Land Surveys, Instruments, and Practitioners in the Renaissance Uta Lindgren
19 • Land Surveys, Instruments, and Practitioners in the Renaissance Uta Lindgren Introduction: The Situation in 1450 for the use of merchants (arithmetic), for architects and the building industry (geometry), and for navigators (as- In the period around 1450 there were neither models nor tronomy). The demand for these practical manuals came methods for the complete cartographic depiction of the from various sources: rich citizens and rich churchmen in landscape. Scholars who lived in southern German mon- growing towns such as Florence, Cologne, London, Paris, asteries and at the University of Vienna during the first and Brugge; merchants; and also sovereigns, who hoped half of the fifteenth century were involved in intensive to use them to secure seafaring. These groups of people work on Ptolemy’s Geography, especially the calculating wanted to embellish their towns with great church build- and collecting of coordinates.1 The scholars’ diverse ac- ings and teach their sons the known calculation methods tivities, methods, and instruments were highlighted in useful for the exchange of merchandise and the art of two astonishing Munich codices by Fridericus.2 But one navigation. cannot produce a large-scale map using coordinates Another impetus for the increase of such knowledge alone. Even though the maps of the Geography came to was strong in all social ranks: the desire to know the fu- fascinate the humanists, they were disappointed when ture by means of astrology. Horoscopes required a good they could find neither their place of birth nor their sur- knowledge of the star constellations and the exact time rounding areas on the maps of ancient Germany.
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