Florence, Constantinople, and the Renaissance of Geography
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printing a mediterranean world Florence, Constantinople, and the Renaissance of Geography Sean Roberts i tatti studies in italian renaissance history Sponsored by Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Florence, Italy Printing a Mediterranean World Florence, Constantinople, and the Renaissance of Geography Sean Roberts harvard university press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2013 Copyright © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roberts, Sean E. Printing a Mediterranean world : Florence, Constantinople, and the renaissance of geography / Sean Roberts. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-06648-9 1. Berlinghieri, Francesco, 1440-1501. Geographia. 2. Ptolemy, 2nd cent. Geographia. 3. Europe—Maps—Early works to 1800. 4. Cartography—Italy—Florence— History—15th century. 5. Cartography—Turkey—Istanbul—History—15th century. 6. Turkey—History—Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918. I. Title. G10051482 .B5 2013 526.09409'024—dc23 2012015050 For Theresa Davidson Contents List of Illustrations ix Introduction: Gifts from Afar 1 1 Ptolemy in Transit 15 2 The Rebirth of Geography 45 3 Making Books, Forging Communities 89 4 Printing Tolerance and Intolerance 133 Conclusion: Resurrection and Necromancy 171 Notes 185 Acknowledgments 275 Index 281 Illustrations (FOLLOWING PAGE 132) figure 1 World Map Engraving on Copper From Francesco Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 2 World Map Paint on Vellum From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 3 World Map Hand-Colored Engraving on Copper From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) x illustrations figure 4 Incipit of Book One Paint on Printed Page From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 5 Incipit of Book One Paint on Vellum From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 6 Incipit of Book One (detail) From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 7 Incipit of Book One (second detail) From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 8 Incipit of Book One (third detail) From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 9 Ninth Map of Europe (detail) Paint on Vellum From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 10 Map of Modern France (detail) Paint on Vellum From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) illustrations xi figure 11 Seventh Map of Asia From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 12 Ptolemy Justus of Ghent Oil on Panel, c.1480 figure 13 Incipit of Book One (detail) Paint on Vellum From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 14 Incipit of Book One Paint on Printed Page From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 15 Ninth Map of Europe (detail) Engraving on Copper From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 16 Map of the Holy Land (detail) Engraving on Copper From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 17 Map of Modern Italy Engraving on Copper From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) xii illustrations figure 18 Map of Modern Spain Hand-Colored Engraving on Copper From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 19 Incipit of Book One (detail) Paint on Printed Page From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 20 Map of the Holy Land Hand-Colored Engraving on Copper From Berlinghieri, Geographia (Florence, 1482) figure 21 Anonymous Battle of Zonchio Hand-Colored Woodcut Early Sixteenth Century figure 22 Cem Prays at the Tomb of the Prophet Woodcut From Caoursin, Description of the Siege of Rhodes (Ulm, 1496) figure 23 Death of Mehmed II Woodcut From Caoursin, Description of the Siege of Rhodes (Ulm, 1496) illustrations xiii figure 24 Cem and Bayezid Engage in Battle Woodcut From Caoursin, Description of the Siege of Rhodes (Ulm, 1496) figure 25 Antonio Pollaiuolo Battle of Nude Men Copperplate Engraving c. 1470 printing a mediterranean world Introduction: Gifts From Afar In the winter of 1483 an apparently unexpected gift arrived in Constantinople at the court of Sultan Bayezid II, son of Mehmed the Conqueror.1 A Floren- tine merchant and occasional diplomatic envoy, Paolo da Colle, conveyed a printed Italian book of maps and world description to the Ottoman capital. The following spring, Paolo arrived in the Savoy lands with another copy of the same geographical text, bearing a letter of donation to Bayezid’s half- brother Cem.2 Having fled Ottoman territory after an unsuccessful bid for the throne, the young prince Cem had sought refuge and military aid along the eastern Mediterranean coast. Stopping first at the court of Qait Bey, the Mamluk Sultan in Cairo, and on to Cilicia from there, Cem was driven finally to seek help from the knights of Saint John on Rhodes, the Hospi- tallers. Eventually the prince found himself transported to Europe in the safekeeping, or, more accurately captivity, of the knights.3 The book, which Paolo brought to these Ottoman princes, was the Septe giornate della geographia—The Seven Days of Geography penned by the Floren- tine humanist and statesman Francesco Berlinghieri and printed in 1482.4 Bound between the book’s covers were over one hundred folio leaves describing the world in Italian verse, following the order of the Greek geographer 2 printing a mediterranean world Claudius Ptolemy’s second- century Geography.5 Berlinghieri’s poem was divided into the seven books or days of its title, framed as the author’s week- long odyssey across the known world. While Berlinghieri’s was not the first attempt to modernize Ptolemy’s description and cartographic methodology in the vernacular, the Geographia was the earliest fully realized effort and the first to be widely disseminated by the printing press.6 Within the Geographia’s pages the potentially dry and encyclopedic project of listing thousands of terrestrial locations was framed within a narrative poem in terza rima, the metric form of Dante’s Commedia. The hills of Fie- sole, high above Florence, stand in for Dante’s dark wood, while the ancient geographer replaces Virgil as muse and guide.7 In a dramatic prologue, Ptolemy descends from the clouds to interrupt Berlinghieri and an unnamed companion, offering the scholars a tour of the known world. Engulfed in swirling clouds and dazed by a blinding light, Berlinghieri finds himself addressed by an unfamiliar voice. The poet calls out, unsure whether he con- fronts a man or a god. The mysterious and as yet unseen speaker identifies himself as Ptolemy, responding that he is neither god nor man but rather “was once a man from Egyptian Alexandria and wrote of the stars and earth while Antoninus Pius reined over the Empire.”8 The two geographers, brought together over a distance of 1300 years discuss etymology, history, and even the proper method for mathematically producing maps. This narrative encounter establishes the dynamic tension that animates Berlinghieri’s poem as a whole. The modern Christian geographer, product of a Florentine literary and philosophical circle that vested antique texts and their authors with exceptional authority, literally confronts that authority. The result is a conversation that confounds scholarly expectation, an initially bewildering oscillation between revolutionary and retrospective knowledge of the world. Though the recovery of Ptolemy’s Geography was once thought to represent an innovative and defining shift away from an irrational, medi- eval conception of the cosmos, revisionist historians of cartography have come to emphasize the continuity of Renaissance geography with traditional precedents.9 Berlinghieri’s book proves one of the best examples of this com- bination of the novel and the archaic, an emblem of a vibrant and hybrid geographic culture that historians are only beginning to fully comprehend. The Geographia’s text performed many of the functions that Renaissance readers had come to expect not only of Ptolemy, but also of geographical introduction 3 texts, both modern and ancient. Berlinghieri’s book included all of the Geog- raphy’s locations and their coordinates, the ancient geographer’s theory of cartography and methods of mathematical projection, as well as a set of maps derived from, and recognizable as, those associated with Ptolemy. Yet the poet’s imaginative conversations with Ptolemy go a great deal beyond transla- tion or paraphrase. Ptolemy’s Geography, while of great interest to a select community of humanist scholars, was principally a list of coordinates and place names. Many of these toponyms were unfamiliar to fifteenth- century Italians and quite a few were actually unidentifiable with any location then known. Berlinghieri, drawing on the example of earlier Italian geographers, translated these obscure names into Italian and, more importantly, identified some of Ptolemy’s lesser- known locations with modern cities familiar to his readers.10 The poet provided his readers with new contexts for understanding often unfamiliar names by integrating Ptolemy’s locations with events of recent and ancient history, information taken from travel accounts, pilgrimage descriptions, and the narrative tracts of ancient authorities including Pliny. Pithy descriptions of eminent individuals, including rulers, scholars, and saints associated with these places are also included.11 These anecdotes were drawn from a range of ancient authors, especially Strabo, but also from more recent (and today less- familiar) geographers including Fazio degli Uberti and Flavio Biondo. The Geographia