1545 Munster Modern Map of Greece (2nd issue)

This is a scarce 1545 example of Sebastian Münster's modern map of Greece: the second imprint of the first detailed map specifically of Greece and the Greek Islands based on contemporary geographical information. Münster's Geographia and Cosmographia provided for many years the literate European's only glimpses of the world, and these two works contained several maps with previously unseen contemporaneous knowledge of the areas they depicted. For Münster's readership, this map was the first depiction of Greece not based upon the 2nd century work of Claudius Ptolemy. This map appeared in Geographia as a somewhat late addition: the 1540 and 1542 editions of the work did not include this map. It would appear again in the 1552 Ptolemy (with the added coordinate bars characteristic of that edition.) It first appeared in the 1544 debut edition of Münster's Cosmographia and would appear in all editions of that work until 1578. In that 1544 German edition, the title of the map explicitly states Münster's intent: 'Neüw Griechen land mit andern anstoffenden in lendern/ wie es zu unsern zeiten beschreiben ist' - 'New Greece... as it is described in our era.'

The Map's Scope and Content

The distinction of this as a modern, not a Ptolemaic map refers not only to the detail within the map but in its overall scope. The maps based on Ptolemy's tenth table of Europe - such as those that appear in the 1477, 1482 and 1513 Ptolemies (as well as Münster's own Tabula Europa X) all share the same focus. They present the Greek peninsula and islands in detail, including Crete, but show almost none of Asia Minor, and detail only as far north as the 'Scardius Mountains' separating Macedonia from Illyricum, or Dalmatia. Although they show the southern part of the Hellespont, Constantinople and the opening of the Black Sea was not included.

The first modern regional map to include Greece was the 1513 Waldseemüller Tabula Moderna Bossine, Servia, Gretiae et Sclavoniae which showed Greece along with the Balkans as far north as the Danube, as far south as Crete, and encompassing southern Italy and Sicily in the west, and part of Asia Minor in the east. In contrast, Münster's modern map of Greece specifically focuses on the Greek Peninsula and Islands while including Constantinople and the Bosphorus.

Consequently, this is the first map to focus on Greece, while adding to Ptolemy's toponymy place names useful to the 16th century reader. For example, the ancient Greek Euboea is here replaced with Negropont; Boeotia with Phocis, Corcyra with Corfu.

An Attractive Woodcut

Typical of virtually all maps printed north of the Alps in the first half of the 16th century, this map is a woodcut, lending the work a distinctive aesthetic. Mountain ranges and forests are indicated pictorially, and major cities are likewise presented as small clusters of buildings in profile. Interestingly, the most prominent of these is neither Constantinople, nor any city in Greece proper; the largest shown are Nicea and Bursa, both in Asia Minor. Bursa, in particular, is shown as a great city. Perhaps the scale of the map prevented Münster from showing Constantinople so grandly, but Bursa (spelled Byrsa here) had been the first major capital city of the Ottoman Empire and it remained to be the most important administrative and commercial center in the empire until the 1453 conquest of Constantinople. During Münster's lifetime, Bursa continued to be a wealthy nexus of the Ottoman silk trade, and a major cultural hub.

Publication History and Census

Cut by an anonymous formschneider, this map was prepared sometime after 1542 for inclusion in the first edition of Münster's 1544 Cosmographia, and appeared in all editions of that work until 1578. It was included in the 1545 and 1552 editions of Geographia: the present example conforms typographically to the 1545 Geographia edition. This edition of Geographia Universalis is catalogued in thirty-six institutional collections. We see three examples of this edition of the separate map in OCLC, although it appears on the market from time to time.