National and Regional Mapping in France to About 1650 Monique Pelletier
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48 • National and Regional Mapping in France to About 1650 Monique Pelletier National Mapmaking from Oronce Fine and in Italy, which were curbed by the 1559 treaty of to Guillaume Postel (1525–1570): Fine, Cateau-Cambrésis but persisted in the dreams of Cather- Jolivet, Nicolay, and Postel ine de’ Medici and her children. (For a reference map of France, covering all of the chapters in this section, see French nationalist understandings of geography were fig. 48.1.) stimulated by the Renaissance translation of Caesar’s La The maps of Fine, Jolivet, and Postel were graduated in guerre des Gaules by Robert Gaguin in 1485.1 When both latitude and longitude, unlike the modern maps in- Gaguin wrote in Latin, he used the terms “Gallia” and cluded in editions of Ptolemy’s Geography. These na- “Francia” or “Gallus” and “Francus” interchangeably, tional maps used trapezoidal projections and varied as because for him there was continuity between Gaul and much in latitude as in longitude. Only Fine’s map retained the France of his epoch.2 Working with the conviction the divisions of climate and day lengths that were found that France “succeeded” Gaul, the French geographers on the maps of Ptolemaic origin. Fine was equally atten- based their studies on the “division introduced by the tive to the historical meaning of the map, leading him to Emperor Augustus and followed by the most skilled geog- give both ancient and modern place-names, in keeping raphers of the antiquity.” 3 In their new maps, Gaul- with the historical awareness of the Renaissance that France was described in a language more sensitive to ad- glorified Gaul as “a country with the best boundaries un- ministrative entities than to topographic realism. der the heavens” 4 and discrediting the medieval dissolu- The early maps of France were the modern maps that tion of the empire of Louis the Pious. complemented Ptolemy’s Geography (e.g., the map of Frantia in the edition of Ulm of 1482, the Gallia novella oronce fine (1494 –1555) of Francesco Berlinghieri published in Florence in 1482, or the Moderna tabula Galliae of the Strasbourg edition of Historical records indicate that Fine’s Nova totivs Galliae 1513). Based on a Gallia bounded by the Rhine, Alps, and descriptio was first published in Paris in 1525 by Simon Pyrenees, which greatly exceeded the boundaries of Re- de Colines, printer and bookseller of the University of naissance France, such maps offered new geographic out- Paris, and that its final edition was published in 1557 by lines and substituted the new names of provinces for the Alain de Mathonière, a printseller who became a book- ancient divisions of Gaul. They were based on coastlines seller in 1565.5 However, neither of these editions was that derived from nautical charts and augured the start of preserved. The surviving examples, at a scale of approxi- the national production of general maps of the country. Three major cartographic documents emerged from 1. Daniel Nordman, Frontières de France: De l’espace au territoire, e e new national mapping efforts in the sixteenth century: the XVI –XIX siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1998), 46 – 47. On the maps of France of the sixteenth century, see Mireille Pastoureau, “Entre Gaule map of Oronce Fine, which was initially published in et France, la ‘Gallia,’” in Gérard Mercator cosmographe: Le temps et 1525; Jean Jolivet’s work based on Fine’s model, pub- l’espace, ed. Marcel Watelet (Antwerp: Fonds Mercator Paribas, 1994), lished in 1560; and the map of Guillaume Postel of 1570. 316 –33, and Monique Pelletier, “La cartographie de la France aux XVe The aborted efforts of Nicolas de Nicolay must be added et XVIe siècles: Entre passé, présent et futur,” Le Monde des Cartes 182 to these accomplishments, although they resulted in the (2004): 7–22. 2. Nordman, Frontières de France, 48. mapping of only two provinces. 3. Philippe Labbe, La géographie royalle . (Paris: M. Henault, The geographic coverage of these three national maps 1646), VIII. This publication was dedicated to Louis XIV. differs from that of Ptolemaic maps. The French maps ex- 4. André Thevet, La cosmographie vniverselle, 2 vols. (Paris: Chez tend to northern Italy, including Venice, the Adriatic, and Pierre L’Huillier, 1575), vol. 2, fol. 506v. even Rome; they cover with cartouches “la Grande Alle- 5. François Grudé, sieur de La Croix du Maine and Antoine Du Verdier, Les bibliothèques françoises, 6 vols. (1772–73; reprinted Graz: maigne” (Great Germany), which is only detailed on Jo- Akademische Druck, 1969), 2:213. The first volume of Les biblio- livet’s map. Their extended scope partly reflects the am- thèques françoises appeared in 1584; the work was reissued in the eigh- bitions of the kings of France to claim territory in the Alps teenth century in six volumes. Simon de Colines also issued Jean Fenel’s 1480 National and Regional Mapping in France to About 1650 1481 BRABANT Calais FLANDERS Ardres G u Saint-Omer î R n Arques e h s Blendecques Tournai i n e ARTOIS Douai HAINAUT E L H A N N C S om S H m Longchamps L I e Péronne N G Rocroi E Dieppe Amiens PICARDY Cotentin Peninsula Serre LUXEMBOURG e Ois Le Havre Rouen Beauvais Î Reims Honfleur L Vesle PALATINATE E Crépy-en-Valois Caen Pont-Audemer - Se D Nanteuil-le-Haudouin Verdun ine E Metz Suresnes - NORMANDY F R CHAMPAGNE e A LORRAINE i Paris N C V E Bar-le-Duc Barenton Strasbourg Nancy Fontainebleau Toul Brest E C Le Rennes MAINE A Conquet BRITTANY Le Mans S Orléans Langres L Messac A Auxerre La Fléche ORLÉANAIS Redon Blois Semur-en-Auxois e Angers in Tours BLAISOIS Dijon Rhine Vila e Plombières-lès-Dijon Montbéliard ir Amboise e o T Romorantin h L c u FRANCHE- O Loches Bourges O Nantes ANJOU U COMTÉ R BURGUNDY A BERRY B I N O E U R Bresse POITOU B Moulins e O n VENDÉE N ô a Luçon N S A hône I S Mâcon R Pertuis Breton BRESSE La Rochelle Beaujolais Clermont-Ferrand L YON NAIS SAVOY Limoges Rochefort L I BAY OF BISCAY BROUAGE M LIMAGNE Lyon Yenne S O e U ir D o S L A Turin SAINTONGE I N U P Grenoble H P PIEDMONT Sarlat-la-Canéda I N Romans É AUVERGNE 0 25 50 100 miles Valence Montgenévre Bordeaux QUERCY Ga L Sampeyre r 0 25 50 100 kilometers onn Cahors Embrun e e Casteldefino n S ô E h Serres GUYENNE R D N A G Rodez Sisteron A LANGUEDOC A L S Avignon Aire C au O Montpellier Arles PROVENCE P G Toulouse N Aix Bayonne E Castelnaudary Saint-Jean-de-Luz Agde Marseilles E R E N R Narbonne Toulon R Y E R Bagnères O P E U A -de-Bigorre S V S S I A Vignemale L Cirque de Gavarnie L S E A N O N N N E A R A E R I T E D CATALONIA M fig. 48.1. REFERENCE MAP OF FRANCE, CA. 1610. mately 1:1,750,000, are intermediate printings likely is- Ioannis Fernelii Ambianatis Cosmotheoria, libros duos complexa in sued from the four woodblocks cut for the original edi- 1528, a book in which Fernel provided a list of coordinates based on tion. Dated 1538, 1546, and 1554, they were published the meridian of Paris (fol. 43v). Fernel determined latitudes similar to by Jérôme de Gourmont, a member of the famous family those established by Fine, but his longitudes were significantly different. of Parisian booksellers and printers that seemed to spe- 6. The surviving examples of these editions are: 1538, Öffentliche 6 Bibliothek der Universität, Basel (reproduced by Lucien Gallois, De cialize in map publishing. Orontio Finæo gallico geographo [Paris: E. Leroux, 1890]); 1546, Uni- The map was presented by its author as a basic mapping versiteitsbibliotheek Leiden; and 1554, BNF, Cartes et Plans, Rés. Ge of the country; the cartouche, in part, reads: “our chief in- B 1475. On the Gourmont family, see Robert W. Karrow, Mapmakers 1482 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping fig. 48.2. ORONCE FINE, NOVA TOTIVS GALLIAE DE- in Paris by Jérôme de Gourmont. Sole example. SCRIPTIO, 1553. Fourth edition of Fine’s map (third pre- Size of the original: 69 ϫ 94.5 cm. Photograph courtesy of the served), made in four sheets and engraved in wood. Published BNF (Cartes et Plans, Rés. Ge B 1475). tention was to reduce all of Gaul in order to meet the de- ordinates of different points of the world on the basis of mands of several good men, and to establish and revise the observations or evaluations. His work was distinct from latitudes, longitudes, and situation of main places, coasts, surveyors’ work, which only measured short distances. rivers, and the most notable mountains, so that this map Fine proposed to use a modified astrolabe joined to a can be amplified and corrected at pleasure in the future” (fig. 48.2). Fine concentrated on Transalpine Gaul as op- of the Sixteenth Century and Their Maps: Bio-Bibliographies of the posed to Cisalpine Gaul situated outside the border of the Cartographers of Abraham Ortelius, 1570 (Chicago: For the Newberry Library by Speculum Orbis Press, 1993), 364, and pp. 1574 –75 in this Alps. The image of Gaul as France was kept distinct from volume. the various Roman “Gauls,” which the author refers to by 7. For Fine’s biography, see p. 1464 in this volume. A bibliography the toponyms “Gallia belgica,” “Celtica,” “Narbonen- of Fine’s maps of France is given by Karrow, Mapmakers of the Six- sis,” and “Cisalpina.” teenth Century, 176 –77, and by Denise Hillard and Emmanuel Poulle, Fine’s cartographic achievements, based on the compi- “Oronce Fine et l’horloge planétaire de la Bibliothèque Sainte- Geneviève,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance: Travaux et lation of coordinates exemplified by Ptolemy’s Geogra- Documents 33 (1971): 311–51.