Franciscus Monachus

Franciscus Monachus, (c. 1490-1565) was born Frans Smunck in Mechelen (or Malines) in the Duchy of Brabant (in modern-day Belgium). His Latinised name, adopted when he matriculated at the University of Louvain, is translated as simply Francis the monk. He is remembered as the cartographer who created the first terrestrial globe in the Low Countries.

Biography

He studied and taught at the university from about 1510 to 1530 and numbered Gemma Frisius among his students. He was also an important influence on Gerardus Mercator. Very little is known of his life and the accounts which do exist are very brief. On leaving Louvain (Leuven) he returned the short distance to Mechelen where he spent the rest of his life in the monastery there. This was no backwater for the Great Council of Mechelen was the supreme court of Low Countries and would be frequented by the highest in the land.

The monks of Mechelen were Minorite Friars, a humble order which was critical of the corruption of the established Church, so much so that over the years its members had been harassed, excommunicated and burned at the stake. They were undoubtedly under suspicion by the hard-line Inquisitors of Louvain University, men such as nl:Ruard Tapper who said of heretics "It is no great matter whether those that die on this account be guilty or innocent, provided we terrify the people by these examples; which generally succeeds best, when persons eminent for learning, riches, nobility or high stations, are thus sacrificed." Monachus had other additional reasons to come to the notice of the authorities.

The profession of monk was not in conflict with intellectual inquiry. Monachus, the monk, has been variously described as a court cosmographer and astrologer, the court in question being that of the Emperor Charles V and his regent, Margaret of Austria. However, it is his fame as a geographer that has lasted, principally through the globe that he constructed c1527.

The terrestrial globe

The globe was made in collaboration with goldsmith Gaspar van der Heyden at the latter's workshop in Louvain. It may have been a unique construction for nothing has survived, but Monachus described its use in a letter to his patron entitled De Orbis Situ ac descriptione ad Reverendiss. D. archiepiscopum Panormitanum, Francisci, Monachi ordinis Franciscani, epistola sane qua luculenta. (A very exquisite letter from Francis, a monk of the Franciscan order, to the most reverend Archbishop of Palermo, touching the site and description of the globe.)

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The pamphlet describing the globe of Monachus and (right) the dedicatee Jean Carondelet

The Archbishop of Palermo was no Sicilian, he was Jean Carondelet (nl:Jan II Carondelet) a Burgundian cleric, politician, jurist and one of the most important advisors to the Hapsburg rulers, Philip I and his son Charles V. Such connections ensured his rapid advancement in the church hierarchy and the award of rich benefices such as the Archbishopric was simply a financial perquisite. Fortunately, Carondelet published the text of the letter in a pamphlet which was widely circulated and reprinted several times. He may have had good reasons to do so.

The image of the letter shows it beginning with a forthright condemnation of the nonsense (geographorum hallucinatio) of Ptolemy and other early geographers and by implication it contradicted Aristotle's view of the world—and to disbelieve Aristotle's views, which were at the centre of religious orthodoxy, was officially heresy. Monachus had his own views of geography which were based on investigation, observation and observation rather than Aristotelian dicta. Such beliefs exposed Monachus to suspicion.

The hemispheres shown in the pamphlet are presumed to be rough sketches prinyed with two small woodcuts about 66 mm (2.6 in) in diameter. The actual globe was certainly larger and finer in every respect since the reply to Monachus contains the following statement: Orbis globum, in quo terrae ac maria luculenter depicta sunt, una cum epistola accepimus—We accept the globe of the world on which the land and sea are elegantly depicted, together with the epistle.

The content of the map is discussed in great detail by Stevenson and Harrisse and a summary of their findings by Siebold is readily available online. The most important features as follows.

• North America is no longer an island as shown in the Waldseemuller map made about 20 years previously. Instead it is shown as an extension of mainland Asia. However, Monachus did accept Waldseemuller's concept of separate North and South Americas although he reduces the separation to a channel (coincidently close to the modern Panama Canal) which he admits (in the epistle) might be dubious even if wished for as providing easy access to the Moluccas (Spice Islands). This was one of the first maps to deny the existence of a Pacific ocean extending into the northern hemisphere.
• The Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida peninsula and all of South America are remarkably accurate. Many later maps would lack this fidelity.
• The existence of a Southern continent is confidently asserted even if it is qualified by the Latin text which translates as "This part of the world not yet discovered by our navigators." Such a continent was widely believed to be necessary to maintain the Earth in balance and Magellan's sighting of Tierra del Fuego had seemed proof of its existence. Harrisse considers this to be an error by Monachus and he presumes that the text should have been "This part of the world not yet explored by our navigators."

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Another edition of the pamphlet indicating Portuguese (Lusitanian) and Spanish hemispheres.

It is the legends above the two hemispheres (in the edition preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale) which would have been of great interest to Carondelet: Hoc orbis Hemisphaerium cedit regi Hispaniae and Hoc orbis Hemisphaerium cedit regi Lusitaniae. Carondelet was the principal advisor of Charles at a time when Spain and Portugal were again debating the division of the world into two hemispheres. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas (and its amendments) had agreed a demarcation line that divided the Atlantic and cut through South America. Everything to the east, from Brazil to India, was Portuguese; everything to the west was Spanish. Twenty or so years later the discovery of the riches of the Moluccas (Spice Islands), at a time when the mineral wealth of South America was untapped, gave rise to a great debate as to who should possess those Islands. In 1528 Monachus presented Carondelet a geographical globe which implied that the anti-meridian of the Tordesillas dividing line would clearly put the Moluccas in the Spanish hemisphere and it is no surprise that Carandolet published as widely as he could. One year later the Treaty of Zaragoza was concluded whereby Spain lost the Moluccas despite the globe of Monachus.