Andreas Walsperger (born c. 1415 in Radkersburg; date of death unknown) was a German cartographer of the 15th century. The son of a carpenter, he became a Benedictine monk at St. Peter's in Salzburg in 1434. He left the monastery in 1442. Little more is known about him except that in 1448/9 [1] he created his map in Konstanz.
The map of Andreas Walsperger is a Latin Mappa Mundi, atypical in its depiction of Africa and in its placing a large castle in China, where others including Fra Mauro's place their grand castle to the north. In Germany, the only other example of the type is the "Mappa mundi Ciziensis" from Zeitz.
The parchment measures 57.7 x 75 cm.
In the sixteenth century, the Fugger family may have owned the map. In 1622, it was given to Pope Gregory XV by Maximilian I, Elector of Bavaria and is now held in the Vatican Library Palatina (Lat. 1362 B).
Sebastian Münster was a German cartographer and cosmographer. He also was a Christian Hebraist scholar who taught as a professor at the University of Basel. His well-known work, the highly accurate world map, Cosmographia, sold well and went through 24 editions. Its influence was widely spread by a production of woodcuts created of it by a variety of artists.
Carmina Burana is a manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts mostly from the 11th or 12th century, although some are from the 13th century. The pieces are mostly bawdy, irreverent, and satirical. They were written principally in Medieval Latin, a few in Middle High German and old Arpitan. Some are macaronic, a mixture of Latin and German or French vernacular.
A mappa mundi is any medieval European map of the world. Such maps range in size and complexity from simple schematic maps 25 millimetres or less across to elaborate wall maps, the largest of which to survive to modern times, the Ebstorf map, was around 3.5 m in diameter. The term derives from the Medieval Latin words mappa and mundus (world).
Fra Mauro, O.S.B. Cam., (c.1400–1464) was an Italian (Venetian) cartographer who lived in the Republic of Venice. He created the most detailed and accurate map of the world up until that time, the Fra Mauro map.
A T and O map or O–T or T–O map, also known as an Isidoran map, is a type of early world map that represents the physical world as first described by the 7th-century scholar Isidore of Seville in his De Natura Rerum and later his Etymologiae.
Terra incognita or terra ignota is a term used in cartography for regions that have not been mapped or documented. The expression is believed to be first seen in Ptolemy's Geography c. 150. The term was reintroduced in the 15th century from the rediscovery of Ptolemy's work during the Age of Discovery. The equivalent on French maps would be terres inconnues, and some English maps may show Parts Unknown.
The Fra Mauro map is a map of the world made around 1450 by the Italian (Venetian) cartographer Fra Mauro, which is “considered the greatest memorial of medieval cartography." It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame that measures over two by two meters. Including Asia, the Indian Ocean, Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic, it is oriented with south at the top. The map is usually on display in the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice in Italy.
"Here be dragons" means dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of a medieval practice of putting illustrations of dragons, sea monsters and other mythological creatures on uncharted areas of maps where potential dangers were thought to exist.
The Hereford Mappa Mundi is a medieval map of the known world, of a form deriving from the T and O pattern, dating from c. 1300. Archeological scholars believe the map to have originated from eastern England in either Yorkshire or Lincolnshire before it was transported westward to the Hereford Cathedral in Herefordshire where it has remained ever since. It is displayed at Hereford Cathedral in Hereford, England. It is the largest medieval map still known to exist. A larger mappa mundi, the Ebstorf map, was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943, though photographs of it survive.
The earliest known world maps date to classical antiquity, the oldest examples of the 6th to 5th centuries BCE still based on the flat Earth paradigm. World maps assuming a spherical Earth first appear in the Hellenistic period. The developments of Greek geography during this time, notably by Eratosthenes and Posidonius culminated in the Roman era, with Ptolemy's world map, which would remain authoritative throughout the Middle Ages. Since Ptolemy, knowledge of the approximate size of the Earth allowed cartographers to estimate the extent of their geographical knowledge, and to indicate parts of the planet known to exist but not yet explored as terra incognita.
The Geography, also known by its Latin names as the Geographia and the Cosmographia, is a gazetteer, an atlas, and a treatise on cartography, compiling the geographical knowledge of the 2nd-century Roman Empire. Originally written by Claudius Ptolemy in Greek at Alexandria around AD 150, the work was a revision of a now-lost atlas by Marinus of Tyre using additional Roman and Persian gazetteers and new principles. Its translation into Arabic in the 9th century was highly influential on the geographical knowledge and cartographic traditions of the Islamic world. Alongside the works of Islamic scholars - and the commentary containing revised and more accurate data by Alfraganus - Ptolemy's work was subsequently highly influential on Medieval and Renaissance Europe.
Alerion is a term for a heraldic bird. Historically, it referred to the regular heraldic eagle. Later, heralds used the term alerion to refer to "baby eagles" or "eaglets". To differentiate them from mature eagles, alerions were shown as an eagle displayed inverted without a beak or claws (disarmed). To differentiate it from a decapitate (headless) eagle, the alerion has a bulb-shaped head with an eye staring towards the dexter of the field. This was later simplified in modern heraldry as an abstract winged oval.
Henry, in German Heinrich, was the archbishop of Mainz from September 1142 until his deposition in June 1153.
Hacı Ahmet was a purported Muslim cartographer linked to a 16th-century map of the world. Ahmet appended a commentary to the map, outlining his own life and an explanation for the creation of the map. But it is not clear whether Ahmet created the map, or whether he simply translated it into Turkish for use in the Ottoman world.
Various species of mythical headless men were rumoured, in antiquity and later, to inhabit remote parts of the world. They are variously known as akephaloi or Blemmyes and described as lacking a head, with their facial features on their chest. These were at first described as inhabitants of ancient Libya or the Nile system (Aethiopia). Later traditions confined their habitat to a particular island in the Brisone River, or shifted it to India.
Liber Floridus is a medieval encyclopedia that was compiled between 1090 and 1120 by Lambert, Canon of Saint-Omer. The text compiles extracts from some 192 or so different works.
The Psalter World Map or the Map Psalter is a small mappa mundi from the 13th century, found in a psalter. No other records of psalters found from the middle ages have a mappa mundi. The Psalter mappa mundi was likely used to provide context for the Bible's stories as well as a visual narrative of Christianity. A Mappa is a noun meaning napkin or cloth and mundi is an adjective referencing something clean or organized. Mappa mundis were not utilized as maps for travel or geographical education, but as history lessons taught through a visual means. Historian Felicitas Schmieder refers to mappa mundi as "Geographies of Salvation" as they are report the narrative of Christ's interaction with our world. The Psalter mappa mundi is now conserved at the British Library in London. An open-access high-resolution digital image of the map with place and name annotations is included among the thirteen medieval maps of the world edited in the Virtual Mappa project. The Map Psalter can be broken down in the following manner: ff. 3v-8r are later additions of 6 illustrations from the New Testament, ff. 9r-9v are the mappa mundi and a second written T-O map, ff. 10v-16v a calendar, which were included in many psalters of the time. They served to highlight days of canonization of saints and other important holidays, f. 17r-v has simple prayers usually found in psalters, ff. 18v-184v consist of the Canticles, or a collection of hymns, prayers, or songs usually found in psalters. ff. 184r-185v include a litany, ff. 185v-189v are petitions for help from God, ff. 217-221v induces the Office of the Dead, ff. 191r-212v are passages praising the Virgin Mary. The ff. 212r - 217r are written in Anglo-Norman, as all signs indicate that the book was made in London. The psalter ends on ff. 221v-222v with a different writing style of common Latin prayers, appearing to be a later addition.
Harley MS 3686 is an early 15th-century Venetian hand-written re-creation of Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographia. It is part of the Harleian Collection at the British Library.
The Sawley map, formerly known as the 'Henry of Mainz' map, is the earliest surviving mappa mundi made in England. It was made between about 1180 and the early 13th century. The map is the frontispiece of a copy of the Imago mundi of Honorius of Autun. It is oriented with east at the top and the island of Delos at the centre.
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