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Concept
Nicolaus Germanus
Résumé
Nicolaus Germanus (1420-1490) was a German cartographer who modernized Ptolemy's Geography by applying new projections, adding additional maps, and contributing other innovations that were influential in the development of Renaissance cartography.
In the fifteenth century it was common for scholars and artisans to adopt a Latinized version of their birth name. Nicolaus Germanus is the Latin form of the name "Nicholas the German". His full birth name is unknown. His name is sometimes preceded by "Donnus" or "Donus", an abbreviated form of the Latin title Dominus ("Lord" or "Master").
Nothing is known about the early life of Nicolaus Germanus. He first appears in the records of the Reichenbach Priory (now in Baden-Württemberg) where he was prior of the Benedictine monastery in 1442. It appears that he was trained in cosmography around 1460 and arrived in Italy by 1464.
He lived first in Florence where he compiled astrological tables and produced his first revision of Ptolemy's Geography in 1466. He later moved to Rome where created a pair of globes and a world map for the Vatican Library in 1477. He continued to prepare updates and revisions of Ptolemy's atlas for several years. The last contemporary record of his activity comes from a fellow German scholar, Conrad Celtes, who met him in Florence and wrote that Nicolaus complained bitterly about others getting the glory and profit for his work.
Nicolaus Germanus was an influential figure in the modernization and popularization of Ptolemy's Geographia. At least fifteen manuscript copies of Geographia were authored by Germanus or immediately copied from his work. Except for the 1482 Florence edition, all versions printed in the fifteenth century were based on his manuscripts.
Scholars group his manuscripts into three recensions (versions), roughly based on the number of maps included and the type of map projection used. His first recension (ca. 1460 to 1466) contains only the original twenty-seven Ptolemaic maps (tabulae antiquae) drawn using a trapezoid projection of which Germanus claimed to be the author.
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