Portuguese Cartography in the Renaissance Maria Fernanda Alegria, Suzanne Daveau, João Carlos Garcia, and Francesc Relaño
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38 • Portuguese Cartography in the Renaissance Maria Fernanda Alegria, Suzanne Daveau, João Carlos Garcia, and Francesc Relaño Introduction the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth and the most comprehensive guide to any country’s cartographic The study of Portuguese cartography has focused in large resources in the Renaissance. After dominating the histo- part on Portugal’s contribution to nautical charting, as- riography of Portuguese cartography for forty years, tronomical navigation at sea, and mapping in support of some of its interpretations are now being modified, but it its vast overseas expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth still forms the starting point for any detailed work on the centuries. The factors contributing to Portugal’s impor- subject, and its influence is clearly seen throughout this tance in those activities during that period are complex.1 chapter.4 Portugal’s geographical position as the westernmost part of continental Europe facing the North Atlantic, for ex- Abbreviations used in this chapter include: Bartolomeu Dias for Con- ample, cannot account entirely for its success. Other gresso Internacional Bartolomeu Dias e a sua Época: Actas, 5 vols. countries had more and better harbors and a larger pro- (Porto: Universidade do Porto, CNCDP, 1989); IAN/TT for Instituto portion of their population engaged in the sea. But Por- dos Arquivos Nacionais / Torre do Tombo, Lisbon; PMC for Armando tugal’s political unity from the thirteenth century; the sup- Cortesão and A. Teixeira da Mota, Portugaliae monumenta carto- port it received from a series of Papal bulls that gave it a graphica, 6 vols. (Lisbon, 1960; reprint, with an introduction and sup- plement by Alfredo Pinheiro Marques, Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional– monopoly in discovery, conquest, and commerce, as well Casa da Moeda, 1987); and Publicações for Publicações (Congresso do as gold and slaves from West Africa to pay for these ac- Mundo Português), 19 vols. (Lisbon: Comissão Executiva dos Cen- tivities; and the technical knowledge of winds and cur- tenários, 1940 – 42). rents in the Atlantic, ship design, chartmaking, and navi- 1. C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825 (New gation all contributed to Portugal’s importance in world York: Knopf, 1969), 13–14. 2. PMC; there is a geographical index of the work: João Vidago, trade by the first half of the sixteenth century. “Portugalia monumenta cartographica: Sinopse do conteúdo geográfico The prestige of Portugal’s chartmaking activity has das estampas,” Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa 90 (1972): overshadowed the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth- 197–228. century terrestrial mapping by the Portuguese, both do- 3. With an introduction by Alfredo Pinheiro Marques and the addi- mestically and overseas. In the literature, “nautical” charts tion of a few supplemental descriptions. 4. The study of Portuguese cartography, particularly for the eigh- often included the surveys and regional and urban maps teenth century to the twentieth, is hampered by the paucity of invento- made in the Portuguese territories overseas. Not many ries of cartographic material in Portuguese archives and libraries. Rare terrestrial maps of Portugal from this period have sur- examples include “Catálogo das cartas [do Arquivo Histórico Militar],” vived, and most of the few studies of these have been Boletim do Arquivo Histórico Militar 43 (1974): 145–320; H. Gabriel more interested in searching for technical innovations in Mendes, Catálogo de cartas antigas da Mapoteca do Instituto Ge- ográfico e Cadastral (Lisbon: Instituto Geográfico e Cadastral, 1969); Portuguese surveying than in explaining the maps’ roles and A Nova Lusitania: Imagens cartográficas do Brasil nas colecções da as cultural and political documents. Biblioteca Nacional (1700 –1822): Catálogo (Lisbon: CNCDP, 2001). The relative importance of nautical maps is reflected in On the existence of old globes, see António Estácio dos Reis, “Old the magisterial six-volume Portugaliae monumenta car- Globes in Portugal,” Boletim da Biblioteca da Universidade de Coim- tographica (PMC) by Armando Cortesão and A. Teixeira bra 42 (1994): 281–98. Even in the case of the main institutions, it is necessary to resort to manual files, to photocopied volumes with re- da Mota, published in 1960 on the occasion of the five stricted distribution, or, more recently, to computerized databases, such hundredth anniversary of the death of Prince Henry “the as the Base Nacional de Dados Bibliográficos (PORBASE), which com- Navigator” (Infante Dom Henrique).2 Its copious de- prises the Catálogo Colectivo das Bibliotecas Portuguesas, coordinated scriptions, with particular attention to the dating and by the Biblioteca Nacional. It contains all the cartographic records, content of these maps in the context of the Portuguese ge- computerized and updated by the project’s member institutions, and is accessible on the Internet at <http://www.porbase.org/>. Maps are ographical discoveries, are accompanied by large-format rarely separated out in the general inventories, such as A. Ayres de Car- illustrations. It was reprinted in a reduced format in valho, Catálogo da colecção de desenhos (Lisbon: Biblioteca Nacional, 1987.3 It is the primary source for Portuguese maps from 1977); João d’Almeida Allen, Catálogo de geographia da Bibliotheca 975 976 State Contexts of Renaissance Mapping PMC is part of a long history of organizing publica- research centers (Studia and Finisterra), and in journals of tions, exhibits, and symposia around anniversaries of public or private institutions (Cartografia e Cadastro, Re- events important to Portuguese cartographic and explo- vista Militar, Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lis- ration history. The first large and exclusively cartographic boa, Mare Liberum, and Oceanos). The most important exhibit was organized in 1903 by the Sociedade de Ge- groups of cartographic publications are the series Sepa- ografia de Lisboa and coordinated by Admiral Ernesto de ratas and Memórias of the Centro de Estudos de Car- Vasconcellos, who had been a hydrographer in the Por- tografia Antiga (today the Centro de Estudos de História tuguese navy. Its catalog is still an important reference.5 e Cartografia Antiga) of the Instituto de Investigação In 1940, a double centenary was celebrated (the eight Científica Tropical. There have been about 250 Separatas hundredth anniversary of Portuguese independence and since 1961 and more than two dozen Memórias since the three hundredth anniversary of the restoration of in- 1963. The Centro de Estudos has functioned with two dependence) with several academic symposia and an im- sections, one in Lisbon and another in Coimbra, directed portant cartographic exhibit organized by A. Fontoura da Costa, a historian of nautical science.6 In 1983, during Pública Municipal do Porto (Porto: Imprensa Civilisação, 1895); and the XVII Exposição Europeia de Arte, Ciência e Cultura, Magalhães Basto, Catálogo dos manuscritos ultramarinos da Biblioteca in Lisbon, various exhibits on Portuguese cultural her- Pública Municipal do Pôrto, 2 ed. (Porto: Edições Comemorativas dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1988). itage were presented to the public. Early cartography was The only autonomous cartographic department in Portuguese present in the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (in Belém, Lisbon), archives and libraries is that of the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon. At the in the exhibit coordinated by Teixeira da Mota and Luís other institutions, the manuscript or printed maps can be consulted in de Albuquerque.7 Between 1988 and 2001, various ev- the reserve collections; that is the case at the Arquivo Histórico Militar, ents were organized by the Comissão Nacional para the Centro de Estudos de História e Cartografia Antiga, the Instituto Geográfico Nacional, the Museu de Marinha, the Academia das Ciên- as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses cias de Lisboa, the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, the Biblioteca da (CNCDP) to mark key occurrences in Portuguese discov- Ajuda, the Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto, the Biblioteca Geral ery, particularly the voyages of Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco da Universidade de Coimbra, and the Biblioteca Pública de Évora. da Gama, and Pedro Álvares Cabral. In 1994, as part of For an assessment of the situation in the main Portuguese cartographic the commemorations of the sixth centenary of the birth collections, see Maria Joaquina Esteves Feijão, “O acesso aos documen- tos cartográficos em bibliotecas e arquivos portugueses,” in El docu- of Prince Henry, the first exhibit that exclusively con- mento cartográfico como fuente de información (Huelva: Diputación cerned printed cartographic images of Portugal and of the Provincial de Huelva, 1995), 153–78, and Maria Helena Dias, “As archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira (from the six- mapotecas portuguesas e a divulgação do património cartográfico na- teenth and seventeenth centuries) was organized by the cional: Algumas reflexões,” Cartografia e Cadastro 5 (1996): 43–50. Arquivo Histórico Municipal do Porto.8 In 1997, as part 5. Ernesto J. de C. e Vasconcellos, ed., Exposição de cartographia na- cional (1903–1904): Catálogo (Lisbon: Sociedade de Geographia de of the Seventeenth International Conference on the His- Lisboa, 1904). tory of Cartography, six exhibits of early cartography 6. A. Fontoura da Costa, “Catálogo da Exposição de Cartografia,” were organized in Lisbon and Évora, and their respective in Publicações, 4:387– 459. catalogs were published by the CNCDP.9 In the following