Sketching the Unknown:
A Phenomenological and Computational Study
of the Rossi “Map With Ship”

The actual maps that exist are but a tiny subset
of the theoretical maps that could exist. These
real maps are products of a very small number
of trajectories through cartographic space...each
with its own unique place in this mathematical
construction. Every real map is surrounded by a
tiny cluster of real or unreal neighbors
who are its ancestors and descendents...

The motivation for this investigation stems from the problem of trying to identify the possible sources and the overall chronological similarity of the Rossi “Map With Ship” to other maps that may be contemporary with it. The history and origin of “Map With Ship” has been a problem for historians of cartography almost since its discovery and it has never been adequately studied from an analytic perspective. A recent C-14 dating of the vellum yielded two age distributions both after 1475.The map purportedly shows the coast of Asia, including Japan, and the coast of North America in the area of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. Scholars have drawn attention to the fact that the strait shown on the map is depicted in a form that recalls several European maps of the region from the late sixteenth century and later. In particular the maps of Zaltieri of 1566 and that of Forlani of 1574 have been discussed in recent studies[1]. The date of the map has been variously claimed to be from the time of Marco Polo’s journeys, to be a fifteenth or sixteenth century copy of a map from the time of Polo, or to be an outright fake or forgery. Although there have been several studies of the Rossi materials in the past no real conclusions have been reached as to the veracity of any of the above claims[2]. The “Map With Ship” is a strange mixture of elements that graphically do not seem to fit the style of any particular cartographic time frame. It is closely related to other maps in the Rossi corpus such as the “Map of the New World” and the “Sirdomap Map” and it appears to be a palimpsest in several areas on both the verso and recto. The map also contains script in three languages: Venician, Chinese and Arabic[3].
Marcian Rossi, the original owner of the collection of maps and documents, corresponded in the early 1930’s with Leo Bagrow who wrote the first study of the corpus[4]. In this study Bagrow reproduces part of Rossi’s letter:

“Marco Polo entrusted the maps to Admiral Rujerus Sanseverinus who had graduated the Nautical School at Amalfi. A number of centuries later his descendent Ruberth Sanseverinus married Elizabeth Feltro Dell Rovere, Duchess of Urbino. In the year 1539 Julius Cesare de Rossi, count of Bergeto married Maddalena Feltro Rovere Sanseverinus…”

Rossi continues this genealogical tree down to his great-grandfather Marciano de Rossi from whom he received the group of map and documents. None of this has however been verified by scholarship.
The following paper will attempt to shed some light on the date of “Map with Ship” by taking a more phenomenological approach to the information actually shown on the map through the use of several mathematical models. By modeling the projection of the Map with Ship, assuming that there is one, and by looking closely at the scale error displayed in the coastal outlines, this study shows that the information on the map is consistent with the geometric methods that would have been available to cartographers in the late medieval period or to a fifteenth or sixteenth century copyist. This is not to say in any way that the map dates from this early period but rather to more conservatively conclude that there is nothing in its geometrical makeup that would exclude such a dating. The calculations for the Rossi map contained several sources of error most especially in the selection of homologies. The final selected points required experimentation and trail and error as the map is somewhat devoid of specific geographic details. The calculated transformational grid overlaid on the Rossi map is shown in the Figure.

The transformational grid shows that we have induced a scale error change from north to south and east to west that is consistent with the family of pseudo-conic projections. Almost all of the error in the Rossi Map is located in angular scale deviations in the Alaskan region, the very region whose existence on the map is the most suspect. The variation in the transformational grid is extremely interesting in that it implies that the information on the map was probably not copied verbatim from a Portolan chart (there is scale deviation and there is little rotation) but rather from a projected map. The pseudo-conic projection scale variation shown on the Rossi map is however nearly indistinguishable at this large level of error from the only other small scale map projections that would have been available to someone before 1550, that of Ptolemy's first and second projections. Hence although the map is projected, and could not have been derived from nautical charts, it is consistent with the geometrical tools that were available to cartographers before the discovery of the information that the map shows. Based on the results of the spline and warping calculations we also calculated the two-dimensional the similarity coefficients of the Rossi map compared to other possible projections[5]. http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~tobler/publications/pdf_docs/cartography/ScalProb.pdf

These coefficients yield a measure of how similar or dissimilar a map is to different projections using distance functions and calculating least-square norms. We attempted this calculation in order to show that the Rossi map was not similar to any other commonly used modern projections and to determine how far it was geometrically from the family of conic projections that characterize those of Ptolemy. This calculation, the results of which are shown in the graph, confirm the results of the spline calculations and show that the Rossi map is most similar to the conic projections of Ptolemy and has little in common with more modern forms.

One can easily see in the diagram below that the Rossi map’s coefficients place it in the location of the two conic Ptolemaic models and far from the cylindrical Sinusoidal and Mercator projections.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Conclusion

There are spaces in which the determination of position requires not a finite number, but either an endless series or a continuous manifold of determinations of quantity. Such manifolds are, for example, the possible determinations of a function for a given region, the possible shapes of a figure, and so on.

-Bernhard Riemann

In conclusion we have shown that the Rossi “Map With Ship” has no internal or geometric inconsistencies that would lead us to believe that it was definitively copied from a modern map. However, the models employed in coming to this conclusion unfortunately do not totally rule out this possibility. For although we have suggested that the map was not copied verbatim from a Portolan chart we have no way of narrowing down the possible geographic sources more precisely at the present time. All we can say based on this study is that it is still possible that the Rossi map was copied from or based on geographic sources that are consistent in their construction, geometry and scale error with those that COULD have been produced or copied from late medieval and early modern sources. The question of the date of the map and its authenticity must however await further studies.

[1] Benjamin B Olshin, “The Mystery of the ‘Marco Polo’ Maps: An Introduction to a Privately-Held Collection of Cartographic Materials Relating to the Polo Family”, Terrae Incognitae, 39 (2007): 1-23

[2] Leo Bagrow, “The Maps from the Home Archives of the Descendants of a friend of Marco Polo,” Imago Mundi 5 (1948): 3 –13.
[3] The Chinese symbols on the map are unreadable and appear to be either nonsensical or copied by someone who did not know the language as is some of the Arabic script.

[4] Bagrow, (1948)

[5] Waldo Tobler, “Measuring the Similarity of Map Projections,” American Cartographer 13 (1986) 135-39.

Sententiae in quatuor IV libris distinctae:
Manuscript Fragments from Library of Congress’ 1513 Edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia by Martin Waldseemüller


Structure of Manuscript

The copy of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1513 edition of Ptolemy’s Geographia housed in the Geography and Map Division of the Library Congress contains a group of interesting vellum fragments used as guards to attach the maps found in the book to the binding. The fragments are manuscripts in two different hands, the identity of which, until now, has been unknown since the book’s acquisition by the Library in 1867.

The manuscript found in the Ptolemy is made up of a series of heavily annotated fragments with glossae volatiles from the Sententiae in quatuor IV libris distinctae (Four Books of Sentences) by Peter Lombard (ca.1100-1160). The fragments, which total 46 in number, each consist of from four to seven lines of text in four columns and all come from the first book, “On the Mystery of the Trinity”. The text is written in Northern Textualis Formata[1] indicating a possible date range of 1275-1350.

(click on figure to enlarge)
The first book of the Sententiae discusses, from a purely cosmological viewpoint, the evidence for the existence of God. The doctrine of the Trinity is also discussed using a series of analogies that come from Late Antiquity, mostly taken from the works of Augustine. Lombard denies that any real knowledge of the doctrine can be obtained from these analogies without positive revelation and faith, and emphasizes, again with Augustine, the fact that human speech cannot give a satisfactory account of the nature of God.

The glossae volatiles (flying glosses) on many of the fragments are all in the same hand and are found throughout the text. These glosses consist of three types. The first are corrections made to the Latin orthography using cross outs and replacement text. These corrections are simply grammatical changes made to the manuscript text. These glosses may have been used in preparing of a printed edition. The second type of gloss consists in simple annotations regarding the location of portions of the text that are quotes from other works. The third type of annotation is much more extensive and deals with the subject of the written text itself. An example of this is where the annotator is troubled by the phrase “from the altar the coal by which the mouths of the faithful”. The annotator alludes to a similarity of this passage to Isaiah 6:6: “And there flew toward me one of the Seraphim, and in his hand a coal, which he had taken with forceps from the altar.”



The manuscript contains rubrics (red characters) that fulfill several functions in this particular manuscript.
1 .They mark subdivisions within the chapters.
2. They identify sources of quotations or the beginnings of quotations.
3. They point out important or difficult issues. For example there are several cases of “be careful” or “pay attention here” found in the fragments.

The 1513 Ptolemy is the only one of Waldessumüller’s works for which a printer and firm date are known. The text and the maps of the Geographia were printed by Johannes Schott of Strasbourg and many of the pages of the 1513 edition have the same watermarks as those found on Waldseemüller’s 1507 and 1513 World Maps[2]. The fragments may have been discarded after the preparation of a printed edition as several editions of the Sententiae in quatuor IV libris distinctae were made in Strasbourg in the late 15th and early sixteenth centuries. The manuscript shows commonalities with two of these editions and may have been used for the Duns Scotus Commentary on the Sententiae in quatuor IV libris distinctae, printed in Strasbourg in 1474.

[1] Albert Derolez, The Paleography of Gothic Manuscript Books: from the twelfth to the early sixteenth century. (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press), 2003.
[2] John Hessler, The Naming of America: Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 World Map and the Cosmographiae Introductio, (London: Giles and the Library of Congress), 2008.

I want to thank Lage Carlsen, Senior Book Conservator at the Library of Congress, for providing the photographs of the manuscript fragments and Chet van Duzer for the intial attribution of the Lombard fragments.

Translation of Large Text Block on Sheet 9 of 1516 Carta Marina
by Martin Waldseemuller

The text block on sheet 9 of the 1516 Carta Marina is the only source for information regarding the number of copies of the 1507 World Map by Waldseemüller that may have been printed. A full translation of the text block has never been published and is found below.

(click on figure to enlarge)

Ilacomilus, Martin Waldseemuller, wishes to the reader good fortune.

We will seem to you reader, to have diligently presented and shown a representation of the world previously, which was filled with error, wonder and confusion. In this representation, we do believe that the reader disagrees with us in that we have represented irregular forms in our previous description of the land and sea (and these we certainly described with no deceiving rhetoric). Our previous representation pleased very few people, as we have lately come to understand. Therefore, since true seekers of knowledge rarely color their words in confusing rhetoric, and do not embellish facts with charm, but instead with a venerable abundance of simplicity, we must say that we cover ours heads with a humble hood. In the past we published an image of the whole world in 1000 copies, which was completed in a few years, not without hard work, and based on the tradition of Ptolemy, whose works are known to few because of his excessive antiquity. This representation took much effort to bring to light so that it would include the locations of the lands and the regions of peoples along with the manners and habits of men. We made it so that it would contain only the cities, the mountains, and the races of men along with their customs known to have flourished and to have been known by the people in the time of Ptolemy[1].

After the bold citizens of Venice[2], the great pontiffs Clement IV[3] and Gregory X[4], and after both Christopher Columbus and Americo Vespucci, captains of Portugal, published the accounts of their discoveries many things were added to our knowledge. Although it is well known that the machinery of the world has not varied since the time of Ptolemy, it is indeed a fact that the passing of time inverts and changes things so that it is difficult to find one city or region in twenty which has kept its ancient name or that has not been newly developed after his time. Because of this and because nothing in these matters is clear in hindsight, difficulties may arise in our understanding of very distant regions and cities. Where are now located Augusta, Rauricum, Elcebu, Berbetomagus, or, among the foreign maritime powers, Byzantium, Aphrodisium, Carthage, Ninive, whose names and locations have been transferred to us which great accuracy by Ptolemy? This is of course a difficult question. Are they close by, next to the Rhine River, or far away and concealed? Who has knowledge of, who can tell apart and who can make known to us the Sequani people, the Hedui, the Helvetians, the Leuci, the Vangioni, the Hagoni, the Mediomatrices, all of whom where so well known at one time. I acknowledge that it is possible that no one could now know the manners of the ancients and could come upon knowledge of Celtic Gaul and Belgium, Austrasia, Noricam, Sarmatia, Synthia, Thaurica and the golden Chersonses, the bay of Caticolphi, the bay of Ganges and the very well known island of Taprobane. Time is expansive; it renews, and brings change into the affairs of men.

Many years ago a traveler set upon a long and laborious journey[5] and, as in more recent times explored the lands of men because even the lands whose names have not changed may have been carelessly reported as things in other zones and at the equator have been. It is obvious that the boundaries of Ethiopia and indeed the fortunate islands, now called the Canaries, could be more north, and the boundaries of India, by the persuasion of its leaders, could be more south than the locations passed on by Ptolemy. Is it not possible that Ptolemy did not judge the accounts of travelers so critically and that information from travelers who believed in some absurdity was transferred to him so that his work now persuades people that the new cosmographers rather than the ancient are to be imitated, lest some important change or alteration remain unknown or uncertain. Moved by these considerations, I have prepared this second image of the whole world for the benefit of the learned, so that as the representation of the whole of the land and sea by the ancient authors stood together, not only would the new and present image of the world shine through, but also the natural change that has taken place in the intervening time would be so evident that you would have a unique view of what sort of things become perishable. These things whatever they may have been in the past and whatever they may become in the future are presented so this change may in no way be doubted as time goes on.

Therefore it has pleased us to create an image and description of the whole world as a marine chart after the manner of modern cartographers to the point that we copied their style in the descriptions of the sea from the most accepted nautical records. In consequence we have generally copied the accounts of journeys, chorographies and the reports of recent travelers in the description of the Mediterranean, of Asia and of Africa. We used accounts of the brother Ascelius[6], who took care of many business affairs under the Supreme Pontiff Innocence, of brother Odoricus de Foro[7], of Julius de Parca Leonis, of Peter de Alaicus, of brother of John de Plano Carpio[8], of Massius and Marcus, Venetian citizens, of Casper, the Jewish informer, whose book of travels was copied and dedicated to the King of Portugal, of Francis de Albiecheta, Joseph of India, of Aloysius de Cadamosco, of Peter Aliaris, of Christopher Columbus, of Ianuensus Ludoicus, and of Vatomanus Bononien. All of these travels, experiences and descriptions of places found on the globe, communicated to us by the patrons and admirers of this affair, we have rendered into this single Marine chart. We took great care in making sure that not a single word of our description be embellished in some sweet style or adorned with some kind of festive arrangement. For it is always better to speak in a humble and truthful style. For this reason we ask you to look upon us with a benevolent spirit.
Farewell.

[1] In this paragraph Waldseemuller appears to be describing his 1507 World Map. Several scholars have put forth other suggestions for the identity of the map discussed here such as the maps contained in the 1513 Ptolemy (See Peter Dickson’s, The Magellan Myth, 2007, for more on this). The maps found in the 1513 Ptolemy however do not have any reference to particular customs and peoples found in the various locations as are found on the 1507 map and seemingly described here by Waldseemuller in this paragraph. The description is also problematic in relation to the 1507 world map as it of course it contains, as Dickson points out, much more than simply the lands known to Ptolemy.
[2] Probably a reference to Marco Polo’s travels.
[3] (d. 1268) Both Clement IV Gregory X expanded the known world from the Ptolemaic view by sending ambassadors to the Mongols.
[4] (1210 – 1276)
[5] Polo?
[6] Dominican priest who led an envoy from Pope Innocent IV to the Mongol kings in around 1245.
[7] Marco Polo speaks of Unc-Khan as the great prince who is called Prester John, the whole world speaking of his great power". In 1229 the celebrated missionary John of Monte Corvino converted a Nestorin prince belonging to this tribe, who afterwards served Mass for him (Rex Gregorius de illustri genere Magni Regis qui dictus fuit Presbyter Johannes)). Many of the actual missionaries, who at this time were trying to convert the Mongolian princes of Upper Asia, paid much attention to the extravagant embellishments of the legend. One of these missionaries, Odoricus de Foro Julii, wrote "that not a hundredth part of the things related of Prester John were true".
[8] Franciscan who visited the Mongols also in around 1245.