. He was a favourite with his master and the members of the household, whilst the foreman, in return for being taught arithmetic,2 initiated him into all the mysteries of the cloth-trade. He worked at his trade like any other journeyman, and in proof of the busy life he led he states that notwithstanding that there was but one other journeyman beside himself, his master, in the course of a year, finished and set quite 900 pieces of cloth belonging to about a dozen merchants. Behaim, whilst in the service of Heberlein, was permitted to speculate in cloth on his own account on condition of the cloth being dyed in his master’s dye-house. Three hundred gulden 3 which he had received from his mother, at the last Frankfurt Lent-fair, had been invested by him at the Bergen fair 4 in English white cloth, which the men in the dye-house pronounced to be of very superior quality. This cloth, when he wrote his letter, had already been teazled, raised and cut ; it was to be dyed in the course of a week, after which it would be set, finished, and folded, and forwarded to Nuremberg, where he hoped it would realise a good profit. He takes this opportunity to express a wish for a senior partner, who would put money into the business, and by whose experience he might profit. Every business, he tells his uncle, should be carried on in partnership, one partner to buy, the other to sell.
1 See Appendix IV., p. 109.
2 Algorithm, or ciphering, according to the decimal notation, as employed by the Arabs, first described by Leonardo Bonacci, of Pisa, in his ‘ Liber Abaci,’ 1202.
3 Each of these gulden was worth about 10 shillings.
4 Mr. B. J. Mes, Keeper of the Archives of Bergen-of-Zoom, kindly informs me that the town had two fairs annually, one a Voorjaarmarld, which began a fortnight after Easter and lasted three weeks, and a houde markt, which began in the middle of October and lasted six weeks. Both the “ early ” and “ cold ” fairs were much frequented by English merchants, who occupied the stores in a street still called Engelsche Straat. The “early” fair in 1749 thus lasted from April 25 to May 16, and, as the Frankfurt fair ended on April 21, there was plenty of time to visit the former.
A Supposed Visit to Lisbon, 1481 or 1483.
From June 8, 1479, the date of the interesting letter which we have thus largely quoted, up to March 1, 1483, on which day Martin Behaim appeared before a magistrate at Nuremberg to answer a charge of having danced on Ember day at a Jewish wedding, we know absolutely nothing about his movements. Most probably he resided during the whole of that time at Antwerp, occasionally visiting the Frankfurt fair and his friends at Nuremberg. Dr. S. Gunther, 5 however, and Dr. S. Ruge,6 suppose him to have paid during that time a flying visit to Lisbon. The former supposes that visit to have been paid in 1483. At Lisbon he might thus have heard about the efforts which were being made to improve the art of navigation, and having mentioned incidentally that as a pupil of the famous Regiomontanus he had some knowledge of astronomical observations, was summoned before the king and invited to join a Junta dos Mathematicos. Behaim, Dr. Giinther supposes, then returned to Antwerp, wound up his business, came back to Lisbon, entered the Portuguese service, and was appointed cosmographer of Cao’s expedition.
Dr. Ruge suggests that he visited Lisbon in 1481, and came to Nuremberg for the purpose of procuring astro¬ nomical instruments.
It need hardly be added that all this is mere con¬ jecture. As to the Junta I shall have to say more in a following chapter.
A Dance at a Jew's Wedding.
After this digression let us return to Nuremberg and the 1st of March, 1483 ; when Martin Behaim, Hans Imhof and three others were charged with having been present at a Jew’s wedding on Ember day (February 26). Martin Behaim and Sebald Deichsler, having actually danced at that wedding — a heinous offence, as it was Lent — were condemned to a week’s imprisonment ; the others escaped with a reprimand. The sentence, in the case of Behaim, was allowed to stand over until his return from an intended visit to the fair at Frankfurt.7 History doth not tell whether the culprit ever returned to Nuremberg to undergo his punishment.
Departure from Antwerp, 1484.
We next meet with Martin Behaim in October or November, 1483, at the “ cold ” fair at Bergen,8 when Hamran Gross, on behalf of Nicolas Schlewitzer of
5 Giinther, ‘Martin Behaim,’ p. 12.
6 Petermann’s Mitteilungen, 1890, Litt. No. 1,680.
7 For the legal documents referring to this case see Appendix, p. 110. The Frankfurt fair began on March 19.
8 The incidents referred to in what follows are detailed in a legal document drawn up at Nuremberg in February, 1489, and published by Dr. Gunther (‘ Martin Behaim,’ p. 53-54). The bonds given by Behaim to Leonhard Hirschvogel and Nicolas Schlewitzer on May 4, 1484, are
• C
10
Nuremberg, lent him 50 Andreas gulden.1 In addition to this he acknowledges to have received from Schlewitzer 5 rosaries, worth gulden Rhenish, 2 golden rings, as also a piece of gold lace, worth 1 gulden, all of which he was to have sold on commission. Schlewitzer had moreover paid for him at Nuremberg half a gulden for wax candles.
Altogether he owed to this creditor 58 gulden 3 ort, and as he was about to proceed to foreign parts he promised to pay this debt on his return, and provided that, in case of his death, it should be paid by his executors, heirs or assigns. By a second bond, drawn up in favour of his uncle, Leonhard Hirschvogel, he acknowledged to have received 9 sacks of galls,2 weighing at Antwerp 31 cwts, to be sold by him, and promises payment as in the case of Schlewitzer. These bonds were dated May 3, 1484.
Martin Behaim then left Antwerp for Portugal, and as his creditors heard no more from him they applied to his brother Stephan for payment, and on February 13, 1489 they were paid the sums claimed ; namely, Hirschvogel 110 gulden Rhenish currency for his galls, and Schlewitzer 58 gulden 3 ort, as stated above.
I publish in the Appendix all the letters still available which Martin Behaim wrote up to the time he left Antwerp for Portugal. They are homely letters, dealing with family affairs and commercial matters, but it would be vain to look for any indication that their writer took the slightest interest in science, literature or art. Among the merchandise incidentally referred to neither books nor scientific instruments find a place.3
V. BEHAIM IN PORTUGAL.
It was thus at the earliest in June, 1484, that Martin Behaim first came to Lisbon, for the suggestion that he paid a flying visit to that city in 1481 or 1482 is not supported by a scrap of evidence.
Nor do I think we do Behaim an injustice if we assume that the main, if not the sole, object of this journey was of a commercial nature.4 Commercial relations
embodied in it. It is a verbose document, such as would delight the heart of an English lawyer (see Appendix VI.). I have consulted the original at Nuremberg and corrected a few misprints in Gunther’s copy. XXI. should be XXIC (2100 or 21 cwts.) ; andrisser, which has puzzled commen¬ tators, andrissz guld (Andres gulden).
1 The Andreas gulden were struck in 1470 by Charles the Bold of Burgundy, whose patron saint was St. Andrew ; their value was about 10 shillings.
2 Galls were tumours produced by the punctures of insects on several species of oak-trees. They were used as a medicine, and for the purpose of dyeing and making ink. The Syrian galls, which were imported by way of Venice, were valued most highly.
3 For a facsimile of the letter dated Mechlin, October 13, 1477, (Appendix II.) see Plate, p. 108.
4 J. F. Roth, * Geschichte des niirnberg. Handels ’ (Leipzig, 1800), says that Behaim’s father already had commercial relations with Portugal, but fails to give us documentary evidence in proof of this assertion.
between Portugal, on the one hand, and Flanders, the Hanse towns and several cities of Upper Germany, on the other, had long since been established. Portugal in exchange for wine, oils, honey, wax, leather and fruit received cloth, various manufactured goods and corn ; the Portuguese had their national bursa at Brugge since 1373, and Royal “ factors ” or Consuls resided at that city and at Antwerp.5
Germans at Lisbon.
At Lisbon Behaim in the course of time was soon to meet many of his own countrymen and even townsmen, and these included not only merchants, but also printers and “ bombardiers ” in the Royal service.6 It was, how¬ ever, only until several years after Behaim’s arrival in Portugal that the houses of Imhof or Incurio, Hirschvogel and Hochstetter of Nuremberg established agencies at Lisbon, and jointly with Fugger and W elser of Augsburg chartered three vessels which sailed on a voyage to India with Francisco de Almeida’s fleet in 1505.7 Accounts of this voyage were written by Balthasar Sprenger of Vils in the Tyrol,8 and Hans Mayr, whose narrative is included among documents collected by Valentin Ferdinand the printer.9 Members of the families of Imhof and Holz- schuher appear to have resided at Lisbon at various times. A Paulus Imhof died there, after many years’ residence, in 1507 ; a Wolfgang Holzschuher was knighted by King Manuel in 1503, for having valiantly fought against the Moors ; a Jacob Holzschuher died at Lisbon in 1504 ; and a Peter Holzschuher died on a voyage to India in 1504. Wolf Behaim, the youngest brother of Martin, came to Lisbon as agent or partner of these Hirschvogels, his kinsmen, and died there on March 20, 1507, only four months before his brother. Another Nuremberger, Hans Stromer, who had accompanied the Markgraf Johann Albrecht of Brandenburg to the Holy Land, in 1435, died at Lisbon in 1490. Among other Germans who resided in Portugal, and who must have known Behaim personally or by reputation, were Lucas Rem and Simon Seitz, or Sayes, both of Augsburg. The former acted as representative of the Welsers in 1503, the latter came to Lisbon in 1503 and remained there until 1510, keeping all the while a diary,10 in which Behaim is not once referred to. The printer, Valentin Ferdinand, has already been mentioned. He acted as interpreter to
5 Reiffenberg, ‘ Relations anciens de la Belgique et du Portugal ’ (‘ Nouv. mem. de l’Ac. de Bruges,’ XIV., p. 25).
6 J. G. Biedermann, ‘ Gescbechtsregister ’ (Bamberg, 1748), Kunst- mann, ‘Die Deutschen in Portugal’ (Suppt. ‘Allgem. Zeitung,’ October 25, 1847).
7 The German merchants risked 36,000 ducats in this venture.
8 ‘Die meerfart unn erfarung niiwer schiffung, 1509,’ of which a facs. reprint was published at Strassburg in 1902, with a critical essay by J. H. F. Schulze.
9 ‘ Bol. Soc. Geogr.,’ Lisbon, XVII., 1901, p. 355.
10 B. Greiff published this diary in the ‘ 26 Jahresbericht des hist. Kreisvereins in Schwaben, 1861.’
11
Dr. Monetarius of Nuremberg in 1494,1 and there is no doubt whatever that he knew Behaim. Yet, in his accounts of Portuguese discoveries no hint is to be found that Behaim took the slightest share in them. The silence of his German contemporaries may partly be due to the fact that Behaim lived most of the time in Fayal, with his father-in-law. This, however, does not explain the silence of Valentin Ferdinand, nor of Lucas Rem, who was at Lisbon when his fellow-countryman died in hospital.
German Brotherhoods.
Not only were German residents numerous at Lisbon in Behaim’s day, but there also existed two German Brotherhoods.2 The more ancient of these was the “ Irmandade ” or “ Confraria de S. Bartholomeu dos Allemaos em Lisbon.” It originated towards the end of the thirteenth century when one Overstadt or Sobrevilla, a German merchant, built a chapel near the Tajo. King Diniz, finding its site suitable for a larger building, erected upon it the Church of St. Juliao, which was completed in 1290, and a chapel within this church — the fourth on the south side — was allotted to the “ Brotherhood.” The church was ruined by the earthquake, and burnt down in 1816, but it was rebuilt after each disaster. The “ Brother¬ hood ” retains its chapel within it to the present time, and a mass is still said there on Sundays and holidays for the soul of its founder. The German bombardiers who served in the Royal Navy, and who were granted special privileges in 1489, belonged to this Brotherhood and were nursed in its hospital.3
The second Brotherhood originated in 1414 among Burgundians and Flemings who took part in the siege of Ceuta, and who are described, in 1482, when King John confirmed their ancient privileges, as the “ Confrades alemaes e flamengos da Confraria de Sta. Cruz e Sto. Andre.4 They had their chapel in the ancient church of a Dominican monastery, founded in 1249, near the Rocio. This Brotherhood is credited with having looked carefully after brethren in distress and seen to their decent burial. The “ Hospital de todos os Santos,” founded by King John in 1492, stood in the garden of this monastery.5 It was in this hospital that Behaim died.
1 See p. 2.
2 J. D. Hirsch, ‘ Hanseatische Gescbichtsblatter,’ XVIII., p. 27. J. von Minutoli, ‘Portugal u. seine Kolonien’ (Berlin, 1855), I., 337 ; private letter of H. Daehnhardt, German Consul General at Lisbon.
3 In 1870 the “ Statutes ” of the Brotherhood were amended. Germans up to the fourth generation are now admitted as “ brethren ” without distinction of religion. A Protestant chapel was built in 1807 on the site of its old hospital.
4 Luis de Sousa, ‘ Historia de S. Domingos,’ 3rd. ed. (Lisbon, 1866), I., 399. An English Brotherhood founded in 1147 by comrades who helped in the capture of Lisbon from the Moors, had its Chapel of St. George in the same church. Up to 1 249 it owned a chapel in the Egreja dos Martens (Martyres).
5 Ruy de Pina, c. 56 ; Resende, c. 140.
Martin Behaim' s Private Life
We know very little of the life led by Behaim at Lisbon. There is no doubt, however, that at an early period he made the acquaintance of Josse van Hurter, the Captain donatory of Fayal and Pico, whose daughter Joanna de Macedo became his wife.6 This connection no doubt gained him admission to the Court and to Society, even though his personal claims as the eldest son of a German patrician might not have done so. Commercial pursuits, at that early period at all events, do not appear to have been a bar to such admission, whatever may have been the case subsequently, when Portugal had become debauched by an inflow of wealth from India, and the honest trader was looked down upon with contempt.7 It is, however, possible that Behaim, on making this aristocratic connection, gave up commerce, took up his residence in Fayal, and assisted his father-in-law in the management of his estate.
But whatever his occupation, there were rumours set afloat that Behaim’s conduct was not that of an honour¬ able man. Thus, his brother Wolf*, writing from Lyons to his cousin Michael, on November 27, 1491, says : “ Here at Lyons they say things about Martin which make me ashamed of him, and I wish very much we were rid of him altogether.”8 There may have been a founda¬ tion for these rumours current among commercial men at Lyons. Martin may have been guilty of “ irregularities ” in matters of business, which in the eyes of business men are looked upon as heinous offences, although treated with some indulgence by men of the world. We can hardly believe his conduct to have been “ dishonourable,” or his father-in-law, only a few years afterwards, would not have intrusted him with the collection of money owing for sugar sold into Flanders.
Still, it is rather curious that Dr. Monetarius, who had evidently been on friendly terms with Behaim during the visit of the latter to Nuremberg in 1490-93 (for he gave him a letter in which he advised the King to employ him on a voyage of discovery), and who was the guest of Behaim’s mother-in-law, when he visited Lisbon in 1494, should not have stated in the ‘ Itinerarium ’ which he wrote of his travels that his young townsman was absent from Lisbon at the time of his visit, or referred to him in any other way whatsoever. Perhaps he thought “ De amicis nil nisi bonum.”
6 This happened in 1488, or earlier, for a son was born to him on April 6, 1489. For a full account of these relations see the chapter on “ Fayal and the Azores.”
7 See Jorg Pock’s letter, dated Lisbon, March 27, 1520 (Ghillany, p. 118). Jorg (or George) Pock was the Lisbon agent of the Hirschvogels of Nuremberg. He came to Lisbon long after Behaim’s death, and all he knew about him was from hearsay. In 1520 he went out to India, and on January 1, 1521 he wrote from Cochin : “ I have read with pleasure the news about the monk of Wittenberg (Luther), have told it to all the priests, who marvel much, and say that he preaches the truth, and a bishop here says that this monk is a holy man in the sight of God.”
8 Ghillany, p. 105.
c 2
12
VI. THE JUNTA DOS MATHEMATICOS.
Advisory Committees.
King John II. is known, on several occasions, to have referred questions of a scientific or technical nature to men of learning who enjoyed his confidence and who he believed would wisely advise him. He did so when Columbus urged him to send an expedition across the Ocean Sea in search of Cypangu and the East Indies.1 On that occasion the members of this J unta — to employ a designation used not quite logically in connection with such ephemeral committees — were Dr. Diego Ortiz de Vilhegas, a native of Calzadinha in Leon, who had come to Portugal in 1476, as spiritual director of that “most excellent lady,” D. Joanna, and stood high in the Royal favour 2 ; Dr. Rodrigo of Pedras negras, the chief physician of the King, with whom his influence was considerable, as we learn from the 4 Epistola ’ of Cataldo de Aquila, printed at Lisbon in 1500 ; and Master Josepe or Jose, a Jew, who is undoubtedly identical with Jose Vizinho, a pupil of the famous astronomer Rabbi Abraham ben Samuel Zacut of Salamanca, Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics in the University of his native town, until 1492, when with thousands of his co-religionists he fled Spain, and found a refuge in Portugal, where King John appointed him Astronomer Royal.3 This Rabbi Abraham is the author of an 4 Almanach perpetuum Celestium moduum cujus radix est 1473,’ a work origi¬ nally written in Hebrew, but translated into Latin by Jose Vizinho 4 discipulum ejus,’ and printed at Leiria in 1496.
A few years afterwards D. Diogo Ortiz, Dr. Rodrigo and a Jew, Moyses, were instructed to prepare a map for the guidance of Joao Pero de Covilha and Affonso de Paiva, whom the King was about to dispatch in search of the country of Prester John.4
It is, however, another 4 Junta dos mathematicos ’ which more especially interests us. This Junta was appointed in 1484 or at latest in 1485. Its task was to lay down simple rules for determining the latitude from meridian altitudes of the sun, for the pole star, which had served for that purpose in the past, was no longer avail¬ able once the Portuguese navigators had crossed the Equator.
1 Barros, ‘Da Asia/ Dec. I., liv. III., c. 11.
2 He became in succession Bishop of Tanger (1491), Ceuta (1500), and Vizeu (1505), and as Grand Chaplain stood at the deathbed of King John, together with Dr. Rodrigo. He died in 1519 (Paiva Manso, ‘Historia ecclesiastica/ Lisbon, 1872, I., pp. 49, 62; Resende, c. 213).
3 On June 9, 1493, he was paid 10 golden espadins (about £7 10s.) by order of King John, and signed the receipt in Hebrew characters, not being permitted, as a Jew, to make use of the letters of Holy Writ (Sousa Viterbo, ‘ Trabalhos nauticos/ I., 326).
4 P. Alvarez, ‘ VerdadeirainformagSo/ c. 103 ; Castanheda, ‘ Historia,’
liv. I., c. 1. Father Alvarez was the chaplain and historian of a Portuguese
mission to Abyssinia, 1520-7. A translation of his narrative by Lord
Stanley of Alder ley was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1881,
Joao de Barros and the 4 Junta.’
We are indebted to the famous historian Joao de Barros5 for an account of this Junta. He mentions Behaim as a member of it, and to him alone all later historians — including G. P. Maflfei,6 Petrus Matthaeus (1590), Olfert Dapper, 7A. Cordeiro, S.J. (1641), andManoel Telles da Silva (1689) 8 — are indebted for this information, and there is thus no accumulative evidence as suggested by several of Behaim’s biographers.
J. de Barros (who wrote in 1539), having informed his readers that when Vasco da Gama reached the Bay of St. Helena he set up his large wooden astrolabe on land, as he had been unable to obtain trustworthy meridian altitudes of the sun on the deck of an unsteady vessel, either with that instrument or with some of the smaller astrolabes of brass with which he had been supplied, and having asserted that the Portuguese mariners were the first to employ these altitudes for the determination of latitude, continues as follows : —
44 At the time when Prince Henry began the explora¬ tion of Guinea the mariners sailed within sight of the coast, being guided by landmarks which they described in sailing directions, such as are still in some way in use at present, and this sufficed for this mode of exploration. But subsequently, when, in the pursuit of their discoveries, they lost sight of the land and penetrated the open sea, they found that owing to currents and other secrets of the sea their estimate of a day’s work was frequently erroneous, whilst an observation of the altitude (of the sun) would have shown correctly the distance run. And as necessity is the mistress of all arts, King John II. referred this matter to Master Rodrigo and Master Josepe, a Jew, and both his physicians, and to one Martin of Bohemia, a native of that country, who boasted of being a disciple of John of Monte Regio, famed among the students of the science of astronomy. These discovered this manner of navigating by altitudes of the sun, and made tables of its declination, such as are now in use among navigators, and which are now more exact than in the beginning, when these large wrooden astrolabes were in use.”
A statement made by so distinguished an author is entitled to respect and deserves careful examination. Still, I may be forgiven for directing attention to the fact that even in the days of Prince Henry the Portuguese were not afraid to venture upon the high sea, for they sailed to the Azores, lying 600 sea miles from the nearest land. Long before them the hardy Northmen, guided solely by the stars and the flight of birds, had found their way across the northern Atlantic, and Columbus would
5 ‘Da Asia/ Dec. I., liv. iv., c. 2.
6 G. P. Maflfei, S.J., was born at Bergamo in 1536 and died at Lisbon, 1603.
7 Olfert Dapper published a number of geographical compilations of value between 1667 and 1688. He died (at Amsterdam) 1690.
8 ‘ De rebus gestis Joanni II./ Lisbon, 1689. Telles da Silva, Marquis de Alegrete, died 1709.
13
have made his famous landfall equally well had he trusted entirely to his dead reckoning or, like a bird of passage, to his instinct, for his observed latitudes are woefully out.1 Verily, the Portuguese seamen of that age were better observers than their Spanish rivals !
The last paragraph in the account given by J. de Barros seems to refer to improved tables of the sun’s declination. Dr. Breusing2 suggests, however, that the author refers to an instrument which superseded the astrolabe for taking a meridian altitude of the sun on ship-board, and that this instrument was the cross-staff.
I shall deal fully with this new aid to navigation, and merely observe in this place that the cross-staff was known in Portugal when J. de Barros wrote, in 1539, but that it was not made use of by Vasco da Gama, Magellan or any other seamen of the period with which I deal.
Of the three persons named by J. de Barros as members of the Junta, two, namely Dr. Rodrigo and Josepe or Jose, have already been referred to, whilst the third, Martin Behaim, shall be dealt with fully a little further on.
The Astronomical Expedition of Jose Vizinho, 1485.
Josepe or Jose Vizinho seems to have taken the lead in the work done by this Junta. He was no mere theorist, for we learn from a note inscribed by Christopher Columbus on a margin of the ‘ Historia Papae Pii ’ (Venice, 1477) that in 1485 he was sent to the Guinea coast for the express purpose of determining a number of latitudes by observing meridian altitudes of the sun. This note reads as follows : 3
“ In the year 1485 the King of Portugal sent Master Jhosepius, his physician and astrologer, to determine the altitudes of the sun throughout Guinea, all of which he performed ; and he reported to said most serene king, I being present, that .... on March 11,* he found that the island of idols near Sierra Leone was exactly 5 degrees distant from the Equator, and he attended to this with the utmost diligence. Afterwards said most serene king often sent to Guinea and other places .... and he always found the results to accord with said Martin Josepius, whereby I have the certainty that the Castle of the Mine is under the Equator.”
1 He places his landfall (Guanahani), by dead reckoning in 28° N., the north coast of Cuba, by observation, in 42° N., the true latitudes being 24° and 23° ! On the chart of Juan de la Cosa, his pilot, Trinidad lies in latitude 14° N., Guadaloupe in 21° N., Guanahani in 35° N., and the north coast of Cuba in 36° N., the true latitudes being respectively 10°, 16°, 24° and 23° N. On the chart of Bartolomeo Columbus, published by Wieser, the errors are even more considerable.
2 ‘Zeitschr. f. Erdkunde,’ IV., 1869, p. 403.
3 ‘ Raccolta Colombiana,’ P. I., T. III. Serie B, No. 363. Simon de la Rosa y Lopez, ‘Catalogo,’ p. xxxiii., believes that this note is by Bartholomew Columbus.
4 Dr. Scheppig suggests to me that there ought to be a full stop after
March 11, and that this was the date on which Jose made his report.
In another marginal note5 Columbus states that he himself during various voyages to Guinea had taken altitudes of the sun with the quadrant and other instruments, and that his results agreed with those of Master Yosepius and of others whom the king had sent out. Columbus, in comparing the distances obtained by dead reckoning with those corrected by observations for latitude made by himself and others, concludes that El- Ferghani was right when he gave the earth a circumfer¬ ence of 20,400 miles, and reckoned 56§ miles to a degree of the Equator.
These marginal notes were evidently written long after the events recorded, and Columbus may have made a mistake in recording Jose’s latitudes, just as he made a mistake when he tells us in another marginal note that the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, as determined by B. Dias, was 45° S.6 Perhaps the 5 degrees refer to the Castella S. Jorge da Mina, for the Ilhas dos Idolos (Los islands) he in 9° 30' N. That Columbus himself should have made such a mistake is not surprising, for he was a very incompetent observer, but that Jose, a learned astronomer, should have brought home so erroneous a record is incredible. Still it is well known that latitudes taken on board ship frequently differed to the extent of several degrees from the truth, and on Soligo’s Chart of Portuguese Guinea, which I shall deal with fully in the second part of this work, we read off the mouth of the Niger “ hie non apar polus,” although that locality lies more than six degrees to the north of the Equator.
Summing up, we find that the Junta, and more especially its most active member, Jose Vizinho, advised that vessels sailing beyond the Equator should observe meridian altitudes of the sun for finding the latitude, that experimental voyages were undertaken to test this method, and Zacut’s 4 Almanach perpetuum ’ was trans¬ lated and printed in order to facilitate the calculation of the observations made. These reforms led naturally to the adoption of graduated sailing charts, which had previously been unknown in Portugal.
Behaim as an Astronomer.
In what way, it may be asked, could Martin Behaim aid Dr. Rodrigo and Jose' Vizinho in the task they had undertaken ? He was no seaman, for at that time he had crossed the sea but once, and that as a passenger, on a voyage from Antwerp to Lisbon. He may have boasted of being a pupil of Regiomontanus, and may have been admitted, as a lad, to the observatory of that great astronomer ; but it is quite certain that he profited little or nothing from lessons he may have received on these occasions.7 In his letters, as far as they have reached us,
5 Imago mundi of Pierre d’Ailly (* Raccolta,’ L. C., Serie C., No. 490).
6 See my paper on ‘ the Voyages of Diogo Cao and Bartholomew Dias’ (‘ Geogr. Journal,’ Dec. 1900).
7 See p. 7.
14
there is no allusion to his ever having taken an interest in astronomical work ; among the articles he dealt with as a merchant there are no astronomical or other scientific instruments. Columbus, in his numerous marginal notes, never once mentions his name. The only contemporary to hint at Martin Behaim’s qualifications as a seaman or astronomer is Hieronymus Monetarius in a letter addressed to King John in 1493.1 In that letter he recommended Behaim as being “ well fitted ” to accompany an expedi¬ tion for “disclosing the East to the West.” Monetarius, however, is hardly a competent witness on such a question. An examination of the famous globe of Nuremberg enables us to form a more trustworthy estimate of Behaim’s capacity. We there find that he placed the mouth of the Congo in lat. 24° S., and the Montenegro in lat. 38° S., the true latitudes of these localities being 6° 4' and 15° 40' S. This proves con¬ clusively that if Behaim accompanied the famous expedi¬ tion of Cao as cosmographer or astronomer, as is main¬ tained by his biographers, he was absolutely ignorant of the work he had undertaken. On the other hand, if this portion of his globe is merely a compilation, he exhibited a deplorable incapacity as a compiler, for since Dias’ return in 1488, the latitudes along the African coast, as far as the Cape, were approximately known.
Moreover, several legends on the globe prove Behaim’s ignorance as a “ cosmographer.” Thus we read, in 78° N.,
“ the longest day here lasts six months,” and in the gulf of Guinea, within the tropics, the curious reader is told that it is summer there when we in “ Europe have winter,” a statement quite appropriate to the southern temperate zone, and possibly taken over from some old map, and put in the wrong place. Another legend proves Behaim’s absolute ignorance in matters connected with the art of navigation, for it tells us with reference to the Indian Ocean : —
“ Here the Stella maris, by us called Polus Arcticus, cannot be seen, and those who navigate this sea must sail (shape their course) with the help of the astrolabe, for the compass does not point (to the north).”
No doubt such nonsense was believed at one time by the ignorant,2 but no seaman, nay, no observant landsman who had once crossed the Equator, as Behaim claims to have done, could have penned such a sentence.
It is not likely that a man so inexperienced as was Behaim at that time, at all events, could have taught anything to a man of the scientific attainments of Mestre Jose. He may have boasted at Lisbon of being a pupil of Regiomontanus, and, on the strength of this boast, may have been invited to join a Junta of astronomers ; but his want of knowledge would soon have betrayed itself. Yet, in spite of these considerations, some of his more imaginative biographers have credited him with achieve-
1 See Appendix IX.
2 S. Gunther, ‘Johannes Kepler und der Tellurisch-kosmische Magnetismus ’ (Vienna, 1888).
ments which would entitle him to a foremost position among the scientific men of his age. J. F. von Bielefeld,3 copying a statement in that untrustworthy ‘ Dictionnaire ’ of Louis Moreri,4 5 suggests that “ Behaim was the first to apply the compass to the navigation of the high sea, an achievement, if true, deserving of immortality.”
Antonio Ribeiro dos Santos, the author of a ‘ Memoria sobre alguns mathematicos Portuguezas,’ 6 actually adopts these wild statements. He says with reference to Behaim : “ He was a disciple of the famous mathema¬ tician John de Monte Regio, Professor of Astronomy, who devoted himself with much diligence to the study of cosmography and navigation. He entered the service of Portugal and was well received by Kings Affonso V.6 and John II. on account of the nobility of his person, his attention to his profession and discourses. The last- named Prince, on February 18, 1485, appointed him one of his esquires (escudeiros), and the navigation of the Portuguese derived much profit from him. Of him it is said that he was the first to adapt the compass for the general use of navigators, which would suffice to immortalize his name and confer much honour upon Germany, his fatherland.”
A. Ziegler,7 in ‘ Regimontanus ein geistiger Vorlaufer des Columbus ’ (Dresden, 1874, p. 17), speaks of Behaim as “ one of the most learned mathematicians and astronomers of his century, a famous navigator and Portuguese cosmographer,” and in a paper published in the ‘Deutsche geographische Blatter’ (Bremen, 1878, p. 117), he actually suggests that Behaim was the spiritus jamiliaris of Ruy Faleiro,8 to whom he revealed the secrets of cosmography and new methods for determining the longtitude.
Quite as fantastic is the statement put forth by a more recent writer, J. P. de Oliveira Martins (‘ Les explorations des Portugaises,’ Paris, 1893, p. 20), who would have us believe that John II., “ when he ascended the throne and founded at Lisbon a school of mathematics, summoned from Nuremberg a pupil of Regiomontanus, Martin Behaim, upon whom devolved the role formerly filled at Sagres9 by Jacome of Majorca.”
3 ‘ Progres des Allemands dans la science.’ (Amst., 1752), pp. 72-76.
4 Moreri was born at Bagemont (Provenge) in 1643, and died in 1680. His ‘ Dictionnaire’ was first published in 1678. This first edition does not refer to Behaim : Bielefeld quotes one of the many enlarged subsequent editions, probably that of 1732.
5 ‘Mem. da litt. Port.,’ VIII. (Lisbon, 1812), 20th ed. 1856, p. 164.
6 Affonso V. died 1481 !
7 A. Ziegler was born at Ruhla in 1822, and died at Wiesbaden in 1887. He was a great traveller.
8 Ruy Faleiro was a native of Covilha, joined Magellan in Spain in 1517, and died about 1529 at Seville. Herrera (Dec. II., lib. 2, c. 19) first started the story of a “ demonio familiar,” but does not identify him with Behaim. Humboldt (‘ Krit. Unters.,’ I., 234) suggests that this Ruy or Rodrigo Faleiro was the Dr. Rodrigo of the Junta, but the latter is described as a native of Pedras negras, and not of Covilha.
9 On the supposed Academy of Sagres see De Souza Holstein, ‘ A escola de Sagres ’ (Lisbon, 1877), and J. Mees, ‘Henri le Navigateur et l’ecole de Sagres ’ (‘ Bull, de 1’Ac. Belgique,’ Classe des Lettres, 1901).
15
I must leave it to the sound judgment of my readers in how far extravagant claims, such as these, can be reconciled with what we know of Behaim and of the history of Portugal in the time of John II.
The Astrolabe.
Far less fanciful are those authors who merely credit the Junta with having “invented” the astrolabe or “ adapted ” it to the use of navigators. One of the earliest among the former is Manuel Pimentel (‘ Arte de Navigar,’ Lisbon, 1682), whose lead was followed by Admiral Ignacio da Costa Quintella (‘ Annaes da Marinha Portugueza,’ Lisbon, 1839, I., 190). Thus the Junta might merely have simplified the planispheric astrolabe of the astrologers, so as to adapt it to the use of seamen. This planispheric astrolabe, of which numerous examples may be seen at the British Museum,1 had a shallow well — the mater astrolabii —within which was placed an engraved chart of the heavens as seen in a given latitude, on a stereographic projection. An ingeniously devised Reta or Arenea (Spider’s Web) moved concentrically
above this chart, and by means of it certain astronomical problems could be solved graphically. The improve¬ ment by Regiomontanus merely consisted in a device which rendered the instrument more useful to astro¬ logers desirous of finding the “ initia coelestium domi- ciliorum,” a device of no interest whatever to the seaman.2
1 One of its earliest descriptions is by Hermann Contractus of Yehringen, a pupil of the Convent School of Reichenau, who wrote ‘ De mensura astrolabii.’ The author died in 1054.
2 Breusing, * Die nautischen Instrumente,’ Bremen, 1890, p. 3.
The seaman’s astrolabe,3 as shown in the illustration, was a much more simple instrument. A disc or a ring of wood or metal, 3 to 15 inches in diameter, was crossed by lines representing the horizon and zenith. The rim between the horizon and zenith was divided into 90 degrees. A movable rule or alidade, with sights, turned
round a point or pin in the centre of the circle. The observer sat with his back to the main mast, held the astrolabe in suspension on a finger of his left hand, whilst he moved the rule up and down with his right until the sun was on with both sights. Supposing the astrolabe had been suspended vertically, this yielded a correct, though somewhat rough, altitude of the sun. Of course, on deck a rolling vessel, the results obtained even by a skilled observer were frequently far from satisfactory, and Master John, one of the pilots of Cabral’s fleet, tells us that errors of four or five degrees in the resulting latitude were almost unavoidable.4 Hence, when it was desired to obtain trustworthy results, the observer landed and set up an astrolabe of larger dimensions upon a tripod stand. This was done by Vasco da Gama when he arrived at the Bay of St. Helena.
Murr 5 was the first to connect Behaim with the introduction or adaptation of the astrolabe for the service of the Portuguese marine, and his view was accepted by Francisco de Borja Gar^o-Stockler,6
3 Abulwefa, a famous Arab astronomer of the ninth century, clearly describes this simple instrument (L. A. Sedillot, 1 Mem. sur les instruments astronomiques des Arabes,’ Paris, 1841, p. 195).
4 ‘ Alguns documentos,’ p. 122.
5 ‘Dipl. Geschichte Martin Behaims’ (Gotha, 1778); 2nd edition, 1801, p. 72.
6 ‘ Ensaio hist, sobre a origem e progresso das mathematicas em Portugal’ (Paris, 1819).
16
Humboldt,1 Rudolf Wolf,1 2 and others. It is, however, stated by Manuel Telles da Silva, Marques de Alegrete,3 that the astrolabe was made use of for the first time by Diogo d’Azambuja in 1481, that is, several years before Behaim arrived in Portugal.4
The Meteor oscope.
Sebastian Francisco de Mendo Trigozo 5 suggests that Behaim merely made known in Portugal certain instru¬ ments made in Nuremberg, and the ‘ Ephemerides ’ of Regiomontanus. Among the instruments he mentions the meteoroscope of Regiomontanus, an adaptation of a
The Meteoroscope.
similar instrument devised by Ptolemy, and described in a letter to the learned Greek Cardinal Bessarion.6 Martin Cortes,7 the son of the famous conqueror of Mexico, explains how this instrument enables an observer to determine the latitude and time by extra-meridian altitudes of the sun. The “hemisphere nautique” in¬ vented in 1581 by Michal Cognet of Antwerp, and described by G. Fournier,8 is in reality nothing more than
1 ‘ Krit. Unters.’ (Berlin, 1874), p. 234, where he suggests that “Behaim’s astrolabe, which was hung up to the mast ( ! ), was perhaps only a simplified adaptation of the meteoroscope of Regiomontanus.”
2 ‘ Geschichte der Astronomie’ (Munich, 1877), p. 100.
3 ‘ De rebus gestis Joanni II.5 (Lisbon, 1689), p. 152.
4 Diogo d’Azambuja was born in 1432 at Montemor, and died there in 1518, having done valiant service in Africa and Asia. He was leader of the expedition which built the Castella de S. Jorge da Mina (1481-4) (L. Cordeiro, ‘ Diogo d’Azambuja,5 Lisbon, 1892).
5 ‘ Memoria sobre Martim de Bohemia 5 (‘ Mem. de litt. portug.,’ Till., Lisbon, 1812, seg. ed., 1856, p. 371).
6 Published by Schoener (Ingolstadt, 1533). Apianus, ‘ Instrument- buch’ (Ingolstadt, 1533), and Ghillany, p. 39.
7 ‘ Breve compendio de la Sphera 5 (Seville, 1556, III., c. 11).
8 ‘ Hydrographie ’ (Paris, 1643), liv. X., cc. 17, 18.
the upper half of the meteoroscope. Fournier, a very good judge, looks upon this instrument as being absolutely useless on board ship, as its orientation depended upon a knowledge of the variation of the needle when making an observation.
The Cross-Staff.
Dr. A. Breusing,9 director of the “ Seefahrtschule ” of Bremen, was the first to suggest that the instrument made known to the Portuguese by Behaim, was the cross-staff, and Dr. S. Gunther 10 agrees with him. The earliest description of this instrument is by Levi ben Gerson, a learned Jew of Banolas in Catalonia, and was dedicated to Pope Clemens VI. in 1342.11 Levi calls his instrument “ baculus Jacob,” George Purbach,12 “ virga visoria,” and Regiomontanus, “radius astronomicus.” The last has frequently been credited with its invention, but J. Petz has shown that he was acquainted with Levi’s description of it.13 Pedro Nunes,14 the famous Portuguese astronomer, quotes Regiomontanus when describing the baculus or radius astronomicus. Among Portuguese and Spanish seamen it became known as balestilha, among Frenchmen
as arbalete, in England as cross-staff.15 It is a very simple contrivance for observing stellar distances and the altitudes of heavenly bodies. Our illustration sufficiently shows its appearance and the manner of its use. It merely
9 ‘ Zeitschrift cl. Ges. f. Erdkunde,’ IV. (Berlin, 1869).
10 ‘ Martin Behaim 5 (Bamberg, 1890), pp. 25, 63, and Enestrom’s ‘ Bibl. mathem.,’ new series, IV., p. 77.
11 Levi ben Gerson died at Perpignan in 1370. His MS. is at Munich (cod. lat. Mon., 8089. Its contents were first made known by S. Gunther).
13 This famous astronomer was born at Peuerbach (Austria) in 1423. He died 1462 as Professor of Mathematics at Vienna. Johan de Monte- regio, or Regiomontanus, was his pupil.
13 ‘Mitt, des Ver. f. d. Geschichte Nurnberg’s,’ VII., p. 123.
14 ‘ De arte atque ratione navigandi’ (Coimbra, 1546), lib. I., c. 6, which was originally printed as an appendix to a ‘ Tratado da esphera 5 (Lisbon, 1537), or ‘ De regulis et instrumentis 5 (‘ Opera mathematical Basel, 1566, p. 73).
15 Dr. Bittner (‘The Mohit of Admiral Sidi Ali ben Hosein, 1554,’ Vienna, 1867) suggests that “balestilha” may be derived from the Arabic “ al balista,” altitude, and not from the Latin “ balista.” On the instrument used by the India pilots for taking the altitudes of stars, see Barros, ‘ Da Asia,’ Dec. I., lib. IV., c. 6, and my ‘ Vasco da Gama,’ p. 27.
17
consisted of a staff along which a “ transom ” could be shifted at right angles. Divisions of equal length were marked along staff and transom. An observer desirous of obtaining the altitude of a star, placed one end of the staff against his right eye and then shifted the transom until its lower end touched the horizon and the upper end hit the star. Nunes, however, points out that owing to the indefiniteness of the horizon at sea, the results could not be trusted. The instrument was useless for taking the altitude of the sun, unless the eye was protected by a coloured glass or the sun was visible only dimly behind a screen of vapour. It became practically available only after John Davis had converted it into a back-staff,1 which enabled the seaman to take his observations with his back turned to the sun.
in observing the altitude of the Pole Star.3 Our illustra¬ tion shows how it is used, and needs no further explanation. In at least one respect this simple instrument was superior to the astrolabe, for it enabled the observer to determine
*
\
\
the altitude of the sun when seen looming through fog or thin clouds, which could be only done with the astrolabe when the luminary shone brightly.
A Back-Staff.
When Nunes’ essay was published, in 1537, the cross- staff’ had been placed in the hands of mariners, but in Behaim’s days it was unknown to them. Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Cabral, Duarte Pacheco Pereira made use of the astrolabe and quadrant, but never mention a cross-staff. A. Vespucci, when appointed Piloto mayor in 1508, 2 was instructed to examine the pilots in the use of the two instruments named. Under these circumstances we are bound to disbelieve that Behaim made known the cross-staff to the Portuguese seamen.
The Quadrant.
There are, of course, a few other instruments which a merchant coming from Nuremberg might have introduced to the notice of Portuguese astronomers, such as metal quadrants, and sundials.
The quadrant had been in use among Portuguese seamen long before the arrival of Behaim among them, for Diogo Gomez tells us that in 1456 he made use of it
1 Described in ‘The Seaman’s Secrets’ (London, 1607), and ‘The Voyages and Works of J. Davis,’ edited for the Hakluyt Society by Admiral Sir A. Markham (London, 1880). This famed navigator was a native of Sandridge in Dovonshire. He was killed in 1605 in a fight with Japanese.
2 ‘ Navarrete Coleccion,’ III., Dec. 7—9.
The Nocturnal.
The nocturnal or horometer, an instrument for ascer¬ taining the hours of the night by observing the Pole Star and its so-called guardians, was already known to P. Apianus. P. Nunes thought little of this instrument, and it does not seem that it was ever used on board ship.4 *
Sundials.
In the letter which Dr. Monetarius wrote to King John of Portugal in 1494 he mentions the “quadrant, cylinder and astrolabe ” as instruments likely to guide Behaim and other mariners in a proposed voyage across the western ocean. I have dealt already with the quadrant and the astrolabe. As to the “ cylinder,” it is nothing but one of those portable sundials for the manufacture of which Nuremberg and other German cities were famous in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The “ cylinder,” of which Sebastian Munster 6 gives an illustrated description,
3 ‘ De prima inventione Guinea ’ (‘Abh. bayr. Ak. d. Wiss.,’ Hist. A., 1845).
4 Fox- illustrated descriptions of the nocturnal see G. Fournier, ‘Hydro- graphie,’ liv. X., c. 20, and A. Schiick, ‘ Das Horometer,’ in ‘ Mitt. d. Geogr.
Ges. in Miinchen,’ I., 1905, p. 269.
6 ‘ Compositio horologiorum’ (Bas., 1531), c.39. S. Munster, the famous author of a ‘ Cosmographia,’ of which 24 editions in German alone were published in the course of a century, was born at Ingelheim in 1489, and died at Basel in 1552.
D
18
resembled a miniature post-office pillar-box about 70 mm. in height, from the top of which a gnomon or “ index ” extended horizontally. There were other kinds of “ horologii viatorum ” or travellers’ dials, vulgarly known as “compasses.” They were combinations of a horizontal string sundial with a compass. One of the most ancient of these instruments may be seen in the museum at Innsbruck. It is dated 1451, bears upon its shield-shaped lid the German eagle, and was probably
A Horizontal String Sundial, 1451.
made for the Emperor Frederick III.1 A similar dial, dated 1453, from the Spitzer Collection, is now in the British Museum. The arms of Habsburg are engraved upon its shield, and with the exception of the style of ornamentation both instruments are alike. The dial-plane measures 78 by 59 mm. and holds a compass. On lifting the shield-shaped lid, a string, serving as gnomon, is drawn up. Usually, however, these string dials were made in the shape of a square box, as described in the ‘ Cosmographicus Liber’ of P. Apianus (Landshut, 1528).
But whilst horizontal dials or “ compasses ” served only in the latitude for which they were made, an equi¬ noctial dial, that is, one whose dial-plane is parallel to the equinoctial plane with a stylus or gnomon rising perpen¬ dicularly from its centre, could easily be converted into a universal dial, adjustable to any latitude. The manner in which this was done is shown in our illustration. Such an instrument might have proved of real service to the
1 For a full description of this and of other ancient sundials, see A. Wolkenhauer, 1 Mitt. d. geogr. Ges. in Miinchen,’ I., 1905, p. 251. These compasses were no doubt made at Vienna, where Purbach wrote his ‘ Compositio compassi cum regula ad omnia climata.’ At Nuremberg the compass-makers were incorporated in 1510, but Dr. Mummenhof, on searching the ‘ Biirgerbuch,’ discovered the names of two masters of the craft in the list of citizens for 1481. But Regiomontanus, the pupil of Purbach, is known to have made sundials years before at Nuremberg (H. Wagner, ‘Nachr. d. K. Ges. der Wiss. zu Gottingen,’ philosoph. hist. Klasse, 1901, Heft. 2).
mariner, especially as it would have enabled him likewise to determine the variation of the compass-needle, and even the latitude (by measuring the length of the shadow cast by the gnomon), but I am not aware of its ever having been introduced on ship-board in Behaim’s day. Magellan, many years afterwards, was content to carry hour-glasses, similar to those which still survive in many kitchens, where they regulate the time for boiling an egg.2
A Universal Equinoctial Sundial adjusted to Lat. 36° S.
Of course, it is quite possible that Martin Behaim imported into Portugal portable sundials, small metal astrolabes and other instruments for which his native town was famous, just as his brother Wolf, about ten years afterwards, imported “ Nuremberg eggs ”or portable wheel watches, which had only recently been invented.3 !
The Ephemerides.
Martin Behaim has been credited not only with having introduced into Portugal certain astronomical instruments, but also with having made known there the ‘ Epheme¬ rides ’ of Johann Milller of Konigsberg, known as Regio¬ montanus. These famous ‘Ephemerides ab anno 1475 ad annua 1506 ’ were published at Nuremberg ten years before Behaim came to Portugal, and were reprinted at Venice in 1483. Is it likely that King John, who took such a lively interest in scientific pursuits, and his advisers, should have remained ignorant of the existence of a work of such importance? But even supposing that these ‘ Ephemerides ’ had first become known in Portugal
2 P. Nunes (‘ Opera,’ Bas. 1., p. 123) says that sundials were rare on board ship.
3 Schlagurlein — striking watches — are mentioned among the articles left behind by Wolf when he died in 1507. They were to have been sold, but up to 1518 no money realised by the sale had been received (Letter of Michael Behaim to Jorg Pock, Ghillany, p. 112). These famous wheel- watches were invented early in the sixteenth century at Nuremberg by Peter Hele of Strassburg (d. 1540).
19
through the agency of Behaim, they would not have attracted any special attention. Jose Vizinho, the most active scientific adviser of King John and of his successor King Manuel, knew, as a matter of course, that the ‘ Almanach ’ of Zacuto, his former teacher, contained tables which would enable an observer to compute readily his latitudes from an observation of the meridian altitude of the sun, which was not possible as long as only the ‘ Tables ’ of King Alfonso 1 of Castile were available. This ‘Almanach perpetuum celestium motuum,’ having been translated by Jose Vizinho from Hebrew into Latin, was first printed at Leiria in 1496, but there is no doubt that MS. copies, especially of the few tables of special interest to mariners, existed long before that time.2 The ‘ Almanach ’ contains four “ tabulae solis ” for a cycle of four years (1473-6), including three ordinary and one leap- year, and a “ Tabula declinationis solis ab equinoctiali.” The former give the sun’s geocentric longitude for each of the twelve signs of the Zodiac and for each day of each year, whilst the latter gives the sun’s declination corre¬ sponding to these longitudes. This declination table differs but slightly from a similar table included in the work of King Alfonso. With the help of Zacuto’s tables a latitude would be computed as follows : —
April 10, 1473. Meridian altitude of the sun, I observer south of the sun . I
|
Sun’s longitude in the sign of the Ram solis) . . . • • . |
(Tabula^ |
29° |
38’ |
|
|
Corresponding declination . |
11° |
24’ N, |
||
|
50 |
0 |
|||
|
90 |
0 |
|||
|
Zenith distance . |
40 |
0 |
S. |
|
|
Declination . |
11 |
24 |
N. |
|
|
Latitude |
28 |
36 |
S. |
It is credibly reported that Zacuto instructed the pilots who sailed in his time on voyages of discovery,3 and there can be no doubt that his ‘ Almanach ’ was in use in the Fleets of Vasco da Gama, Cabral, Joao de Nova and Albuquerque.4 Of course, they may have been
1 These ‘ Tables ’ were calculated by two Jewish astronomers, 1262- 1272, but only printed at Augsburg in 1488.
2 I consulted the first edition at the Bibliotheque de Ste. Genevieve at Paris. Other editions, amended and enlarged, were printed at Venice (1498, 1499, 1500 and 1502). The ‘ Ephemerides sive Almanach per¬ petuum,’ edited by Johan Lucilius Santritter of Heilbronn, and printed by P. Lichtenstein at Venice in 1498, are described by R. Wolf (‘ Geschichte der Astronomie,’ p. 97) as the work of Regiomontanus, when in reality they are by Zacuto, of whose existence he seems to have been unaware.
3 Gaspar Correa, ‘ Lendas da India,’ I. (Lisbon 1858), pp. 10, 16, 23, 261-4, 375. Correa went out to India in 1512 and died there before 1583. His ‘Lendas’ deal with the history of India up to 1550. They were partly written in 1561 and are of varying trustworthiness.
* Vasco da Gama sailed for India in 1497 and 1502, Cabral in 1550, JoSo da Nova in 1501, Affonso de Albuquerque in 1503.
supplied as well with the ‘ Ephemerides ’ of Regiomon¬ tanus, and we know that Columbus and Vespucci made use of the work of the great German astronomer. Andres de San Martin, one of the pilots in Magellan’s fleet, who was killed in Sebu in 1521, had both the ‘ Almanach ’ of Zacuto and the ‘ Ephemerides,’ and found both woefully in error when attempting to cal¬ culate a longitude from a conjunction of Jupiter and the moon, which he had observed on December 17, 1519.5 6 7
F rancisco Albo, another pilot of Magellan’s expedition, who was fortunate enough to return to Spain, to judge from the log-book as published by Navarrete (IV., 1837, p. 209), evidently had tables of declination of our modern type.6 These tables are entered with the date, and furnish the sun’s declination at a glance, without the computer being obliged to have recourse to a “ Tabula Solis ” giving the sun’s geocentric longitude. Eugen Gelcich ] surmises that “ tables were prepared in this form at the suggestion of Behaim and of his colleagues of the Junta, in order to meet the requirements of mariners.” Jose Vizinho might, of course, have prepared such tables, and so might any ordinary pilot, for their computation called for little skill and no knowledge of astronomy. But I demur even to the suggestion that Behaim, whose ignorance of nautical matters 1 believe to have been proved, had a share in this humble work.
The earliest printed tables of this kind I found in Martin Fernandez de Enciso’s ‘ Suma de Geographia ’ (Seville, 1519). These tables, like all those of a subsequent date, are calculated for a cycle of three ordinary and one leap year, as in Zacuto’s ‘ Almanach.’ Two sets of similar tables are found in a MS. Codex nowin the library of the Duke of Palmella, and published at his expense.8 This codex contains a treatise on the mariner’s compass by Joao de Lisboa,9 dated 1514, besides a number of other papers and documents by unknown authors dating from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century. Among these are two sets of declination tables, the one of the usual type, the other peculiar, inasmuch as the point of reference for what its author called “declination” is the North Pole. Thus decl. 23° S. is expressed by 90° + 23°= 113°, whilst decl. 23° N. is given as 90° — 23° = 67°. Neither date nor author of these two sets of tables is given. The last set of tables which need be mentioned are printed in Pedro de Medinas ‘ Arte de Navigar ’ (Valladolid, 1545).
The fact that these various tables were computed
5 Herrera, Dec. II., lib. IV., c. 10.
6 The tables quoted by him differ from those of Enciso to the extent of one to three minutes.
7 ‘Die Instr. u. d. wissensch. Hulfsmittel der Nautik’ (Hamburg, Festschrift, 1892), p. 90.
8 ‘Livro de Marinharia, cop. e coordenado por Jacinto Ignaccio de Brito Rebello’ (Lisbon, 1903).
9 Joao de Lisboa accompanied Tristao da Cunha to India in 1506, was appointed Piloto mor in 1525, and died in 1526.
D 2
20
\
independently is made manifest by the following table, which gives the southern declination for the first of January of each of the four years of a cycle.
|
January 1 (Old Style). |
Enoiso, 1519. |
Livro de Marinharia. |
Pedro de Medina, 1546. |
M. Pimentel, Arte de Navigar, 1685. |
Recent Tables (1893-97). |
||||||
|
1st Set. |
2nd Set. |
||||||||||
|
O |
/ |
O |
/ |
o |
, |
O |
, |
O |
, |
O t |
|
|
1st year |
21 |
54 |
21 |
52 |
21 l |
48 |
21 |
51 |
21 |
54 |
21 53 |
|
2nd ,, |
21 |
55 |
21 |
54 |
21 |
50 |
21 |
54 |
21 |
56 |
21 55 |
|
3rd „ |
21 |
58 |
21 |
57 |
21 |
52 |
21 |
56 |
21 |
58 |
21 57 |
|
4th „ |
22 |
00 |
21 |
58 |
21 |
54 |
21 |
58 |
22 |
00 |
22 00 |
Breusing, Gunther and Ruge on Behaim’ s services on the Junta.
It is now time to ask what, in the opinion of com¬ petent critics, had Behaim done to entitle him to a position on a scientific committee which J. de Barros assigns to him, or the appointment as cosmographer and astronomer of the important expedition which left Portugal in 1485 under the leadership of Diogo Cao ?
Dr. A. Breusing,1 Director of the School of Navigation at Bremen, who lays stress upon the importance of improved instruments of observation, contents himself with suggesting that Behaim made known in Portugal the cross-staff and a metal astrolabe of handier size than those which he supposes to have been in use up to his time.
Dr. S. Gunther 2 suggests that Behaim paid a visit to Lisbon in 1482 or 1483, that he there heard of the efforts which were being made to improve the art of pilotage, whereupon he let it be known in the course of conversa¬ tion, that he, as a pupil of the great astronomer Regiomontanus, had acquired knowledge likely to prove of great service to mariners. The King, when he learnt this, invited the young stranger to join the Junta dos mathematicos, which had recently been appointed. Behaim, as a matter of course, accepted this invitation, and thus secured a position in Portugal. He then returned to Germany, to wind up his affairs, went back to Portugal in 1484, and was at once appointed to accompany an expedition for the exploration of South Africa. Gunther then maintains that the introduction of the cross-staff and of the ‘ Ephemerides ’ most amply justified the Portuguese mathematicians in inviting this youthful stranger to join in their deliberations.
Dr. Sophus Ruge, in a review of Gunther’s excellent biography,3 accepts the view that Behaim paid a flying visit to Lisbon in 1482, where he boasted of having studied astronomy under Regiomontanus, and was com¬ missioned in consequence to procure certain astronomical
1 ‘ Zeitschr. d. Ges. f. Erdkunde,’ Berlin, 1869, p. 105.
- ‘Martin Behaim’ (Bamberg, 1890, pp. 13, 25).
3 Petermann’s Mitteilungen, 1890, Lit. No. 1,680.
instruments, including a cross-staff, for which his native Nuremberg was famous. With that object he visited Nuremberg in 1483, was taught there the use of these instruments, and although never appointed a member of the Junta, his technical advice proved of such value that it secured him the appointment as astronomer of Cao’s expedition.
All this is most ingenious, no doubt, but it is mere conjecture. He might have paid a visit to Lisbon in
1482, for nothing is known of his movements between June 9, 1479, when he was at Antwerp, and February,
1483, when he was summoned before the magistrates at Nuremberg for having danced at a Jew’s wedding. Instead of returning immediately to Lisbon with his instruments, he attended the Easter fair at Frankfurt, and the fair at Bergen in October or November, where he bought cloth and borrowed money, and was only ready on May 4, 1484, to leave Antwerp for “foreign parts.”4 The documents still available mention cloth, galls, and a few other articles as the merchandise he dealt in, but refer in no single instance to “instruments.” Had he been commissioned to buy instruments at Nuremberg, as conjectured by Dr. Ruge, he would no doubt have returned immediately to his mandatories. At the same time it is curious that a supposed pupil of Regiomontanus should have been obliged to visit Nuremberg in order to make himself acquainted with the use of instruments invented or manufactured by his master. Still, it is just possible that Behaim did import instruments into Portugal, but there is absolutely no proof extant that he ever did so.
VII. BEHAIM’S AFRICAN VOYAGE, 1484-85.
It is to an alleged voyage with Diogo Cao, either as astronomer or, as he himself asserts, as captain of one of the two vessels of the expedition, that Behaim owes the title of Navarchus, Seefahrer, or Navigator. Behaim himself has given two versions of this voyage, but before placing these before the reader I shall sketch the progress of Portuguese discovery along the west coast of Africa up to the year 1490.6
Portuguese Voyages of Discoveries, 1472-82.
When John II. in 1481 ascended the throne of his father Affonso, the Guinea coast had been explored as far
4 See Chapter IV., p. 9.
5 For a fuller account of these explorations see my essay on ‘ The Voyage of Diogo Cao and Bartholomew Dias ’ (‘ Geographical Journal,’ Dec. 1900). Since writing this paper important rock inscriptions referring to Cao’s second expedition have been discovered at the mouth of the river Mposo, near Matadi.
o
21
as Cape S. Catherine. Lopo Gonsalves had been the first to cross the line ; Fernao Po is credited with having discovered in 1372 the Ilha formosa, which now bears his name ; whilst Ruy de Sequeira “ about the same time,” according to Galvao,1 followed the coast as far as Cabo de S. Catharina (November 25), and also discovered the islands of S. Thome (December 21) and S. Antonio (January 17). The latter subsequently became known as Ilha do Principe, that is, the island of Prince John, the future King John II., who had enjoyed the revenues of the Guinea trade ever since 1473. This trade had become of importance, but nothing had been done to expand it since 1475, in which year the monopoly granted to Fernao Gomez came to an end, nor had steps been taken to render effective the claims to sovereignty put forth by Portugal. Hence foreign interlopers made their appearance upon the coast, and during the unfortu¬ nate wars with Castile (1475-80) entire fleets sailed from Spanish ports to share2 in the profits of the trade there.
One of the first measures taken by King John was to put a stop to these irregularities. Royal ships were sent out to protect Portuguese interests, and on January 20, 1482, Diogo D’Azambuja laid the foundations of the famous Castella de S. Jorge da Mina, which was the first permanent European settlement on the Gold Coast, and the centre of Portuguese activity up to 1637, when it was captured by the Dutch.
King John, having thus attended to what he conceived to be his more immediate duty as a king and ruler, took up the long-neglected work of his uncle Henry the Navigator, for, as Ruy de Pina tells us, he was not only “a good Catholic, anxious for the propagation of the faith, but also a man of an inquiring mind, desirous of investigating the secrets of nature.”3
Diogo Cad’s First Voyage of Discovery, 1482-84.
The King appointed Diogo Cao to the command of the first expedition despatched from Portugal to take up the exploration of the African coast beyond the Cabo de S. Catharina. Cao left Lisbon about June 1482, called at S. Jorge da Mina for supplies, and then followed the coast until a body of fresh water, five leagues out at sea, revealed the existence of a mighty river (rio poderoso) which had poured it forth. This river was the Congo. He there entered into friendly relations with the natives, and having
1 Antonio Galvao was born at Lisbon in 1503, spent 1527-47 in India, and died 1557 in hospital. His ‘Tratado’was published at Lisbon in 1563, and again, with a translation, by the Hakluyt Society (‘ The Discoveries of the World’), 1862.
2 D. Cao, in 1 483, captured three Spanish vessels on the Guinea coast. For an account of this capture by Eustache de la Fosse of Doornick, see C. Fernandez Duro, ‘ Boletin,’ Geographical Society of Madrid, 1897, pp. 193—5.
3 Ruy de Pina, ‘ Chronica d’El Rey Joao II.,’ c. 57.
despatched messengers with gifts to the king of the country, and set up a stone pillar at the river’s mouth, he continued his voyage to the south. When he reached the Cabo do lobo, in 13° 26' S., now known as Cape St. Mary, he erected his second pillar or padrao.4 This pillar, fortunately, has been recovered intact. An inscrip¬ tion upon it, in Portuguese, tells us that in the year 6681 of the world or in that of 1482 since the birth of Christ the King ordered this land to be discovered by his esquire
(escudeiro) Diogo Cao. The coat of arms is that in use up to 1485, when King John ordered the green cross of the order of Aviz to be removed from it, the number of castles to be reduced to seven, and the position of the “quinas,” or five escutcheons, to be changed.5
When Cao came back to the Congo he was annoyed to find that his messengers had not yet returned, and being naturally anxious to hasten home with a report of his important discovery, he seized four native visitors to his ship as hostages. He gave their friends to understand that they should be brought back in the course of time to be exchanged for his own men who were still with the king.
Cao came back to Lisbon in the beginning of 1484, and certainly before April of that year, for on the 8th of that month he was granted an annuity “ in consideration of his services,” and a few days afterwards was given a coat of arms charged with the two padrdes he had erected on the coast of Africa.
Diogo Cads Second Voyage of Discovery, 1485-86.
Cao’s departure on his second expedition was delayed until the latter part of 1485, and the padrdes which he took with him were ornamented with the new coat of arms, recently adopted and dated 1485 a.d. and 6185 of the creation, the latter year beginning with September 1,
4 Illustrated descriptions of these padroes are given by Luciano Cordeiro, ‘ Boletim da Soc. Geogr. de Lisboa,’ 1892 and 1895.
5 This change probably was ordered in June 1485 when a similar change took place in the coinage. (Teixera de Aragao, ' Descr. geral e hist, das moedas,’ Lisbon, 1874-83, I., p. 240; J. Pedro Ribeira, ‘Dissert, chronol. e criticas,’ t. TIT. App. YT. and plates.)
22 —
1485.1 It seems that Cao, on this occasion, commanded three vessels, his fellow captains being Pero Annes and Pero da Costa. It is possible that Cao, when crossing the Gulf of Guinea, discovered the island called I. Martini on Behaim’s Globe, and now known as Anno bom. Such a discovery is suggested by a rough map of an ‘ Ilha Diogo Cam ’ depicted upon a loose sheet in Valentin Ferdinand’s MS. The shape of this island, however, resembles in no respect the two delineations of the island of Anna bom given in the same MS., and no reference to it is made in the text.
Cao on reaching the Congo ascended it for about ninety miles, as far as the River Mposo, above Matadi, and within sight of the Yelala Falls, for there, upon some rocks upon the right bank an inscription2 has been discovered which records this achievement. The coat of arms proves that this inscription dates from 1485, or a subsequent year. We there read: “Thus far came the
vessels of the illustrious King D. Joao II. of Portugal : D° Cao, P° Annes, P° da Costa ” ; further to the right, “ Alv° Pyrez, P° Escolar ” ; lower down, “ J° de Santyago, 4* of illness (da doen^a), J° Alvez (Alvares), * D° Pinero, G° Alvez — Antao.” Still further away there is another cross with a few names— Ruys, Farubo, Annes, and a masonic symbol (X).
Several of the names given are those of well-known Portuguese seamen. A Pero Annes served under Albu¬ querque in India ; Pero Escolar accompanied the Congo embassy in 1490-1, was pilot of one of Vasco da Gama’s vessels, and accompanied Cabral to India ; Joao de Santiago commanded the store vessel of the expedition of B. Dias.
The remaining names may have been cut into the rock subsequently to Cao’s expedition of 1485. The name of Martin de Bohemia is looked for in vain.
1 For a description of this padrao see Scheppig, ‘ Marine Rundschau,’ 1894, p. 357, and ‘ Die Cao-Saule am Kap Cross’ (Kiel, 1903) : L. Cor- deiro, ‘ O ultimo Padrao de Diogo Cao ’ (Boletim, 1895, p. 885).
2 This important inscription was known in 1882, for on the map of the Lower Congo, by Capello and Ivens, is indicated a ‘ Padrao Portuguez.’ Father Domenjuz of Matadi seems to have been the first to have taken a photograph of it, which was published by L. Frobenius in his work ‘ Im Schatten des Kongo Staates,’ 1907. Another photograph, by the Rev. Pettersson, has been published by the Rev. Tho. Lewis (‘ Geogr. Journal,’ xxi., 1908, p. 501).
Cao, having landed the hostages whom he had carried
off two years before, proceeded to the south. He kidnapped several natives, who were to be taught Portuguese so that they might serve as interpreters in future ex¬ peditions. On the face of ‘ Monte negro,’ 15° 41' S., he erected a padrao, and a second at Cape Cross, described as Cabo do padrao and Sierra parda on old maps, in 21° 50'. The former of these pillars is now in the Museum of the Lisbon Geographical Society, its inscription quite illegible ; that of Cape Cross was carried off by Captain Becker in 1893, and has found a last resting-place in the Museum of the ‘ Institut fur Meereskunde ’ in Berlin. The German Emperor has since caused an exact copy of it to be erected on the spot.
If we may trust to a legend upon a Map of the W orld drawn in 1489 by Henricus Martellus Germanus,3 a legend confirmed by a ‘ Parecer ’ drawn up by the Spanish pilots and astronomers who attended the ‘ Junta ’ of Badajoz in 1524, 4 Diogo Cao died near this Cape Cross.
And if Cao died, the details given by Ruy de Pina and Barros of the final stage of this expedition — the interview with the Mani Congo, who asked for priests and artisans, and sent Cazuto with gifts of carved ivory and palm-cloth to Portugal as his ambassador — must be rejected. I am inclined to believe that these details refer to Bartholomew Dias. Cazuto would then have reached Portugal in December 1488, was baptized at Beja in January 1489, when the King, his Queen, and gentlemen of title acted as sponsors, and was sent back to Congo with D. Gon^alo de Sousa, King John’s ambassador, in December 1490.
But whatever the circumstances, Cao’s name disappears henceforth from the annals of Portugal. His ships returned, no doubt, in the course of 1486, and when Dias started on his memorable voyage in August 1487 he took back with him the natives kidnapped by Cao on the coast beyond the Congo.
The Voyage of Bartholomew Dias, 1487-88.
When an envoy of the King of Benin came to Portugal in 1485 or 1486 he roused the King’s curiosity
3 For a reduced facsimile of this map see p. 67. For further informa¬ tion on this map, p. 66.
4 This ‘ Parecer ’ or Report is printed in Navarrete’s ‘ Colleccion,’ IY. (Madrid, 1837), p. 347. J. Codine, ‘ Decouverte de la cote d’Afrique ’ (Bulletin de la Soc. de Geogr., 1876, Notes 23 and 29), would have us believe that the words “ et hie moritur ” of the legend do not refer to Cao but to the Serra Parda. This is quite inadmissible. The Spanish pilots say “ donde murio ” where he died.
23
by giving him an account of a powerful ruler, far inland, who held a position among the negroes not unlike that held by the Pope in the Christian world. The King hastily concluded that this Ogane, as he was called, could be no other than the long-sought Prester John. He at once sent messengers by way of Jerusalem and Egypt in search of him, and prepared an expedition to aim at the same goal by sailing round Africa. The command of this expedition was given to Bartholomew Dias de Novaes, who departed from Lisbon in July or August 1487. He followed the coast to the south, and before the year had closed arrived at a Cabo da Volta and a Serra Parda at the entrance of a capacious bay, originally called Golfo de S. Christovao, but since known as Angra pepuena and Ltideritz Bay. Here, in lat. 26° 38' S., he set up his first pillar, fragments of which may now be seen at Lisbon and in the Cape Town Museum.
Proceeding onward, Dias, for a time, ran along the coast, but before he reached St. Helena Bay he had lost sight of the land. He thus sailed as far as 45° S., and, having apparently weathered a storm, stood east, but failing in the course of several days to meet with land, turned his prow to the northward. Sailing in that direction for 150 leagues, he saw lofty mountains rising before him, and on February 3, 1488, the day of St. Braz, he came to anchor in a bay which he called Bahia dos Vaqueiros (Cowherd’s Bay). It is the Mossel Bay of our days.
During his onward course Dias had to struggle against the Agulhas current, as also against the prevailing south¬ easterly winds, and his progress was slow. He entered the Bahia da Roca (Rock Bay), now known as Algoa Bay, and 30 miles beyond it on an islet at the foot of a cape still known as Cape Padrone, he erected his second pillar, no trace of which has yet been discovered. When Dias reached the Rio de Infante (Great Fish River), and with it the threshold of the Indian Ocean, his crews refused to go any further. He turned back reluctantly, and on this homeward voyage he first beheld the mountains which fill Cape Peninsula, and at their foot set up his third and last padrao. According to tradition he named the southern extremity of this peninsula Cabo tormentoso, in memory of the storms which he had experienced, but King John, whose hope of reaching India by this route seemed on the eve of realization, re-named it Cabo da boa esperan^a — the Cape of Good Hope. We do not know- whether Dias, on his homeward voyage, called at the Congo. We know, however, that he touched at the illia do Principe, did some trade at a Rio do Resgate,1 and called at S. Jorge da Mina. Ultimately, after an absence of sixteen months and seventeen days, he once more entered the Tagus. This was in December 1482.2
1 * Trade river ’ — perhaps the Rio formoso.
2 Dias in 1497 accompanied Yasco da Gama as far as the Cape Verde Islands; in 1500 he commanded a vessel in Cabral’s fleet, and perished off the Cape which he had discovered.
Minor Expeditions.
Voyages to the Guinea coast were of frequent occurrence at that time, and there is no reason why Behaim should not have been permitted to join one of these, either as a merchant or as a volunteer anxious to see something of the world. Most of these voyages were made for commercial purposes, but in addition to merchant-men there were Royal ships in the preventive service,3 and surveying vessels charged with a more minute examination of the coast and the inland waters than had been done by the pioneer explorers. One of the most famous of these surveyors was the heroic Duarte Pacheco Pereira, the author of the ‘ Esmeraldo de Situ orbis.’ 4
We have particulars of only two expeditions of this kind. The first of these I have already noticed. It was accompanied by Jose Vizinho, the astronomer.5 The second was led by Joao AfFonso d’Aveiro, who had been associated with Diogo d’Azambuja in the building of S. Jorge da Mina.6
Joao Affonso d’Aveiro and Benin, 1484-85.
The information concerning this voyage is fragmentary and leaves much to conjecture. J. A. d’Aveiro started in 1484, and he or his ship returned in the following year with an ambassador of the King of Benin, and the first Guinea pepper or pimento de rabo seen in Portugal, and sensational information about a king, Ogane, living far inland and rashly identified with the Prester John so long sought after. Upon receiving this news the King of Portugal ordered a factory to be established at Gato, the port of Benin, but the climate proved deadly to Europeans, many of the settlers fell victims to it,7 and the place was abandoned. King John, at the same time, sent Fr. Antonio of Lisbon and Joao of Montarroyo to the east to inquire into the whereabouts of Prester John,8 but, being ignorant of Arabic, they failed in their mission.
3 It was in this service that D. Gao, in 1480, captured three Spanish interlopers.
4 For a biographical notice see p. 2, Note 5.
5 See p. 13.
6 Ruy de Pina, c. 94, Garcia de Resende, and J. de Barros, ‘ Da Asia, Dec. I., Liv. III., c. 3, say that d’Aveiro returned from this voyage in 1486 ; according to A. Galvao he returned in 1485 or 1486 ; according to Correa, ‘Lendas,’ t. I., c. 1, in 1484. According to A. Manuel y Vascon- cellos, ‘Vida y acciones do Rey D. Juan II.’ (Madrid, 1625), p. 165, and Manuel Telles da Silva, ‘ De rebus et gestis Joanno’ (Lisbon, 1689), p. 215, both Cao and d’Aveiro sailed in 1484. These dates, unfortunately, are not very trustworthy.
7 There is no doubt that d’Aveiro died in Benin, but whether his death happened in the course of the first voyage or after the establishment of the factory at Gato, is not made clear from the available narratives of the voyage. J. Codine (‘Bull, de la Soc. de geographic,’ 1876) believes that he died during the first voyage.
8 De Barros, ‘ Asia,’ Dec. I., Liv. III., c. 5.
24
whereupon, on May 7, I486,1 he despatched Joao Pero de Covilha and Affonso de Paiva on the same errand.
Behaim’s Own Accounts of his Voyage.
Behaim has transmitted two accounts of the voyage along the west coast of Africa which he claims to have made, and on the strength of which posterity has dubbed him ‘ the Navigator.’ The first and more ample of these accounts may be gathered from the legends of his Globe and the geographical features delineated upon it.
The second account has found a place in the 4 Liber chronicorum,’ compiled at the suggestion of Sebald Schreyer2 by Dr. Hartmann Schedel,3 printed by Anton Koberger and published on July 12, 1493, on the eve of Behaim’s departure from Nuremberg. The original MS. of this work, in Latin, still exists in the town library of Nuremberg, as also the MS. of a German translation which was completed on October 5, 1493, by George Alt, the town-clerk. The body of the Latin MS. is written in a stiff clerk’s hand, and is evidently a clean copy made from the author’s original. The paragraph referring to Behaim has been added in the margin, in a running hand. In the German translation, f. 285a, this paragraph is embodied in the text. This proves that this information was given to the editor after he had completed the Latin original of his work, but before George Alt had translated it. Behaim at that time was still at Nuremberg, and there can be no doubt that it was he who communicated to Dr. H. Schedel this interesting information, and is responsible for it.
The Story as told on the Globe.
I shall now give the Story of the Voyage as it may be gathered from the Globe. It is as follows : —
In 1484 King John of Portugal despatched two caravels on a voyage of discovery with orders to proceed
1 Ruy de Pina, who may have been present when these messengers took leave of the King, says May 7, 1486 (c. 21), but Alvarez (l.c. c. 102) was told by Covilha, whom he met in Abyssinia in 1521, that he departed on May 7, 1487. If Covilha left Portugal in May, 1486, d’Aveiro’s expedition must have returned in 1485, and such seems to have been the case, for Frei Fernando de Soledade (‘ Historica Serafica da ordem de S. Francisco,’ t. III., Lisbon, 1705, p. 412) says that Frei Antonio of Lisbon and Joao (Pedro) de Montar royo were despatched in 1485.
2 Sebald Schreyer, b. 1446, was a liberal supporter of art and science. It was at his suggestion that the ‘ Liber chronicorum ’ was compiled, and he paid part of the cost of its publication.
3 Dr. H. Schedel was born 1440, settled at Nuremberg in 1488 and died there in 1514. He was an enthusiastic pupil of Conrad Celtes, and an indefatigable collector of codices and inscriptions. On f. 266 of the Lathi edition H. Schedel is named the author or editor, on June 4, 1493, but at the end of the volume, f. 300, his name is omitted, and the following are named instead : — Seb. Schreyer, Sebastian Kammermeyster (mathematician), A. Koberger (printer), Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff (draughtsman). M. Wolgemut, the famous artist, was born at Nuremberg in 1434, and the illustrations of the volume were executed in his workshop.
beyond the Columns of Hercules to the south and east. Of this expedition the author of the Globe was a member. The caravels were provisioned for three years. In addition to merchandise, for barter, they carried eighteen horses, with costly harness, as presents for Moorish (negro) kings, as also samples of spices which were to be shown to the natives.
The caravels left Lisbon, sailed past Madeira and through the Canaries. They exchanged presents and traded with Bur-Burum, and Bur-ba-Sin, Kings of the Jalof and Sin, on the north of the Gambia, stated to be 800 German miles4 from Portugal. Grains of Paradise were found in these kingdoms. Notice was taken of the current which beyond Cape Verde flows strongly to the south. The caravels then followed the coast to the east, past the Sierra Leoa (Sierra Leone), the Terra de Malagucta, the Castello de ouro (S. Jorge da Mina) and the Rio da lagoa (Lagos) to King Furfur’s Country, “ where grows the pepper discovered by the King of Portugal, 1485,” and which is 1,200 leagues from Lisbon.5 “Far beyond this” a country producing cinnamon was discovered. The place names along this part of the coast, such as Rio de Bohemo (Behaim’s river) are absolutely original, and are not to be found on any Portuguese chart. It is to be regretted that the original delineation of the bottom of the Bight of Biafra, including the island of Fernando Po, should have been destroyed, for what we now see is merely the work of a restorer.
The islands in the Gulf of Guinea — S. Thome, do Principe and the Insule Martini — were “ found ” by this expedition, and they were then without inhabitants.
Sailing southward along the coast the explorers passed the “ Rio do Padrao,” a “ rio poderoso ” or “ mighty river” (lat. 25° S.), distinguished by a flag placed on its northern bank, until they reached a Monte negro, in lat. 37° S., the extreme Cape of Africa, where they set up the columns of the King of Portugal on January 18, 1485.
Doubling this Cape the explorers sailed about 220 leagues to the east, as far as a Cabo ledo (lat. 40° S.) 2300 leagues from Portugal, and having set up another column they turned back, and at the expiration of 19 months6 they were once more with their King. A miniature of this cape shows the two caravels of the expedition. The distance from Portugal, as measured on the Globe, actually amounts to 2300 leagues.
The Story as told in the 4 Liber chronicorum .’
I now proceed to give the story of Behaim’s voyage as given in Schedel’s 4 Chronicle.’ After a reference to
4 A gross exaggeration ! From Lisbon to the Gambia is only 450 German miles, or, as measured on the Globe, 560 miles.
5 Of the identity of King Furfur’s Country with Benin there can be no doubt. If we accept the date 1485 as correct, this country was discovered on the homeward voyage. Of course I know that “ furfur ” is the Latin for bran, and “ fur ” for thief or slave.
6 Nineteen months according to two legends on the Globe, one of them close to Cabo Ledo.
25
Prince Henry’s discovery of Madeira and of the islands of St. George, Fayal and Pico, one of which was settled by “ Germans of Flanders,” the ‘ Chronicle ’ continues as follows : — 1 2
“ In the year 1483 2 John II., King of Portugal, a man of lofty mind, despatched certain galleons (galeas), well found, on a voyage of discovery to the south, beyond the Columns of Hercules, to Ethiopia. He appointed two patrons (captains) over them, namely Jacobus3 canus, a Portuguese, and Martinus Bohemus, a German, a native of Nuremberg in Upper Germany, of good family, who had a thorough knowledge of the countries of the world and was most patient of the sea (situ terre peritissimum marisque patientissimum), and who had gained, by many years’ navigation, a thorough knowledge beyond Ptolemy’s longitudes to the west.4
“ These two, by favour of the gods, sailed, not far from the coast, to the south, and having crossed the equinoctial line entered another world (alterum orbem) where looking to the east their shadow fell southwards, to the right.5 They had thus by their diligence, discovered another world (alium orbem) hitherto not known to us, and for many years searched for in vain by the Genoese. Having thus pursued their voyage they came back after twenty- six months 6 to Portugal, many having died owing to the heat. As evidence of their discovery they brought with them pepper, grains of paradise, and many other things, which it would take long to enumerate. A great quantity of this pepper was sent to Flanders, but not being shrivelled like the oriental pepper and of a longish shape, preference was given to the true pepper.”
A Summary of the two Accounts.
These two accounts may be combined as follows : —
In 1484 two caravels, commanded by Diogo Cao and Martin Behaim, were despatched by King John. They traded with the Jalof and the people of the Gambia, and sailing east “ found ” the Guinea Islands, including the Insula Martini. Having crossed the Equator, a feat attempted in vain by the Genoese for many years, they discovered another world. Sailing south as far as 37°, they reached a Monte negro, the extreme Cape of Africa, where, on January 18, 1485, they set up a column. Doubling this cape they sailed east another 260 leagues,
1 Latin original, £.290; German translation, f.385A.
2 A misprint for 1484 or 1485?
3 Jacobus, Diogo, James and Jack are synonymous.
4 This claim to be an experienced navigator is absurd, for Behaim’s first experience of the sea was made in 1484. Of his further experience up to 1490, we know nothing.
5 The inhabitants of the tropical zone are, of course, Amphiscii, whose shadow at noon is thrown to the north or south according to the position of the sun. Behaim’s statement is applicable only to inhabitants of the southern temperate zone.
6 In the Latin “ vicesimo sexto mense,” but in the German translation
“ in dem sechzehenten monat.” Dias is said to have come back after an
absence of 16 months 17 days.
as far as Cabo Ledo, when they turned back. King Furfur’s Land, where grows the Portuguese pepper, seems to have been visited on the homeward journey in 1485. After an absence of 19 (26 or 16) months, they were once more at Lisbon, having suffered heavy losses from the great heat, and bringing with them grains of paradise, pepper and probably also cinnamon (said to have been discovered beyond King Furfur’s Land) in proof of the discoveries they had made.
Behaim’s account examined.
It is quite conceivable that Behaim’s townsmen in the centre of Germany believed this account of his African voyage, but Behaim himself must have been aware that he was misleading them with a view to his own glorifica¬ tion. Even though he had made no voyage to the Guinea coast at all, and took no special interest in geographical exploration, he must have known that the islands of Fernando Po, do Principe and St. Thome, as well as the Guinea coast as far as the Cape of Catharina in latitude 1° 50' South,7 had been discovered in the lifetime of King Affonso, who died in 1481. Genoese, and also Flemings,8 certainly took a small share in the trade carried on along the coast discovered by the Portuguese, but since the days of Teodosio Doria and the brothers Vivaldi, in 1291, no Genoese vessels had started with a view of tracing the coast of Africa beyond the Equator. Behaim, if he really joined Cao in an expedition to Africa, must have known that his companion, in 1482, had discovered a mighty river and the powerful kingdom of the Mani Congo, and that in the course of a second expedition, in 1485, Cao traced the coast as far as a Cabo do Padrao, quite six degrees beyond the Monte negro of his globe. He must have known that Dias, in 1488, returned with the glorious news that he had doubled the southern cape of Africa, 12 degrees to the south of this padrao, and explored the coast for 120 leagues beyond, when the ocean highway to India lay open before him. Behaim is silent with reference to these facts, and any person examining his globe, and not conversant with them, would naturally conclude that it was Behaim, and his companion Cao, who first doubled the southern cape of Africa.
Grains of Paradise, Pepper and Cinnamon.
As to the grains of paradise, the pepper and also cinnamon, which were brought to Lisbon as “ evidences ” of discovery, a few words may be said.
Grains of Paradise, or Malaguetas, are the seeds of Amomum granum Paradisi, Afz, and as early as the
7 Here, on the chart of “ Ginea Portugalexe,” 1484, is shown the “ tree marking the furthest discovered in the time of Fernam Gomez,” whose trading monopoly, granted in 1469, expired in 1474.
8 Pacheco Pereira, ‘ Esmeraldo,’ p. 54, tells us of a ship manned by thirty-four Flemings, which was wrecked on the Malagueta coast and its crew eaten up by the natives.
E
26
thirteenth century this condiment reached Barbary and Europe by caravans crossing the Sahara.1 Their discovery on the coast of Guinea dates back to the days of Prince Henry.
The pepper of King Furfur’s Land or Benin is the pimenta de rabo, or “ tailed ” pepper, which Portuguese historians tell us was first brought to Portugal by Joao Affonso d’Aveiro. It is the fruit of Piper Clusii, D.C. The discovery of this pepper caused a sensation, for pepper, up till then obtained from India by way of Venice, was a costly spice— “ ter muita pimenta,” pepper is dear, is still said proverbially. Unfortunately this Guinea pepper was not highly valued in Flanders. King John told Dr. Monetarius (l. c., p. 68) that he believed the superiority of the pepper of Malabar and Sumatra to be due to the treatment of the berries, and that he had sent an expert to Cairo to enlighten him on the subject. After the discovery of India, when the trade in pepper became a Portuguese monopoly, the export of this pimenta de rabo was prohibited, in order that the high price of Oriental pepper might be maintained.2
Cinnamon is not found in Africa at all, except where its cultivation has been introduced in recent times from Ceylon. O. Dapper, however, the learned Dutch physi¬ cian, apparently supports Behaim’s statement as to cinna¬ mon, for he says 3 that “ black cinnamon ” is found in Loango and is used for the purpose of “ divination ” (probably in the poison ordeal). I have searched in vain for an authority for such a statement. Mr. R. C. Phillips and Mr. R. E. Dennett, both men of education and of inquiring minds, who resided for many years as merchants to the north of the Congo, know nothing about “ black ” cinnamon. Of course, there are several species of Cassia, such as the Cassia occidentalis, the bitter root of which is antifebrile, whilst the roasted seeds furnish the “ Negro coffee ” of the Gambia ; Cassia obovata, which yields senna, and other species. The bark, a decoction of which is most generally in use in the poison ordeals, is furnished by the Erythrophlaeum guineense, Don., a tree found in all parts of Africa, from the Senegal to the Zambezi.4 5
The Globe and contemporary Maps.6
I now proceed to examine more closely the delineation of the west coast of Africa as given on the Globe, with special reference to the voyages of Cao, and of other expeditions of the period. I first of all compare the
1 Conde de Ficalho, ‘ Memoria sobre a Malagueta,’ Lisbon (Academia das Sciencias), 1878.
2 Conde de Ficalho, ‘ Plantas uteis da Africa Portugueza ’ (Lisbon, 1884), p. 245.
3 C. Dapper, ‘Africa’ (German edition), Amsterdam, 1670, p. 511. Mr. Dennett is the author of ‘ Seven Years among the Fjort’ (London, 1887) and ‘ Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort’ (London, 1898).
4 Ficalho, ‘ Plantas uteis,’ pp. 157, 164. Also Dr. M. Boehr, ‘ Correspon. der Deutschen Afrik. Ges.,’ vol. I., p. 382.
5 See Map of Guinea and South-Western Africa compiled from
materials available in 1492. Map 5.
longitudes of a few places as found on a map of “ Ginea Portugalexe,” in all probability drawn by Christopher Soligo of Venice, and on Behaim’s Globe with what they really are according to modern observations. Soligo’s map is contained in a codex, which originally belonged to a Count Cornaro-Piscopi, then found its way into the Palace of the Doges, and may now be consulted in the British Museum, where it is labelled Eg. 73. The codex contains 35 charts by various draughtsmen, or rather copyists. The chart of “ Ginea Portugalexe ” which concerns us is in three sheets, and depicts the entire coast from Portugal to the “ Ultimo padrao ” set up by Cao on Cape St. Mary in latitude 13° 16'. Its Portuguese original was evidently drawn immediately after Cao’s return from his first voyage in 1484. The chart is furnished with a scale, but is still without parallels. A legend written right against the mouth of the Niger tells us “hie non apar polus,” but this invisibility of the pole-star is not borne out by the scale of the chart, for if we place Lisbon, according to Ptolemy, in latitude 38° 40' N. and allow 75 miglie 6 to a degree, the latitude of the mouth of the Niger would be 7° 30' N.
|
Localities. |
Soligo, 1484. |
Behaim, 1492. |
Actual, 1907. |
|||||||
|
Lisbon . |
o 38 |
40 |
N. |
O 40 |
/ 0 |
N. |
O 38 |
/ 42 |
N. |
|
|
Gambia . |
13 |
40 |
N. |
11 |
0 |
N. |
13 |
20 |
N. |
|
|
Mina d’ouro (Elmina) |
. |
7 |
20 |
N. |
4 |
0 |
N. |
6 |
0 |
N. |
|
Lagos . |
9 |
20 |
N. |
4 |
30 |
N. |
6 |
30 |
N. |
|
|
Cabo formoso, Niger . |
7 |
30 |
N. |
2 |
30 |
N. |
4 |
20 |
N. |
|
|
Rio do Padrao (Congo), Cao’s Pillar, 1482 . |
First | |
6 |
0 |
S. |
25 |
0 |
S. |
6 |
0 |
S. |
|
Cabo do lobo, Cao’s second pillarl dedicated to St. Augustin, 1482 . j |
13 |
0 |
S. |
34 |
0 |
S. |
13 |
26 |
s. |
|
|
Monte negro, Cao’s third pillar |
,1495 |
.. |
38 |
0 |
s. |
15 |
40 |
s. |
||
|
Cabo do Padrao (Cape Cross), |
Cao’sl |
21 |
Q |
|||||||
|
fourth pillar . |
. ./ |
|||||||||
|
Cape of Good Hope . |
34 |
22 |
s. |
The next table gives the distances between certain localities according to the same authorities and as measured on a rather rude map of the world by Henricus Martellus Germanus.7 This map is one of many in a manuscript codex, “ Insularium illustratum,” now in the British
6 The Portuguese Legoa of 7,500 varas was equal to 6,269 meters, and 4*24 Italian miglie of 1,480 meters each were therefore equal to one legoa. One degree of the Equator (111,307 meters) was consequently equal to 17*75 legoas or 75*21 miglie (or miles). Pilots generally assumed that 4 miles were equal to a league. Girolamo Sernigi, who wrote a letter to a gentleman at Florence about Yasco da Gama’s first voyage, knew better, for he reckoned 4^ Italian miles to a league, and on the chart which Alberto Cantino caused to be compiled at Lisbon, in 1502, for his patron, Hercules d’ Este, Duke of Ferrara, a degree is equal to 75 miglie (see Ravenstein, ‘A Journal of the First Voyage of Yasco da Gama,’ pp. 208, 245).
7 Henricus Martellus (Heinrich Hammer) was evidently a German settled in Italy. A MS. Ptolemy in the Biblioteca Magliabechiana contains a map of modern Italy drawn by him (A. Mori, * Atti.-sec. Congr. Ital.,’ Rome, 1896, p. 567). Facsimiles of his map of the world have been published by Count Lavradio (1863) and in Nordenskiold’s ‘Periplus.’
o
27
v
Museum (Add. MS. 15,760). It is dated 1489 and shows the discoveries up to the return of Dias in 1488. There is no scale, and in estimating the distances I have assumed the Mediterranean to be 3,000 Portolano miles in length.
|
Localities. |
Soligo, 1484. |
Martellus, 1489. |
Behaim, 1492. |
Actual, 1907. |
Behaim’s Errors. |
|
Lisbon to the Gambia . |
leg- 460 |
Leg. 400 |
Leg. 630 |
leg. 608 |
Per Cent. 24 |
|
Gambia to Lagos .... |
470 |
430 |
470 |
420 |
12 |
|
Lagos to Cabo Formoso andl the Rio de Behemo . . . / |
70 |
70 |
100 |
55 |
95 |
|
Cabo Formoso to R. do Padrao, j Congo . / |
310 |
270 |
600 |
250 |
140 |
|
Congo to Cabo do Lobo . |
120 |
110 |
210 |
128 |
64 |
|
Cabo do Lobo to Monte Negro. |
80 |
70 |
44 |
59 |
|
|
Monte Negro to Cabo do Padrao |
120 |
113 |
|||
|
Cabo do Padrao to Cape ofl Good Hope . / |
390 |
230 |
•• |
||
|
Cape of Good Hope to Dias’ 1 furthest . / |
" |
200 |
•• |
131 |
|
|
Total . |
2,070 |
2,300* |
1,879 |
* Inclusive of 220 leagues for the distance between Monte Negro
and Cabo Ledo.
On examining the above tables it will be found that whilst along the Guinea coast, from the Gambia to the Cabo formoso (Niger), the latitudes differ from the truth to the extent of only about two degrees, and the excess in distances only amounts to 20 per cent., these errors rapidly increase as we follow the coast to the south. The island of S. Thome',1 the true latitude of which is 15' N.,is placed by Behaim in lat. 7° 30' S, while the River Congo is placed 19°, the Monte negro 22° 20' beyond the true position ; the distance as measured on the Globe exceeds the truth to the extent of over a hundred per cent.
Lower Guinea.
If we now turn to the delineation of South Africa on the Globe we cannot fail being struck with its general resemblance to the map of Henricus Martellus. It is only on comparing the nomenclature of the two that we discover striking differences. We then discover that the Monte negro which Behaim places in lat. 38° S. is not the Cavo de speran^a of Martellus, as has been rashly supposed by certain critics,2 but corresponds to the Monte negro of the latter, which we know to be in lat. 15° 40' S. It was upon this cape that Cao, in the course of his second voyage, erected one of his padroes, which has been discovered since in situ. We find further that the cavo ledo and San bartholomeo viego of the Globe, which seem to mark the furthest reached by Dias in 1487, are in reality
1 St. Thome 2° 30' N. according to Soligo, 1° N". according to Pacheco Pereira (‘ Esmeraldo,’ p. 15).
2 The “Caput bona spei” of Ghillany’s and Jomard’s facsimiles is not to be discovered on the Globe.
meant to represent the furthest reached by Behaim himself when he sailed in the company of Cao in 1485.3
The place names along the coast to the south of the Cabo de S. Catharina as far as the Monte negro agree, as a rule, with the names to be found on the few surviving charts of the age of the Globe. A few names are peculiar, but this is natural, as the small scale on which these maps are drawn made it impossible to introduce every name to be found on the original charts, and copyists or compilers did not agree in the selection they made. It is remarkable, however, that the name of the famous kingdom of Congo should be looked for in vain upon the Globe, although its discovery and the establishment of intercourse with its powerful ruler constituted the most important event of Cao’s two voyages, and an embassy from him was staying in Portugal when Behaim left for Nuremberg. It is curious, too, that the flag at the mouth of the Rio do Padrao should fly from the north bank, when any visitor to the river must have known that Cao’s padrao was erected to the south.
The Southern Extremity of Africa.
Once we have doubled the Cape of Monte negro the place names are as puzzling as the names inserted upon Juan de la Cosa’s chart,4 which are supposed to represent the nomenclature bestowed by Vasco da Gama. Close to Cabo Ledo there is a Rio do requiem, which seems to owe its name to some tragedy, such as Cao’s supposed death. Other names remind us of the voyage of Bartholomew Dias. A Rio do Bethlehem takes the place of Juan de la Cosa’s Rio da Nazareth ; the Angra de Gatto may represent the Angra das Vaccas of the same author, for as Behaim writes “ patron ” instead of “ padrao ” he may fairly be supposed to have written “ gatto ” (cat) instead of “gado ” (cattle) ; the “ Rio dos Montes ” reminds us of the “ terra dos montes,” the Roca of the “ baia da Roca ” (Algoa Bay) of Cantino’s chart. Lastly there is the enigmatic “ San bartholomeo viego ” and an Oceanus mar is asperi meridionalis,” which has been supposed to be connected with the gales experienced by Bartholomew Dias when doubling the Cape of Good Hope.
Upper Guinea.
If we leave the South and direct our attention to Upper Guinea we shall find that, although the coast lines are drawn but roughly, there are not wanting indications that the author of the Globe had some personal knowledge of this part of Africa. He alone knows the name of the king from whose country pepper was brought to Portugal
3 See p. 24.
4 Juan de la Cosa accompanied Columbus and Alonso de Hojeda on their voyages to the West, 1493—1500, and on his return he compiled the map which bears his name, and facsimiles of which have been published by Santarem, Jomard, A. Vassano and in Nordcnskiold’s ‘ Periplus.’ J. de la Cosa was killed in a fight with Indians near Cartagena, 1509.
E 2
28
in 1485. “ King Furfur's Country ” is undoubtedly Benin, and if Behaim has placed the legend referring to it about a hundred leagues inland he did so only for want of space. Behaim, elsewhere, states that King Furfur’s Country is at a distance of 1,200 leagues from Portugal, and this distance, measured on the Globe, carries us a hundred leagues beyond the Rio do lagoa (Lagos), as far as a Rio de Behemo (Behaim river), an appellation undoubtedly intended to point out the discoverer of the river, but absolutely ignored by all his contemporaries.1 It is, how¬ ever, more likely that merely new names were given to rivers previously discovered. For on Soligo’s “ Ginea Portugalexe ” (1484) fourteen rivers are shown between the Rio dos Ramos and the Rio dos Camaroes, including a Rio de S. Jorge and a Rio de S. Clara to the west of the Cabo Formoso, and a Rio de S. Bartholomeu immediately to the east of it.
The Guinea Islands .
The islands in the Gulf of Guinea, we are told, were “ found ” by the vessels which the King sent forth from Portugal in 1484, but they were actually discovered, with the possible exception of Annobom, during the reign of King Affbnso, who died in 1481.
Fernando Po, a cavalier of the household of that King, discovered, about 1471, the ilha formosa which now bears his name.
The ilhas de S. Thome and S. Antao (Antonio) were perhaps discovered by Ruy de Sequeira, on his return from the Cabo de S. Catharina, the last discovery made during the reign of King Affonso.2 The revenues of S. Antao having been granted to Prince Joao, the future King John II., when nineteen years of age (i.e. in 1474), the island was re-named Ilha do Principe, the Prince’s Island, and under that name it figures on the Globe, as on all the available maps of the period.
The captaincy of S. Thome was granted to Joao de Paiva on September 24, 1485, and its earliest colonists arrived there on December 16 of the same year. He was succeeded, in 1490, by Joao Pereira ; in 1498 by Alvaro de Caminha, who sent thither the children of Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492, 3 and “ degradados ” or convicts; and in 1498 by Fernao de Mello. King John, in a conversation with Dr. Monetarius, in 1494, spoke of this deportation, but Behaim, whose Globe was made in 1492, may refer to an earlier deportation consequent upon the cruel persecution of the Jews which, instigated by the Pope, took place in Portugal in 1487.4
1 I fancy that this Rio de Behemo may be identical with the Rio Formoso, or river of Benin.
2 The Saints’ days are, St. Catherine, November 25, St. Thomas, December 21, St. Anthony, January 17.
3 King John received these fugitives on condition of their paying a ransom and departing the kingdom within a limited time, on pain of being made slaves.
4 Ruy de Pina, c. 29.
Insula Martini — Anno bom.
The Insula Martini of the Globe appears to have been named by Behaim in his own honour. It is undoubtedly identical with the Ilha do Anno bom. The omission of this island on Soligo’s “ Ginea Portugalexe,” 5 which was drawn immediately after the return of Cao from his first voyage in 1484, does not conclusively prove that the island had not been discovered at that time, for Duarte Pacheco Pereira, the author of the ‘ Esmeraldo de situ orbis,’ who wrote his work after 1505, and had access to all official documents, was equally ignorant of its exist¬ ence.6 The existence of the island cannot, indeed, have remained unknown for any length of time to vessels trading to the Gulf of Guinea, for it lies within the equatorial current, which carries a homeward-bound vessel at a rate of from 20 to 50 miles daily to the westward. Already Ruy de Sequeira, returning from the Cabo de S. Catharina, may thus have passed within sight of it, for it is visible for over forty miles, whilst traders bound homeward from Benin or Bonny, and desirous of avoiding the tedious struggle against the strong current flowing eastward along the Guinea coast, would try to make all the southing they could, and having passed Prince’s Island and St. Thome', would cross the Line, one or two degrees beyond which they would be carried westward by the equatorial current. By this route the passage from Bonny to Sierra Leone has been accomplished in less than three weeks, whilst vessels keeping near the coast have been as long as three months. This southern course may frequently have taken a vessel within sight of Anno bom, and as most of these vessels were traders and not royal ships, this may account for the ignorance of official historians. Indeed, I believe that the island was sighted or “ discovered ” repeatedly without much notice being taken of the fact. Valentin Ferdinand, on the authority of Gon^.alo Pirez, a Portuguese skipper, who had been engaged for years in the trade of S. Thome', states that Anno bom was discovered on January 1, 1501 in a caravel of Fernao de Mello, the captain donatory of that island, when it was found that seven years previously a fishing boat with three negroes in her, only one of whom was still alive, had been carried thither by the currents from the river Congo.7 This seems to have been the “ official ” discovery of the island, which has retained the name then bestowed upon it up to the present time, but it was not the “ first ” and real discovery, unless we reject the account
5 See p. 26.
6 As was also Waldseemiiller or Hylacomilus when he compiled his map of the world in 1507, and the modern maps which appeared in the Strassburg edition of Ptolemy in 1513. Waldseemiiller was born about 1470 at Radolfzell, studied at Freiburg, and is the author of two large maps of the world only recently discovered and published by J. Fischer and F. R. von Wieser (the oldest map of the world with the name America, Innsbruck, 1903). He died in 1521. See L. Gallois (‘ Americ Yespucci,’ 1900) and F. Albert (‘Zeitschrift f. Gesch. des Oberrheins.’ XY. 1901, p. 510).
7 ‘Bol. da Soc. de Geogr.,’ Lisbon, VI., 1900, p. 353.
29
of Behaim altogether, confirmed as it is by his Globe. Val. Ferdinand, in the MS. already frequently referred to, presents us with three rude maps of the island, each differing from the other to so great an extent that if it were not for the titles, or the place where these maps are found, they could not possibly be believed to refer to the same island. The first of these maps (numbered 1 in the accompanying Map 5) has already been published by Dr. S. Ruge ; 1 tracings of the two others 1 owe to the kindness of Dr. G. von Laubmann, the Director of the Munich Library, where the MSS. are kept.2 The first of these maps agrees, in its general features, with the delineation upon the Portuguese chart which Alberto Cantino caused to be designed at Lisbon for his patron, Hercules d’Este, in 1502. The second map bears the title “ Ilha diogo Cam,” which seems to show that Ferdinand, when he made that sketch, believed the island to have been discovered by Diogo Cao, or, at all events, to have been named in his honour. A third map of the 4 Ilho ano boo ’ has apparently been rejected by the author as untrust¬ worthy, for he has drawn three lines of deletion across it. The marked differences in these three outlines are equally observable in the few charts drawn up to 1502 and still available. And these differences not only extend to the outline of Annobom, but also to the latitude assigned to it, and of its bearings and distances from S. Thome and the Cabo de Lopo Go^alves.3
|
Behaim, 1492. |
Cantino, 1502. |
Canerio, c. 1502. |
Hamy’s Chart, c. 1502. |
Modern Charts. |
|
|
S. Thomd latitude . |
8° 0' S. |
0° 30' N. |
1° 30' S. |
© o O |
0° 12' N. |
|
Annobom latitude . |
12° 30' S. |
3° 0' S. |
5° 0' S. |
1° 25' S. |
1° 25' S. |
|
Distance from S.i Thome, miles/ |
270 |
162 |
170 |
90 |
100 |
|
S. Thome bears. |
N. 30° W. |
N. |
N. |
N. 15° E. |
N. 30° E. |
|
Cabo de Lopo Gon-t calves bears . . / |
E. 35° N. |
E. 40° N. |
E. 35° N. |
E. |
E. 12° N. ' |
|
Distance to Cabo de) Lopo Goncalves, > miles] |
320 |
175 |
180 |
150 |
136 |
These differences seem to justify the conclusion that the draftsmen or compilers of these early charts depicted the island from map sketches brought home by successive navigators, who sighted it from a distance, but did not think it worth while to examine it more closely, so as to enable them to depict the island as correctly as the other islands in the Gulf of Guinea had been depicted years before.4
1 ‘ 27. Jahresb. des Vereins fur Erdkunde zu Dresden,’ 1901.
2 Cod. Hisp. 27 ff., 339r and 343r and V.
3 For Cantino see pp. 26 and 27. Nicolas de Canerio was a Genoese. Facsimiles of his map of the world have been published by Gallois (‘ Bull. Soc. de Geogr.,’ Lyon, 1890) and G. A. Marcel, Keeper of the Cartogr. Collection of the Bibl. Nat. (‘ Reproduct, des Cartes et Globes,’ &c.). The chart, now the property of Prof. E. T. Hamy of the Musee d’Ethnogr., Paris, was bought at the sale of the library of the late Captain King, London. Facsimiles have been published by Dr. Hamy himself and in Nordenskiold’s ‘ Periplus.’
4 In proof of which see Map 5, insets.
Conclusion.
Having thus dealt at considerable length with the history of discovery and early cartography of Western Africa I shall endeavour to summarise the results in as far as they throw light upon the voyage which Behaim asserts he made in company with Diogo Cao.
We may dismiss without hesitation Behaim’s assertion that he was appointed 44 Captain ” of one of the vessels which sailed in that expedition. Such a command would not have been given to a foreign merchant only recently arrived in Portugal, and absolutely ignorant of naval affairs. He might, however, have been permitted to embark as a 44 volunteer ” or as a trader. If he accom¬ panied Cao as 44 cosmographer,” as is asserted by several of his biographers but nowhere claimed by himself, the results must have been exceedingly disappointing if we are to look upon the delineation of the west coast of Africa on his Globe as the outcome of his labours.
There is moreover the evidence of the 44 inscribed rocks ” only recently discovered on the Congo (see p. 22). These prove conclusively that Behaim played no leading part in Cao’s second expedition, and that if he accom¬ panied it at all it must have been in a very humble capacity.
Behaim tells us that Cao and himself left Portugal in 1484, and returned after an absence of 16, 19 or 26 months. As Behaim only arrived in Portugal in June 1484 at the earliest, he cannot be supposed to have started before July. His return, consequently, would have taken place in October 1485, January or August 1486. What then becomes of the knighthood conferred upon him on “Friday, February 2, 1485,” or of the deed of partnership signed at Lisbon on July 12, 1486 by F. Dulmo, the captain of Terceira, and Joao de Estreito of Madeira, anent an expedition in search of the island of the Sete Cidades which was to have been joined by a 44 cavalleiro alemao,” whom Ernesto do Canto,5 a very competent judge, identifies with Martin Behaim, he being the only German at that time in Portugal to whom this description would apply ?
As a matter of fact, if we accept the dates given, Behaim cannot possibly have taken part in the second voyage of discovery commanded by Diogo Cao. That famous navigator, having returned from his first voyage, was at Lisbon in April 1484. He only started on his second voyage of discovery after June 1485, — perhaps as late as September. Are we to suppose that during the interval between his two voyages of discovery, say between June 1484 and August 1485, Cao paid another visit to the Congo, perhaps for the purpose of taking back the hostages whom he had carried off* in 1483 ? There exists no record of such a voyage, and Behaim’s own account and his Globe distinctly point to a voyage extending far beyond the point reached by Cao in the course of his first
5 ‘Arch, dos A9ores,’ I., p. 341, IV., pp. 440, 443.
30
voyage. Of course, Behaim may have made a mistake in his dates, and if instead of 1484-5 we read 1485-6 he may indeed have accompanied Cao in his memorable second voyage. But here again Behaim’s own statements render this most unlikely. Cao, being bound on a voyage of discovery, would naturally have made haste to reach the Congo. He certainly would not have delayed in the Gambia to get rid of his horses and their costly harness, or wasted time in tedious barter with Jalof and Sin. Neither is it likely that many of Cao s men died owing to the heat, which may well have happened to an expedition which stayed for some time in the Gulf of Guinea. Indeed, it was the great mortality among the Portuguese who were sent to Benin in 1486 which caused a factory occupied by them in that kingdom to be abandoned soon afterwards.1
Lastly there is the Guinea pepper, brought home in proof of the discoveries that had been made. In fine, all that Behaim tells us might have happened in connexion with a trading voyage, such as that of Joao Affonso d’Aveiro. If that Captain sailed in 1484 and Behaim joined his ship at the end of June or in the beginning of July, soon after his arrival in Portugal, he might have been back in Lisbon after an absence of seven months, in time to be knighted by the King in February 18, 1485. A voyage to Benin and back would have occupied about four months, and there remained thus three months available for trading on the Gambia and elsewhere. Proceeding twelve leagues up the Rio Formoso, which according to D. Pacheco Pereira was navigable only for vessels of fifty tons burthen,2 J. A. d’Aveiro reached Gato, the deadly climate of which carried off not only the leader himself but also many of his companions.3 Having taken on board the ambassador of the King of Benin and a cargo of pimenta de rabo, the expedition left for Portugal. On the homeward route, when making for the serviceable equatorial current, the Insula Martini of the Globe was sighted. Lisbon was reached after an absence of only seven or eight months, and Behaim, in recognition of the services he had rendered, was knighted on February 18, 1485. But if we suppose d’Aveiro to have started only in
1 De Barros, ‘ Asia,’ F. I., p. I., p. 179.
2 D. Pacheco Pereira, ‘ Esmeraldo,’ p. 72, had visited Gato four times, but refers neither to the factory established there nor to J. d’Aveiro.
3 I agree with J. Codine (‘ Bull, de la Soc. de Geographie,’ Paris, 1869, II., and 1876, I.) that d’Aveiro died during the first voyage to Gato and not in the course of a second expedition after a factory had been established at the place. I cannot, however, accept the remainder of his speculations concerning the expeditions of Cao and d’Aveiro. He assumes both navigators to have started in October, 1484, both bound for south¬ western Africa. He credits Cao with having set up three padroes : the first on the Congo in 1485, the second (that of S. Agostinho, in 13° 23' S.) on August 15, 1486, the third at Cape Cross. J. A. d’Aveiro, who was accompanied by Behaim, is supposed to have set up two padroes, viz., one on Monte Negro in 15° 40' S., on January 12, 1485, as stated on the Globe, the second at Cape Frio, which he identifies with San Bartholemeu Viego, in August, 1485. Benin was visited on the homeward voyage, and the vessel returned to Lisbon in May, 1486. The death of d’Aveiro enabled Behaim to claim credit for an expedition in which he only held a sub¬
ordinate position. Cao came back to Lisbon in April, 1486.
1485, immediately after this honour had been conferred upon Behaim, sixteen months might have been expended upon this voyage, and yet he would have been back in Lisbon in July 1486, in time to accede to the agreement about a proposed search for the island of the Sete cidades.
Having given this subject the most careful considera¬ tion, it is my belief that Behaim was not a member of Cao’s expedition, but that he may have made, and probably did make, a voyage to Guinea, and that he probably did so on board the vessel of Joao Affonso d’Aveiro. The Globe with its legends and the account of his voyage given to the editor of the ‘ Chronicle ’ were calculated to convey an idea that the expedition which he had joined was the first to cross the line into “ another world,” and ultimately doubled the southern cape of Africa. In Portugal, where the facts were known, he would not have dared to put forth such claims or such an incorrect delineation of the west coast of Africa. It was easy, however, to deceive the worthy burghers of his native town, who knew little or nothing about the maritime enterprise of the Portuguese, and looked upon their townsman as a great traveller, as indeed he was, and a successful discoverer, which he was not.
VIII. BEHAIM’S KNIGHTHOOD, 1485.
We learn from a memorandum in the archives of the Behaim family, that Martin Behaim was knighted on Friday, February 18, 1485. It is not in Behaim’s hand¬ writing, but is evidently based upon information furnished by him, and reads as follows : — 4
1485 adj 18 Febrer auf einen Freitag jn Portugal jn der Jladt albaffauas ( Alcagovas ) jn sandt falvators kirchen nach der tag mes wartt ritter ge/chlagen M. B. von Nurmberg von der Hand des Grofs- meclitigen Konig Hern Johann/e des andern von Portigal, vnnd Konig von algarbia vnnd Konig in affrica vnd Konig in Genea, unnd fein totten darzu was des Konig felb der jm vmbgiirtett fein fwertt vnd der Herzog von begia der ander dot der im vmbiirtet den redden fporn, vnnd der drit dode der graue criftoffel de nxelo des conidcs vetter gurtot jm den linken fporn , vnnd der virt dott was der Graff Fernando Martins Mafkarinis ( Mascarenhas ) der den ritter den renhut aufffezett vnnd jn wapet vnnd der Konig der jn ritter fchlug dis gefdiadi jn beibefen aider furfl vnnd ritterfdiaft vnnd der Kongin.
1485, on Friday the 18 of February, M. B. of Niirnberg was knighted in the Church of the Saviour at Alca^ovas in Portugal, after the morning mass, by the hand of the most potent King John II. of Portugal, King of Algarve, King in Africa and King in Guinea. And his sponsors were the King himself, who girth on his sword, and the second sponsor was the Duke of Beja, who girth on his right spur, and the third the grey Cristopher de Mello, the King’s cousin, who girth on his left spur, and the fourth sponsor was Count Fernando Martins Mascarenhas, who put on his morion (helm) and armed him, and the King who dubbed him Knight. This was done in the presence of all the Princes and Knights, and of the Queen.
4 First published by Doppelmayr, ‘ Histor. Nachrichten von den Niirnberg. Mathematicis u. Kiinstlern,’ Niirnberg, 1730, p. 30. Murr, p. 130, published a more correct version.
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Sr. Sebastiao Francisco de Mendo Trigozo, who, strange to say, failed to identify the persons named in this memorandum, would have us reject this account altogether as quite improbable (de todo inverisimil). In this we agree with him if it were intended to describe the recep¬ tion of a Cavalleiro into the famous and powerful order of Christ,1 as is assumed by Murr, Ghillany and Gunther. Behaim himself certainly laid no claim to that distinction : had he done so, the habit and badge of the Order — a golden cross with red enamel — would most certainly have been shown conspicuously in his family portrait. (See Frontis¬ piece.) Moreover, in 1485 the Knights of the Order were still bound by the monastic vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. It was only after the accession of King Manuel, in 1495, that the Cavalleiros of the Order were permitted to marry.2 Yet Behaim married a short time afterwards, and it will surely not be contended that he was in a position to obtain a Papal dispensation for doing such an unlawful thing.
The German historians mentioned above fully accept the Knighting of Behaim, but they object to the date given, viz., February 18, 1485— as only a month before, according to a legend on his Globe, he was still far away in Africa at Cabo negro, and it would have been utterly impossible for him to be back in Europe for the ceremony described. It must, however, be pointed out that in the date given above, day, month and year are concordant, that not until 1491 does the 18th of February again fall on a Friday, and that Behaim had already claimed the title of a Knight when he turned up at Nuremberg in 1490. Under these circumstances we must either reject the date on the Globe or that of the above memorandum. I do not hesitate to do the former.
The circumstances described in the above memoran¬ dum bear in every respect the impress of truth. The King, with the whole of his household, is known to have left Montemor o novo (on account of the plague) for Beja in January, 1485. His route led him through the ancient town of Alca^ovas, where there was a small castle, built by D. Diniz, in 1290, to which was attached a chapel dedicated to the Saviour, the ruins of which still exist. The ceremony described may fairly be supposed to have taken place within this building.
The Duke of Beja, raised to that dignity in 1484, is best known to history as King Manuel the Fortunate.
The Mellos of the house of the Counts of Oliveira might certainly claim to be “ cousins ” of the King. Martin Affonso de Mello, guarda mor or chief esquire of John I., was able to trace his pedigree back to a son of King Affonso III. ( 1248-1 279 ).3 Other Royal connec¬ tions are mentioned in the Dedication to Joao de Mello
1 ‘ Definhjoes e Estatutos dos Cavalleiros e Freires da Ordem de N.S. Jesu Cristo.’ Lisbon, 1628.
2 Goes, ‘Chron. de D. Manuel’ (Lisbon, 1566), I., c. 17.
3 Antonio Caetano de Sousa, ‘ Historia genealogica da Casa Real portugueza,’ III., 1737, p. 415.
of a reprint of Resende’s ‘ Chronica del Rey Dom Joam II.’ published at Lisbon in 1752.
Quite recently, in 1479, D. Alvaro, Count of Tetugal, a brother of D. Ferdinand II., Duke of Bragar^a, and de¬ scended from D. Affonso, the bastard son of King John I., had married D. Filippe, the daughter of Rodrigo de Mello, Count of Oliven^a.4 And not only were the Mellos distantly related to King John II., they were also held in high favour and employed in honourable offices. Gomes Soares de Mello, a brother of the Count of Oliver^a, was a Councillor (Cavalleiro do Conselho) of the King, in 1484 ; Manuel de Mello held the post of chief groom of the chamber (Reposteiro mor), whilst Christo vao de Mello was one of the 111 Cavalleiros fidalgos of the King’s household in the year named.5 Christovao, who was governor (alcaide mor) of Evora, was killed in a skirmish outside Ceuta, in 1488.6 7
D. Fernao Martins Mascarenhas commanded the King’s Bodyguard (Ginetes) in 1484, 7 and certainly was with the King at that time. In 1488 he commanded a fleet which was sent to Africa (Morocco), and in 1495 he stood by the King’s death-bed.8
When it is asked what had Behaim done to render himself deserving of the distinction of a knighthood, we are referred to his supposed services as an astronomer and cosmographer. These I have already fully considered, and suggested that if Behaim accompanied one of the expedi¬ tions to Guinea such a reward might have been appro¬ priately bestowed upon him. Failing this, it is possible that Behaim may have been engaged in one of the numerous skirmishes which took place at Ceuta and else¬ where in Africa, for the inscription on the memorial chandelier at Nuremberg tells us that he “ stoutly fought the African Moors.”9
It is, however, quite possible that he owed his knight¬ hood to personal influence. He belonged to an old Patrician family of the famous Imperial city of Nurem¬ berg, and these Patricians, or Geschlechter, not only claimed to be of noble birth, but were certainly superior in wealth,
4 A. Braancamp Freire, ‘ Livro dos brasoes da Sala de Cintra,’ 1901, I., p. 210. D. Beatriz de Vilhena, their daughter, married in 1500 D. Jorge, the illegitimate son of John II.
5 See A. Caetano de Sousa, £ Provas da historia genealogica,’ II., 1742, pp. 176-181, where are given the names of all persons holding position in the King’s household in 1484. A D. Fernao de Mello, who is described as a cousin of the King (Paiva Manso, ‘ Hist, do Congo,’ p.