1 A. Fanfani, The ‘Vinland Map’ and the New Controversy Over the Discovery of America, Dec. 10, 1965, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 1965. S. E. Morison, , ‘It All Boils Down To What We Knew Before,’ The New York Times Book Review, LXX (Nov. 7, 1965), p. 7 Google Scholar. Nevsky's article, reported in The New York Times of April 16, 1966, appeared in the April 15 issue of Soviet Weekly, published in London.

2 A thumbnail summary of objections to the map's authenticity by Taylor, E. G. R., eminent English historian of navigation and cartography, appeared in The Journal of the Institute of Navigation, xix, no. 1 (Jan. 1966) pp. 124–125 Google Scholar. While her opinions deserve to be taken seriously, it should be noted that none of her five points seems actually compelling, while some are clearly erroneous (e.g., the supposed extension of the West African coastline beyond the point reached by Portuguese expeditions at the time the map was drawn overlooks that the Bianco map shows the same southward extension— i.e., to Cape Bojador).

3 Skelton, R. A., Marston, Thomas E., and George D. Painter, , The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (New Haven and London; Yale University Press, 1965)Google Scholar, T. E. Marston, ‘The Manuscript: History and Description,’ pp. 3 ff.

* The following interpretation was submitted, in a preliminary form, to the fifth annual meeting of the Society for the History of Discoveries, Indiana University, November 12-13, IQ65; and somewhat more definitely, to the Columbia University Seminar on the Renaissance, November 1, 1966; and to the ‘Vinland Conference,’ Smithsonian Institution, November 15-16, 1966.

4 Foreword by A. O. Vietor, pp. v f.

5 The legend reads: ‘Vinlanda Insula a Byarno reperta et leipho socijs.’ The text of a longer accompanying legend is transcribed on p. 140.

6 Ibid., pp. v, 6 ff.; 109 £; 228-30.

* It is on such broader historical questions that the otherwise extremely scrupulous work of the analysts, whose comments appear in the Yale volume, seems to have fallen short. While the volume presents a wealth of conscientious research, invaluable for any interpretative analysis—most notably concerning the map's place in the general evolution of cartography (the cartographic section is by R. A. S. Skelton, Superintendent of the Map Room of the British Museum, one of the outstanding experts in the cartography of this period)—the attempts to link it with the proper intellectual or cultural environment are no more than haphazard and feeble, and the respective tentative conclusions seem hasty and ultimately misleading. In this sense, the analysts are not entirely free of a responsibihty in the ensuing confusion. Yet it might be more to the point to describe the volume as an indispensable compilation of the raw materials for a more satisfying historical analysis—while a definitive interpretation may call for a good deal of further searching investigation and debate.8

7 Morison; R. A. Skelton, ‘The Vinland Map,’ The Vinland Map . . ., pp. 209-212, 218-222, 222-227 (and the literature cited), pp. 140-141.

8 In essence, this is all the authors intended: ‘The present publication … is designed to be a preliminary work; completeness or finality is not claimed for the commentaries, which are to be considered a springboard for further investigation,’ A. O. Vietor, Foreword, p. vi.

9 Rectangular, North-oriented world maps among the forerunners of the Vinland map include Giovanni da Carignano's, c. 1310; the Pizzigano map and atlas, 1367-75; Abraham Cresques’ Catalan atlas, 1375 (all in portolan style); and Pirrus de Noha's, 1415(F) (Skelton 113). Mr. Skelton assumes the Vinland map used Bianco's, or a common prototype, extensively. Treating the continental land mass as an oval, interrupted by the Atlantic, the mapmaker finally fitted the picture into a rectangular page.

10 Skelton, pp. 123 f.; 155. The problem of the Northern geography, and the sources for its diffusion in continental Europe, is extensively discussed, pp. 160-227. While no one specific source for Vinland and Greenland can be determined, it may be noted that contacts with Scandinavia (from where the information must have derived) were particularly frequent in Italy, especially Rome (pp. 175 f.); that Claudius Clavus, who brought a fresh knowledge of Viking discoveries to Italy in the 1420's, learned the principles of Ptolemy's cartography there (p. 176), and may therefore have been associated with the Florentine group studying Ptolemy's geography (see below), and that Skelton's cartographic argument that Clavus could not have been the author of the information (pp. 177 f.) fails to take into account the contingency that the basic data for the Vinland map were compiled by Florentine geographers whose attention may at least initially have been drawn to the Northern Atlantic land formations by Clavus. (See also p. 199 for some noteworthy qualifications on Clavus.) On the Council of Florence in its possible connection with the map, see below. E. Haugen and O. Ore, in two independent papers presented to the Smithsonian conference, have suggested that the Vinland-Greenland information may stem from an (unknown) report by the papal legate to Greenland, Bishop Eirik, to the Holy See, c. 1125. The use of such a source by the eventual compilers of the map seems highly conceivable in the context suggested here.

11 According to Skelton's list 113, only two maps could strictly be considered as forerunners of the Vinland map for their substantive inclusiveness, combined with advanced features in the format. But of these, Cresques’ Catalan atlas of 1375, though incorporating Marco Polo's information on the Far East and using portolan techniques, neglects the Atlantic geography; while the world map in the Laurentian (‘Medici’) sea atlas of 13 51 includes the Azores and other Atlantic islands but is South-oriented and seems generally undistinguished in technique. Skelton 112 also gives credit to Giovanni Leardo's three maps (1442-52/3), roughly contemporary with the Vinland map, for their sophistication in compilation and use of varied geographic materials (Leardo used data from Conti's report). But Leardo, like Bianco, uses a circular, East-oriented format. According to all salient criteria the Vinland map seems clearly to belong to the Southern European (Italian, Catalan) tradition—a fact which Skelton assumes throughout.

12 One should keep in mind that the issue is not the spheric shape of the globe— accepted in scientific thought probably since Pythagoras (though not necessarily commonly or consistently accepted, and obsolete during the earlier Middle Ages). For the history of the spheric concept, see Randies, W. G. L., Quelques modifications apportées par les grandes découvertes à la conception mediévale du monde (Lisbon, 1959), p. 5 Google Scholar; Brown, Lloyd A., The Story of Maps (Boston, 1950), pp. 25 Google Scholar ff.

13 For a summary of the evolution of the ‘Ocean’ concept, see Skelton, pp. 153 ff.; T. Goldstein, ‘Geography in 15th Century Florence,’ Merchants and Scholars (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1965), pp. 12 f. (especially notes 8, 9).

14 The division into one sphere of land and one of water was also bound up with the traditional physical cosmology, as established by Aristotle, with its four elements arranged in concentric circles around the habitable land. See, e.g., the Petrus Apianus map of the Aristotelian cosmos, Crombie, A. C., Medieval and Early Modern Science (Doubleday Anchor Books, Garden City, N.Y.: 1959)Google Scholar, 1, PL 1—which may also serve to demonstrate why the circular format was the most suited for representing the two-part concept of the earth.

15 On variations in the technique, and its place in the tradition of nautical charts and world maps since the fourteenth century, see Skelton, pp. 110 ff.

16 On sources for the map's northern geography, see note 10 above. Skelton (p. 155) stresses the map's uniqueness in its representation of the ‘Atlantic’ In its emphasis on the Ocean the map may be considered in the same tradition with the lost Toscanelli charts, and the two 15th-century cartographic works embodying his ideas, including Behaim's globe (ibid., pp. 154 f.). For the other Atlantic islands—and their possible connection with speculation about a fourth continent, see pp. 157 ff. (and the literature cited there). T. Goldstein, ‘Florentine Humanism and the Vision of the New World,’ Adas do Congresso International da História dos Descobrimentos (Lisbon, 1961), rv, 195 ff. summarizes general fourth continent speculation since antiquity.

17 Mr. Skelton's alternative explanation, i.e., that the format may have been dictated by the need to fill the rectangular space provided by the opening of a codex, seems to miss the point (p. 115).

18 Both the rectangular space and the North-orientation are usual in the portolan charts. Though Skelton notes this (p. 112), he suggests a spurious reason for the Northorientation, i.e., that it enabled the legends to be read in the same sense as the text of the documents following the maps in the code (p. 155). (The Bianco map, despite its East-orientation, employed the same horizontal direction for its legends.) See note 9 above for world maps in portolan style among the map's forerunners.

19 The hand used in the two documents and on the legends of the map (the copyist was apparently identical with the mapmaker), the ‘Upper Rhineland bastard book hand’ —Oberrheinische Bastarda—was in use during the period in France, Flanders, and Italy, as well as in Germany or Switzerland (Marston, pp. 6 ff.). In essence, the same holds true for the paper, parchment, and binding. Though an ingenious case is made for the likely provenience of the paper from a Basle mill (ibid., pp. 9 f.), there is no reason why the paper should not have been sold elsewhere (or purchased in Basle, but used somewhere else). The binding shows certain ‘Germanic,’ but even more pronounced Italian features (pp. 13 rf.).

20 Ibid., p. 16. Skelton's arguments in favor of Basle seem vague (p. 178) and ignore the role of the Council of Florence for the exchange of geographic information (see below).

21 The Council was officially transferred to Ferrara in 1437 (and its Basle sessions continued without the sanction of the Pope) and to Florence in January 1439. During the Ferrara-Florence sessions the Council was attended by a large delegation from the Eastern churches, which gave it its importance for the collecting of geographic data. Jedin, H., Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church (Glen Rock, N. J.: Deus Books, 1960) pp. 99 Google Scholar ff.

22 See Goldstein, ‘Geography,’ pp. 19 f.

23 Ibid.

24 Strabo, Geographika, 1.4.6 (The Geography of Strabo, ed. Jones, H. L., Loeb Classical Library, London-New York 1917 Google Scholar, 1, 241, 243). D'Ailly's offhand statement to the same effect lacked Strabo's firm conceptual context and could hardly have had any serious effect on 15th-century scientific geography. See Goldstein, ‘Geography,’ notes 8, 68.

25 Anastos, M. V., ‘Pletho, Strabo and Columbus,’ Annuaire de VInstitut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientates et Stapes (Brussels 1952)Google Scholar, XII, 6 ff.

26 Goldstein, ‘Geography,’ pp. 16 ff. (For Plethon's accepting Ptolemaic ideas, probably under Florentine influence, see p. 18).

27 Ibid., pp. 23, 18 f. Ptolemy, Geography, Bk. IV, ch. 8; VII, 5; 1, 24.

28 See Anastos (p. 5) on Plethon's questioning members of Isidore of Kiev's delegation about Russian geography. See Goldstein (p. 20) on Toscanelli's collecting of geographic notes. On Plethon's description of a map of the North, shown to him by Toscanelli and presumably made by Clavus, see his Diorthosis, ed. Diller, Isis XXVII (1927), 441-451.

29 ‘And don't be surprised if I call the areas where the spices are west, when they usually call them east, because for those sailing on the lower side of the globe these areas will always be found to the west; while for those [travelling] by land and on the upper side, they will always be found to the east.’ (Et non miremini, si voco occidentales partes ubi sunt aromata, cum communiter dicantur orientates, quia navigantibus per subterraneas navigationes ad occidentem semper illae partes inveniuntur; si, enim, per terram et per superiores itinera, ad orientem semper reperiuntur). Sumien, N., La correspondence du savant Florentin Paolo del Pozzo Toscanelli avec Christophe Colomb, Paris, 1927 Google Scholar (with Latin text). The concept of ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ parts of the globe may have to be understood in the traditional terms illustrated by the Bianco map (where the three-continental land mass occupies the upper ‘cap’ of the globe). It may also be taken as, in effect, synonymous with the Northern and Southern Hemispheres—the bulk of the Spice Islands being, in fact, located in the Southern Hemisphere. Though using the conventional image, Toscanelli's premise is at any rate that the Ocean may serve as a waterway to reach the Far East.

30 Pp. 141 ff.

31 The possibility that the Vinland map is in fact the lost Toscanelli map is admittedly remote. Yet, one or two considerations deserve to be mentioned. The usual assumption that the Toscanelli map was constructed at the time of his letter to Fernao Martins has no basis in the evidence. (He merely says he is sending a ‘chart made by my own hands,' without specifying when he made it.) He seems to have kept a copy of the chart in his files, enabling him to make the copy which he enclosed in his subsequent letter to Columbus—possibly the original, from which the copies for both letters were made. It would seem conceivable that his ‘sailing chart’ (or portolano) was originally drawn at the time of the Council of Florence, when his geographic interests seem to have been at their peak (coinciding with the approximate date of the Vinland map). Whether or not any Northern Oceanic land formations were included in his map would not be evident from the vague phrasing of his letter. The gradations which he mentions might have been added later, on the copies for Martins and Columbus. While all this is distinctly conjectural, the fact remains that the Toscanelli map belonged to the extremely rare group of 15th-century cartographic works representing the full scope of the Ocean, of which the Vinland map is an example (see Skelton, pp. 154 f. and note 16 above).