Was Lorenz Fries’s 1525 Strasbourg Ptolemy Atlas Complete? Or Were Two Maps Omitted?

Abstract Two manuscript maps, one of the Pacific and the other of Russia/Tartary, have emerged since 2009. In this article they are described in detail, set into context, and an argument is offered for identifying them as having been made in Strasbourg for the tabulae modernae section of the 1525 edition of Ptolemy’s Geography. Had the two maps been included as intended, they would have completed the modern mapping of the world.

The spread of printing from moveable type in Europe in the fifteenth century created a new lease of life for many ancient and medieval texts. Publishers rushed to capture the market for the most important works in circulation. From the start, the emphasis was on authors who had stood the test of time, notably those of Antiquity, the Church Fathers, and the leading medieval exegetes, together with the Bible itself. Among these was Claudius Ptolemy, whose enduringly popular Geography was first printed in Latin in Vicenza in 1475, followed by his astrological work, the Tetrabiblos (Venice, Liber quadripartitus, 1484), and in due course the astronomical Almagest (Venice, 1496). 1 By the turn into the sixteenth century, one Italian and six Latin editions of the Geography had been published, and by 1525 another six in Latin had appeared, only one without maps. 2 Ptolemy, c.150, drew up a list of more than 8,000 place-names with coordinates (longitude and latitude) that cover the world between Tenerife (0 degrees) and Cattigara (180 degrees east). The other half of the world was then unknown. When plotted, his list of places results in ten maps of Europe, four of Africa, twelve of Asia and one of the world, together totalling twenty-seven tabulae antiquae. Early modern mapping more than a thousand years later required adaptations of Ptolemy's maps, giving rise to the tabulae modernae. The process of 'modernization' was first applied to existing Ptolemaic maps, but when this became too difficult, the modern maps were separately designed and added to the old ones. The Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery brought about fundamental changes in Ptolemaic maps of Asia and completely new ones for (southern) Africa and the Americas.
The four Strasbourg editions of the Geography differed from previous ones by having a separate part dedicated to tabulae modernae. The 1513 and 1520 editions by Martin Waldseemüller had 20 modern maps; the 1522 and 1525 Lorenz Fries editions had 23 modern maps. The last two editions were printed by Johannes Grüninger. This article is concerned with Grüninger's 1525 edition, for two manuscript maps have recently come to light that appear to be draft tabulae modernae intended for this edition. The first of these maps came to my notice in 2009. 3 Entitled Tab[ula] Moderna Alterius Hemisphaerii, it shows the Pacific Ocean with part of the Americas and Asia (Fig. 1). My preliminary observations on it were reported at two international conferences and published in The Globe, the Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Map Society in 2012. 4 The second map, which I purchased in 2011, was presented for sale in London at Sotheby's auction house. 5 It is entitled Tab [ula] Mod [erna] Tartarie, and shows Russia from the Baltic to Scythia, east of the Urals (Fig. 2). At my request, the map of Tartary was studied by Dr Peter Meurer, who published his comments in Cartographica Helvetica. 6 Here, the results of both studies are amalgamated, and my conclusion is that the two tabulae are final drafts for new tabulae modernae that were to be included in Grüninger's 1525 Ptolemy edition. However, it would seem that the maps were never printed for reasons of time and religious strife. 7 Thereafter the drafts were lost, and their existence remained unknown to historians of cartography until now. Their rediscovery provides fresh insights into tabulae modernae in general and into the earliest mapping of Russia, Siberia, Mexico, South America, the Pacific and the Philippines in particular.
Why did these tabulae disappear? In general, few traces remain of the preliminary manuscript sketches and worksheets needed before a new map could be printed. 8 Some examples of the map-making process have survived, as in the case of the woodcut map of the German lands by Johannes Stumpf (1547) and the highly detailed drafts for at least five of the county maps of England by William Smith. 9 The tabulae in question in this article are most likely final drafts that were intended to be discussed with the mapmaker, corrector, publisher and financier (Hans Koberger); since they are complete, with text on the verso, they could hardly have been worksheets destined to be pasted on to the woodblock for cutting.

The Strasbourg Geography and Lorenz Fries
The first two editions of the Strasbourg Geography were printed by Johann Schott in 1513 and 1520. These atlases had 47 maps by Martin Waldseemüller, including a Supplementum with 20 modern maps. Among them were the first tabulae modernae of Asia, Africa (two), and the Atlantic Ocean with parts of the Americas. Thus a greater part of the newly discovered world had been mapped and was printed in 1513, providing a broad distribution of this new knowledge throughout Europe.
In 1520, the year of publication of the second edition of the Geography, Johann Grüninger reached an unspecified agreement with Schott that allowed him to produce a new edition of the atlas. He also bought the woodblocks of the maps, possibly to avoid a parallel reprint. 10 Grüninger then went on to publish another edition in a smaller and cheaper format that was updated with modern maps to show recent discoveries. The man in charge was Lorenz Fries.
Lorenz Fries (1485?-1531) was neither a native of Strasbourg nor originally a mapmaker. He practised as a doctor and astrologer in Colmar (Alsace) and was a productive writer. His earliest publications were medical books and astrological treatises written in German. The publisher of almost all his books was Johann Grüninger in Strasbourg. Fries eventually married and settled in Strasbourg becoming a burgher in 1520. 11 About the same time he was installed in the guild of goldsmiths and printers. While continuing to work as a physician, he became involved in Grüninger's geographical publications, which included the heritage of Martin Waldseemüller who had died in 1520. 12 Fries renounced his Strasbourg citizenship under religious duress on 11 May 1525 and resumed his medical and astrological work, first in Trier and later in Metz, both largely Catholic cities. No cartographical work of his is known after 1525. 13 For the 1522 edition of the Geography, Fries reduced Waldseemüller's maps by about 23 per cent and simplified most of them. The only exception was the Tabula Asiae V, for which he used the 1520 woodblock. He therefore needed to have 46 new woodblocks cut, for each of which a potentially disposable manuscript worksheet must have been provided. The text of Book VIII of Ptolemy, describing the different parts of the world, was printed on the back of the corresponding tabulae antiquae within an elaborate woodcut frame. The texts on the backs of the tabulae modernae were taken mostly from Johann Bohm, Omnium gentium mores, leges et ritus . . . (Augsburg, 1520). Fifteen of the woodcuts from Waldseemüller's Itinerario, which Grüninger and Fries were preparing for print, were also added to the versos of some of the tabulae. Only the two world maps lacked texts on the verso. Fries added three new tabulae modernae, providing them with his own text. 14 None of the 50 maps was numbered. The atlas was ready by 30 March 1522. The key point in all this is that Grüninger at one time must have had 50 manuscript worksheets.
The 1522 Ptolemy edition was heavily criticized by some professionals, but it was a commercial success. When Fries started working on the 1525 edition in early 1524 the only areas to have escaped modern mapping were large parts of the western hemisphere and European Russia with its lands east of the Volga and north of Scythia. Precisely between the printing of the 1522 and the 1525 Geographies, data became available to fill the gaps. First, the remnants of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition returned to Spain in September 1522, having circumnavigated the world, and the first printed account of the voyage, by Maximilianus Transylvanus, was published in Cologne in February 1523. 15 Then, in April 1524, the second and third letter (cartas de relacion) of Hernán Cortés, reporting the discovery of inland Mexico and the conquest of Tenochtitlan were published in Latin in Germany. 16 This edition contained a map of the Gulf of Mexico and a plan of the city of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). With the printing of Peter Martyr's first three Decades, these publications, provided the bulk of the information on South America, Mexico and the Pacific needed for a map like the Tab[ula] Moderna Alterius Hemisphaerii, the map of the Pacific with which we are concerned. 17 Information for the Tartary tabula reached Fries in a different way. His main source in this case was Waldseemüller's wall map of the world, the Carta Marina of 1516, on which Fries was working to produce a reduced version for Grüninger. He must also have had a copy of the recently published (1524) booklet describing Ambrosius Contarini's journey through Poland, Russia and Circassia to Persia. 18 All this new information created an opportunity for adding the maps needed to complete the geographical coverage of the world, one map showing more of the New World and the great ocean to its west, and the other portraying Russia and Tartaria (Fig. 3).

The Two New Manuscript Maps
Neither of the two newly discovered manuscript maps is dated or signed. The handwriting is probably secretarial but not attributable; it is certainly not that of Lorenz Fries. 19  Neither of the two manuscript tabulae modernae that have come to light matches any known printed map. There is much, however, to suggest they were made for the 1525 Geography. The layout and style of the two maps correspond to that of the three tabulae modernae made by Fries for the previous edition (1522). Both manuscript maps are on the trapezoidal, or Donis, projection favoured by Fries and their dimensions are the same. On each, the title is given in a banderole at the top of the map like other maps re-designed or made by Fries for the 1522 Ptolemy. The draft tabulae are stylistically like Fries's tabulae modernae: the signs for mountains, cities and other geographical elements are done in the same way, and the lettering and form of the numbers match (five is written as a 5, not a 4 as in Waldseemüller's maps and other maps produced before about 1520).
The text on the back of each map is framed on either side by a broad margin for the decorative motifs characteristic of Fries's other printed versos, such as those in the 1522 and 1525 Geographies, and a space has been left at the start of the writing for the historiated initial (Figs. 4 and 5). 24 The syntax is remarkably similar to that of texts composed under Fries's responsibility for the tabulae modernae of America and China, suggesting he was responsible for the two new texts as well. 25 Only one feature does not match Fries's usual practice. Whereas the sea on his woodcut tabulae modernae is blank, with a hatched coastline, the sea on the manuscript maps is neatly pecked, a style common in copperplate engravings and early Italian maps. There is no obvious explanation for this here, unless Fries had used an Italian scribe to prepare the fair copy of the map.

Physical Characteristics
Both maps were at some time bound into the same book, as is indicated by the central vertical strip of glue stain, the matching paper damage along the outer edges, and the damp stains. Heavy thumbing at the lower-right corner of the Tartary map (masked on the Pacific Ocean map by water staining) suggests intensive use over a long period of time while still in a book. The marked difference in overall condition suggest that the maps also had a lengthy later life separately.
Each map occupies a centrally folded double folio measuring 40.5 × 54 cm (16 × 21 in). The watermarks are identical, a glove with cuff (together c.85 × 24 mm) with a six-pointed flower, or star, above the third finger. The distance between the chain lines is also the same on both maps: 25 mm (Plate 1). Similar watermarks are ascribed to a range of dates between 1516 and 1544. 26 Radiocarbon dating of the paper used for the Pacific tabula suggests that the plant fibres grew either between 1451 and 1528 or between 1551 and 1634 (Plate 2). 27 Watermark and radiocarbon dating thus combine to give a range for the manufacture of the paper between 1516, the earliest date of the watermarks, and 1528, the last date of the first part of carbon dating (see Plate 2).
Both the maps and their texts are in the same hand throughout, showing only the inevitable irregularities brought about by the reloading of a quill pen with ink. The text on the verso of each map contains underlining in three places. The original number, 41, in the lower-right corner of the Tartary map, has been replaced by 27.
The ink on maps and texts was examined by X-ray fluorescence (micro XRF) and the individual results compared with each other, with those from the analyses of ink on a letter written by Grüninger on 22 November, 1524, and with a modern iron-gall ink. 28 The conclusion is that both maps were executed with identical ink that is, however, quite distinct from modern iron-gall ink (Plate 3). They also show that the ink used for the underlining of the texts on the back is the same on both maps but differs from that used for the texts themselves. We learned, too, that the ink used to change the map number on the Tartary map to 27 was not the same as that used either for the maps or for the underlining. The ink used by Grüninger in his letter was similar but not identical to that used on the manuscripts.
A final observation on the physical characteristics of the maps is that a stylus or hard point of some sort and a ruler were used to mark out the frame of the map on one side of the sheet and the frame of the text on the other side before inking, thereby also ensuring the exact positioning of the blocks in the printing press. 29 The oblique meridians were also drawn with the stylus in the same way. Traces of this preparatory work are still discernible where the inking of the grooves was discontinued (Fig. 6).

Tabula moderna Alterius Hemisphaerii
The map of the 'Other Hemisphere', depicts the world encompassed between latitudes 40°north and 60°south and longitudes 320°east and 180°e ast, with the prime meridian of Cadiz that could not have been shown on a map until news of Cortés's conquest of Mexico and Magellan's passage through the straits of Tierra del Fuego and his circumnavigation of the world had reached Europe (see The map is on a trapezoidal projection and so arranged as to show those parts of the Western Hemisphere assigned by the Pope to Spain in the Treaty of Tordesillas (7 June 1494). It excludes Portuguese territory. The selection of Cadiz for the prime meridian, 10 degrees east of that of the Canaries, was common among the Spanish explorers after the time of the Treaty. 30 The contested Moluccas (Spice Islands) are placed a few degrees within the Spanish area of dominance. 31 The text on the back of the map has been laid out to form two pages when the map was folded for binding (Appendix 1). Thus, the start of the text with its historiated initial letter is seen first, before the first page of the bifolium is turned to reveal the map, while the conclusion is found on the fourth page, the verso of the right-hand side of the map (see Fig. 3). It is a summary of the first printed account of Magellan's celebrated voyage into the Pacific as reported by Maximilianus Transylvanus. 32 Although the decoration is missing from the compartment ruled for it by the scribe, a minuscule f tells the printer to insert a block with a historiated F for the first word of the text, the name Ferdinand. In the bottom-right corner, below the last line on the page, the number 51 indicates the map's intended place in a volume or atlas.
A corrector, possibly the German humanist Johannes Huttich, who had a better command of Latin than Fries, has underlined the text in three places. 33 Comparison with the wording of Fries's source (Transylvanus's letter) shows why the corrector was dissatisfied. For example, the first underlining occurs below the words est. n. (= enim) latitudinis duorum, trium et cinque usque in decem milianorum (see Fig. 3). Transylvanus, however, had written: Erat fretum hoc, quod quidem tunc (sic) fretum esse ignorabatur latitudes aliquando trium, aliquand duorum nonnunque decem, aut quinque miliariorum italicorum. 34 And at the bottom of the first page of text Fries had written fretum ipse cui longitude miliariox centum hispanox fertur where Transylvanus, in describing the length of the channel the explorers had just left, had longitutinem freti miliarium Hispanorum sere centum esse attestantur. Fries apparently had missed the distinction Transylvanus had made between Italian and Spanish miles, and the corrector wanted him to be explicit and clear.

Toponymy on the Alterius Hemisphaerii Map
For the dating of the two manuscript maps, the origin of place-names has proved particularly useful (Appendix 2). Because their appearance suggested the maps might have been intended for the 1525 edition of the Geography, the year 1525 was taken as the hypothesized date. It would be an encouraging pointer were all names on the maps to have come from sources known to have been available to the mapmaker before that year, but that alone would be insufficient evidence to date a map. If, on the other hand, even a single name is identified that could not have been known until after the hypothetical date, that would indicate a definite terminus post quem for the map's compilation. Names that occur both before and after the hypothetical date are not helpful in dating a map.
Analysis of the place-names on the Pacific tabula reveals that 55 out of the 64 toponyms come from identifiable sources available to Fries before 1525. Of the nine names with no obvious pre-1525 source, two are incomplete or illegible (dhins and i..la). Two (costa vadosa and val ombrosa) are found on a later map, Vesconte di Maggiolo's manuscript planisphere of 1527. It is improbable, however, that this Italian manuscript map would have been the source for Fries; it is much more probable that Fries and Maggiolo made use of the same unknown source. 35 The same applies to Cocomello which is found on Pineda's manuscript map but not in any printed source Fries could have consulted. Two more names, Fretu Magellani and Terra Vespucii, have no obvious source before 1525 and would appear to have been made up by Fries. 36 For the remaining two names, P.Olmo and Usaicara, no source has been found.
In short, for none of the nine names for which no source before 1525 has been found can it be said that these names necessarily had their origin after 1525. This in turn means we can be satisfied that the hypothesized date of 1525 for the tabula holds. Twenty-nine of the names on the Pacific tabula were used for the first time on a map. Nine of these 29 names have not been found on any map produced after 1525, which confirms that the manuscript map was never printed and had soon disappeared from sight. 37

Tabula Moderna Tartarie
The title of the second manuscript map, Tartaria or Tartary, goes back to the late medieval period when it was used to indicate the seemingly limitless steppe lands beyond Europe that stretch eastwards from southern Russia and that were inhabited by little-known peoples always threatening invasion.
Greek and Roman geographers knew the area as Sarmatia (asiatica) and Scythia. Ptolemy's seas, rivers, mountains, tribes and regions were represented in the maps associated with the Geography on Tabula Asiae II (between 64 and 85 degrees east) and on Tabula Asiae VII (between 85 and 140 degrees east).
By the time that Grüninger started working in the 1520s on his new editions of the Geography, no tabula moderna covered the regions beyond the Dnieper River. Medieval literature on Tartary included the two travel reports of the Franciscan monk Giovanni da Pian del Carpine (c.1182-1252), papal delegate to the Great Khan of the Mongols in Karakorum in 1245-1247, and the account of the Flemish Franciscan monk William of Rubruck (c.1220c.1293) of his missionary travels in 1253-1255 to the same region. These popular works were circulating widely in manuscript in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Waldseemüller had referred to both authors in preparing his large world maps of 1507 and 1516, adding also a tabula moderna of eastern Europe (Sarmatia Europae: Hungria; Polonia, Russia) that covered the area as far east as the Vistula River to his 1513 edition of the Geography.
Another strand in the mapping of Russia had started with the map of Sarmatia Europea (essentially the German lands and all between the Rhine and Dnieper rivers) included in the 1508 Rome edition of the Geography. The map's author was the Italian cosmographer Marco Beneventano  The Tartary Tabula Despite its rectangular frame, the Tartary tabula is also on a trapezoidal projection, as indicated by the lines of longitude, which extend to almost 60 degrees at the bottom of the map and 110 degrees at the top (see Fig. 2). It shows Russia between latitudes 50°north just under Mare Bachan and the Oceanus Septentrionalis at about 75°north.
The map drew heavily on Waldseemüller's Carta Marina, a map Fries knew well. The incorrect depiction of the rivers and lakes confirms that the compiler did not know Gerasimov's woodcut map of Russia, which would have told him that, for instance, the Oka River links the Moskva River with the Volga network. Nor does any detail on the Tartary map derive from Miechów's Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis, otherwise we might expect at least some of its characteristics to have been included on the Tartary tabula, such as the name Mare Caspium, the more modern Don fluvius instead of the Ptolemaic Tanais fl., and the Tartar name Edel fluvius in addition to volga fl alias Rha.
The text on the verso of the map is partly based on the journal of Ambrogio Contarini, Venice's legate to the court of Uzun Hasan at Tabriz, Persia, between 1474 and 1477, who had travelled to Persia by way of Poland, Russia and the Caucasus in order to avoid Venice's enemies in the Mediterranean (Appendix 3). 42 Other sources were also used, notably the classical writers Pomponius Mela and Gaius Julius Solinus. As with other of Fries's compositions for the backs of his tabulae modernae, however, the relationship between text and map is only partial. Taken as a whole, the Tartary text is a mixture of loosely related data on the Tartars and Tartary with all the signs of hasty compilation.
As with the Pacific tabula, the Tartary text takes up all the first page but only half of the last page of the folded bifolium. Only on the first page is the writing framed and space set aside for decoration, an a indicating the place for the historiated A of Ambrosius, (see Fig. 4). The text is underlined in three places in ink identical to that used for the corrections on the Pacific tabula. Two of these underlinings are on the first page, line 10 ad flus vistula in and line 13 silva, and one is on the last page, line 13 nunc scythas et moderni Tartaros. In addition, on the first page the original number 41 has been erased and 27 written next to it (see Fig. 6).
The sources for each of the 53 names on the map of Tartary have been identified (Appendix 4). All had appeared in published form before March 1525. The majority came from Waldseemüller's Carta Marina (1516), some from Waldseemüller's 1507 wall map of the world, and some from the map of Asia II in one of the Ulm Ptolemy editions (1482 or 1486). Eleven names are found in the second edition of Contarini's journal (1524), but one of these also appears in the 1482 Ptolemy and five also occur on the Carta Marina of 1516, meaning that at least five and at most eleven names on the Tartary map came from Contarini's book. Again, analysis of the origin of place-names on the Tartary tabula supplies no reason to think the map was made after 1525.

Producing the 1525 Edition of the Geography
The consistency of the evidence from the various analyses described above persuades us that the two newly discovered tabulae modernae were made towards the end of 1524 and no later than 26 February 1525, and that the only serious candidate for the mapmaker is Lorenz Fries. Corroboration of the likely date and authorship is provided by a small but significant detail, the correction of the map number of the Tartary tabula from 41 to 27, which can be logically explained in only one way.
The maps in the 1522 Geography had no map numbers. For unknown reasons it was decided to give each map in the 1525 edition a number on the back at the end of the text. Only the two world maps did not get a number as they had no printed text on the back. In that way the printer could avoid an extra round of printing. Fries gave his draft maps numbers and thus must have been working on the Pacific and Tartary tabulae after the decision was made but before the printed maps started to arrive, when he noticed the Terra Sancta tabula already had the number 41. A letter from Grüninger to Pirckheimer dated 22 November 1524 confirms the situation. Tired of waiting for Pirckheimer's text corrections on the outstanding maps, Grüninger wrote 'I have waited for your comments on the maps and have in the meantime printed the maps'. 43 A failure of coordination between mapmaker and printer meant that Fries had to alter the position of the Tartary tabula and thus its number. Using a pot of newly made ink, he changed that from 41 to 27 (see Fig. 6).
In the new situation, the Ptolemaic world map was to be moved from its position 27 to the first position, preceding the tabulae antiquae already numbered 1 to 26. As the world map was unnumbered, the change would not have disturbed the order of the other tabulae antiquae. 44 The Tartary tabula was then able to go into the vacated place as map 27, to become the first of the tabulae modernae with the map of the Atlantic remaining as map 28 and the following tabulae modernae keeping their numbers up to map 49. The next map, the unnumbered world map, stayed where it was intended to be, after map 49. 45 The new Pacific tabula, numbered 51on the manuscript draft, would have come after the world map. Thus, had Fries's drafts been printed and included as planned, the 1525 edition of the Geography would have contained 52 maps. Even if they were printed at the last minute, the new tabulae could have been fitted in without the need to reprint any of the maps..

The Question of Authenticity
Inevitably, the unheralded appearance in the twenty-first century of one, let alone two, sixteenth-century manuscript maps raises eyebrows among map historians and connoisseurs, perhaps even more when they are purported to have been created for a specific publication. From what has been said above, readers may already have been encouraged to accept the pair of draft maps described in this article as genuine. In all our investigations into them the possibility that they could be forgeries was foremost in our minds. Proving authenticity is more difficult than proving fakery: however many arguments might point to authenticity, one objective and conclusive counter argument would be sufficient to confirm doubt. No such argument has been raised or found. On balance, taking all evidence, arguments and counter-arguments together, a case of forgery can be safely excluded.
The three most persuasive characteristics militating against the notion of forgery that emerged from the physical inspection of the artefacts have already been described and need only be summarized at this point. One concerns the ink. Three slightly different inks have been identified, indicating intervals between their mixing: the ink used in the drawing of the cartographic image, the ink used for the underlining in the texts on the back and the ink used for the correction of the Tartary map number from 41 to 27. It is difficult to see how a modern forger could have anticipated the recent technology for discerning differences in the composition of ink that cannot be seen by the naked eye. 46 The second indication of genuineness is the initial misnumbering of the Tartary map and its subsequent correction to 27 as described above. Why would a master forger make such a mistake? After all, there is already a printed map in the 1525 atlas bearing the number 41 (Terra Sancta).
A final argument against forgery is provided by the whiteness of the inkless grooves left by the stylus in the area of heavy thumbing on the Tartary tabula. Had a forger had the sophistication to use a stylus in preparing the drawing on a wellthumbed but otherwise blank piece of sixteenthcentury paper, the process of scoring would have pressed the grease of the thumbing into the grooves, with the result that these would appear as dark grey lines. Conversely, dirt from thumb marks resulting from the handling of a page that has already been ruled for writing would not penetrate the scored grooves, leaving them clean. The whiteness of the grooves on the Tartary tabula testifies that they were present before the page started to be thumbed (see Fig. 6).
In addition to the internal evidence, discussion of authenticity also involves critical appraisal of the content on the map in question and its appropriateness for the postulated date of the cartographical image. In this connection, the author did receive some sharply critical feedback after presenting the provisional outcome of his research, the salient aspects of which are summarized here.
The most common comment made was that on the Pacific tabula the outlines of the Americas are too modern, especially on the western side. This can be refuted by a number of points once the map and its postulated maker, Lorenz Fries, are set in context. First, it is unsurprising that Fries, who inherited Waldseemüller's work, would have known how to draw the Americas in a 'modern' way, namely as separate from Asia. Second, parts of the west coasts of both North and South America were known and mapped by the early 1520s. Fries himself was the first to represent the west coast of South America between 42°and 17°South on his Orbis typus universalis, the world map of 1522. The western (southern) coast of Central America had been mapped on Jorge Reinel's planisphere of c.1519. 47 As for the rest, Fries must have been guessing.
A second objection to the authenticity of the maps relates to the text on the verso of the Pacific tabula, which seems to suggest that it was written long after the discovery of the Strait of Magellan, also dissolves when the wording is considered in the light of contemporary linguistic practice. The sentence in question refers to Magellan's discovery of the entrance to the Strait that came to bear his name: fretum quoddam intrarunt, quod fretum Magellani, tanquam eius inventum etiam hodie, appellant. A literal translation could be 'a strait, which they call Strait of Magellan, even today as it was found by him'. At issue are the words etiam hodie, which can mean, as it often did in sixteenth-century church Latin in referring to events that occurred a long time ago, 'even today'. However, the phrase can also mean '[just] like today'.
It has to be borne in mind that, as already observed, Fries's first language was German and his Latin was poor. 48 Before German started to become a unified language, inspired by Martin Luther's widely disseminated translation of the Bible in 1522, it was spoken and written in a number of different ways. We may accept that Fries's text would have been initially composed in his variant of German. 49 Common German words so wie Heute [just like today] or so wie auch Heute [just like today] are easily translated into etiam hodie as demonstrated in another context. 50 Finally, space allows one more objection to the interpretation of the two draft maps to be enlarged upon. It is often asked if it would not have been possible for the two new tabulae modernae to have been made (shortly) after the publication of the 1525 Strasbourg edition and simply inserted into a printed copy by its owner. Again, the answer seems to be straightforward in the light of the Tartary map's having been originally given the number 41, already printed on another map in the same atlas. If you have an atlas and add a map in manuscript you give it a sequential map number, not an already existing one.
The recent discovery of two manuscript maps and their identification as final drafts by Lorenz Fries made not later than 26 February 1525 for Grüninger's 1525 edition of Ptolemy's Geography has to be counted as a significant event. The arguments, analyses and interpretations offered here should suffice to identify the maps and their author. No objective and conclusive argument against this identification has emerged, and if no new one comes forward, then the two maps are among the oldest extant to show all Mexico, the Strait of Magellan, the South American continent, the Pacific Ocean, the Mariana Islands, the Philippines and early modern Russia.
From the start, our approach has been to adhere to the principles of historical analysis and to apply the full methodological spectrum to the cartography. Modern technologies for testing the material basis of the maps have been useful in ratifying the conclusions thus reached, but independently they could not have produced the close dating now achieved. Open and wide-ranging discussion with individuals and academic forums have been a vital element in achieving the identification of the two maps offered in this article.
Acknowledgments: About fifty institutions and individuals in nine countries have helped me over the past seven years with material and advice to conclude the process of identification of both tabulae and in the writing of this article. I am grateful to them all. I would like to specially mention Dr Peter Meurer, who was my first teacher and remains my guide in the history of cartography, and Gregory McIntosh who gave me access to his vast knowledge of the early years of the era of the European discoveries and whose exactness and precision prevented so many errors and mistakes. 3. The map was offered for sale by a private coin collector in Latin America in June 2009. He had originally purchased it from one of his scouts, who searched street markets for coins. In public presentations of the map, the question has been raised whether the map could at some point have been stolen. This is highly unlikely: only valuable things get stolen. The map has never been recognized or referred to, let alone described as important. Its condition betrays neglect. with Fries's explanatory booklet Uslegung der Mercarthen oder Cartha Marina containing an original piece of cartography by Fries-a modern map of West Africa, Tabula prima navigationis Aloisii Cadamosti-and his reworking of Waldseemüller's written description of the world, the Itinerario or Cronica Mundi. The last was never published, but some of the woodcuts prepared for it were used as illustrations on the versos of various maps in the 1522 edition of the Geography.
27. The two radiocarbon tests produced near-identical results, with the same degree of probability (95%), with a single difference (1531 instead of 1534).
28. X-ray fluorescence ( Its breadth is two, three, five or even ten miles. Here the southern Polar Star was seen elevated at 52 degrees over the horizon, whereas they thought that the land bordering the Strait on the left consisted of islands. And although they did not see any living person at all, a great number of fires was nevertheless observed. Here they had a night lasting five hours in the month November. Having passed the Strait itself, which they say had a length of 100 Spanish miles, they came upon another vast and great sea. And after a sailing voyage lasting forty days they found two islands on the Tropic of Capricorn, which they called the 'Infortunate ones', as they were uninhabited. After again three months of crossing this overwhelming sea, in such a way [= direction] that they had already passed the Equator towards the North, they reached the sea in the North, where they found Inuaganam, Selam, Acacam, Massanam, Subuth, Mauthan, Boel, Gibet, and many other islands both fertile and uninhabited and previously never seen. Here the Great and Little Bear were seen elevated at 11 degrees. On these islands Magellan lost his life. Seranus also, his second-in-command, died unhappily in fetters. Behind these, two big islands were found, of which one is Borneo, the other Solol with a circumference of 3,000 miles. And by as much as the latter one is greater, so much is the former one more beautiful. All inhabitants are 'caphrae', that is heathens. They venerate the sun and the moon as gods, they love peace and leisure, and they are very much in favour of justice and piety, whilst they detest war very much. And if one wishes to know more about their rites, let him consult the letter by Maximilianus Transylvanus, the Emperor's secretary. The Moluccas, five islands right on the Equator, were finally found, of which the first is called Thedori, and after that Tharante; Mathien; Muthil and Mare, rather small, but fertile for clove, cinnamon and nutmeg nut . It is believed that they are not far removed from Cattigara an outpost of the Chinese which is situated at the eastern end of our hemisphere. The same Transylvanus describes their customs and institutions and the further voyage very well. Appendix 1 (continued) The Tartars living in those regions and in Sarmatia Asiatica are ruled by the Prince of Kazan with the name Batoth, from the dynasty of the Great Khan, whose army is said to consist of two hundred thousand Tartars, Saracens and Christians. They retreat in summer along the shores of the rivers Don and Volga up to the Riphean and Hyperborean mountains. But they come down in winter to the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Asov and the Black Sea. Among those Tartars is one tribe of Tartars, who were formerly named Scyths and who have rough customs. They use the skulls of their enemies as cups, and they drink blood from their wounds. They certainly love fights, and they confirm a treaty by mutual sucking of blood. They have no town, house and roof, but the live in caves. They have livestock and cattle, grazing in the wild wastes. Wives and sons live in waggons that are covered with skins. No crime is graver among them than theft. They live on milk and honey, and they spurn gold and silver to avoid excess and greed. Towards the north are very rough mountains, up to which extend the Hercynian Mountains. There are enormous deserts because of the immense frost. In the mountains there are griffins, a species of wild beasts, which love and guard in a wondrous way the gold brought from the interior of the earth, and they are hostile to those who will touch it. The first people next of them in the frozen area are the Arimaspi, who are said to have only one eye. There follow the Essedones [Cendones] up to the Sea of Asov and the very lovely Dnieper River, which nurtures big fish of the best flavour and without bones. They say that his entire people were placed and named Magogas after himself by Magog, the son of Japhet. They are now the Scyths and nowadays named Tartars.
Having swum through the river,Contarini made his way through the plain of Tartary, until he reached Caffa or Theodosia on the Crimea, today a trading centre of Little Tartary; this is included in the remainder of his itinerary. The following is described in the map.