Metascience (2010) 19:143146

DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9333-3

BOOK REVIEW

The construction of universal cosmography

in the renaissance
Matthew McLean: The Cosmographia of Sebastian Munster:
describing the world in the reformation. Aldershot-Burlington:
Ashgate, 2007. vii + 378 pp, 60.00 HB

Victor Navarro Brotons

Published online: 9 March 2010

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

This book aims to provide a thorough review of the most famous cosmographical
treatise of Renaissance Europe. It also describes the main features of the intellectual
personality of its author, Sebastian Munster, and accounts for his motivations and
goals in writing this book.
The term cosmography was applied in the sixteenth century to a wide range of
knowledge and activities, ranging from astronomy to natural history. The semantic
changes from different authors (Pedro Medina, Apianus, Munster etc.) reflect the
diversity of interests and occupations related to science and technology in an era of
profound cultural change. For instance, in Spain, the cosmographical activity was,
to a large measure, related to the effort of the explorations and with the control and
rule of the lands conquered, and had characteristics of a state monopoly. But there
were other cosmographical activities carried out by university teachers and
humanists, such as the description and mapping of their own land. In any case, the
interest in cosmography in the Renaissance was quite widespread in Europe, and as
Jean Marc-Besse has pointed out (Les grandeurs de la Terre. Aspects du savoir
geographique a la Renaissance, Lyon, Ens, 2003), cosmography was both the
chambre decho (the soundbox) and the work of an intellectual community, the
so-called Republic of Letters, that was experiencing its initial stages. Via
correspondence, direct contact or other means, an intense interchange of informa-
tion was carried out of texts, ideas, information, data, maps and instruments that was
instituting a universal space for communications. Moreover, cosmography had
dimensions which were scientific and political, aesthetic and ethical, philosophical
and religious.
Munsters work corresponds to the case of the academic-humanist and his goal
was to give a comprehensive description of the terrestrial world and everything in it.
In this way, the ambitious range of topics covered by Munsters Cosmography

V. N. Brotons (&)
Mestral 9, 46110 Godella, Valencia, Spain
e-mail: victor.navarro@uv.es

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included geography, physical and human, the history and customs of men, animals,
plants and prodigies of nature.
McLean begins by describing the most relevant aspects of Munsters biography:
his first studies of the trivium in his hometown, his entry into the Franciscan order
and his studies of the quadrivium, logic, ethics and metaphysics. The beginning of
his studies of Hebrew, in addition to geography and theology, under the tutelage of
Gregor Reisch, continued with the Franciscan Konrad Pellikaan. He deepened his
knowledge of mathematics in Tubingen with Johannes Stoffler, where he also
served as a professor to the members of his order. He moved to Basel in 1518, where
he worked as a theology lecturer and began his publishing career, working as a
corrector, editor and translator for Adam Petri. During his stay in Heidelberg, where
he held a professorship between 1524 and 1527, he taught theology and Hebrew,
researched geography and brought a number of practical Hebrew instructional
works to print. He returned to Basel in 1529, where he held the chair of Hebrew
without interruption until 1552, leaving the Franciscan order and embracing the
Reformation.
McLean describes the contributions of Munster in the study of sacred languages,
through the teaching and publication of numerous texts of several kinds, noting that
these studies and work on cosmography were, for Munster, both aspects of a unified
philosophia Christiana and spoke to the same hub. Intellectually, Munster was a
harmoniser, a compiler and an orderer. McLean again comments on these features
of Munsters work, which are clearly reflected in his Cosmographia.
In Chap. 2, McLean examines the development of cosmography in Munsters era,
beginning with a description of the classical sources, particularly the works of
Strabo and Ptolemy. These authors represent two traditions that Munster attempted
to gather in his work: the mathematical tradition represented by Ptolemy and the
descriptive by Strabo. After also describing the medieval tradition, McLean tries to
account for the continuity and discontinuity between the medieval and
Renaissance Weltbild (worldview), noting the major factors of change between
one and the other. The goal would be, according to McLean, to place the work of
Munster in the context of the rise of scientific geography in the context of Empire
and exploration (p. 142). McLean pays special attention to Northern humanism
and the German geographistoriens (p. 87 and ff.), and to the Project of a Germania
Illustrata made by Conrad Celtis that would serve, according to this author, to
illustrate Germanys landscape, history, institutions, regional cultures and the
cohesive force of her constant Germanic character. A project endorsed by Munster
and integrated into his Cosmographia.
In Chap. 3, McLean studies the genesis of the Cosmographia, its methods of
delivery, and its dissemination and influence. Munster articulated the cosmograph-
ical (in the Ptolemaic tradition) and geographical perspectives, but with a preference
(or sliding) toward geography. Moreover, from the beginning, Munster made it clear
that his work was the result of a collection of works for which he established a
network of collaborators to supply him geographical and cartographical informa-
tion. Munster also sought the patronage, protection and material support of princes,
and the support and collaboration of churchmen, and city councils. In addition,
Munster used his work as editor and his privileged position in Basel, a city through

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which he circulated manuscripts and new publications, including occult works.

Along with all these resources, McLean also emphasises the forensic research
undertaken by Munster through travel for the acquisition of accurate geographical
data through surveys of the territories and meetings with scholars and other people.
McLean describes the innovative techniques used by Munster to determine
distances and longitudes and latitudes of places. Finally, McLean comments on
the 35 editions of the Cosmographia published in the 100 years after the first edition
in 1544. Munster produced his definitive edition in 1550, and later other publishers,
notably Francois de Belleforest, introduced substantial changes in the work.
Indicators of the wide diffusion of the Cosmographia are both the number of
editions and copies sold and the number of languages in which it was translated, to
which must be added the considerable number of people who collaborated in the
realisation of the work in one way or another.
A case in point in relation to the reception of the Cosmographia is that of Spain.
Only Spain remained impermeable to the Cosmography (p. 186), says McLean.
McLean provides some possible explanations for this, but this question deserves a
separate study, which should also include Portugal (unmentioned by McLean), the
two countries where cosmographical activity was more developed and linked to
exploration and territorial expansion (but where we can find also a humanist
cosmography, though of much less prominence and importance). Munster, in fact,
devoted very little attention to the New World, although he dedicated his work to
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Spanish monarchy.
McLean continues his study in more detail into the organisation of the
Cosmographia, the descriptive or narrative procedures of Munster, and the topics
and innovations of the work. Munster took Pliny as a stylistic model for the bulk of
the text, and in relation to the structure and organisation of the work, Munster used
the method of the periegesis, a classical procedure that takes the form of a
progression of pilgrimage, through the World, place by place: the world is divided
into continents which are discussed in sequence. McLean stresses the importance,
richness and novelty of the illustrations in the Cosmographia: illustrations of cities
with the help of local artists, illustrations of animals and buildings, maps of the four
continents then known, maps of countries and regions, and the use of maps to
elucidate aspects of human or economic geography. He also emphasises the
ethnographic work developed by Munster, even if the cosmographer was unable to
shed entirely the tradition of cultural typologies. The analysis of zoology, botany
and prodigies of nature is quite poor and McLean ignores important works on the
subject by other authors.
In the last chapter, McLean examines how the book came to reflect the
convictions of the author. Munster would have tried to make a moralised geography
integrated with a providential embrace of human history. The conjunction of
cosmography and theology was frequent in the sixteenth century and is clearly
present in Munster. But, alongside this, McLean also emphasises the irenicism and
religious tolerance that exudes the work, in line with the intellectual climate of
Basel.
To sum up, this is a major study of one of the most outstanding works of
Renaissance Europe that should be read by historians of science and technology,

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and by all those interested in the culture of this exciting time. With works like this,
geography, associated with cosmography, is occupying the place it deserves in the
context of knowledge and scientific practices that shaped modernity.

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