Franciscus Monachus

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 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. He was known for the prediction he gave to Margaret of Austria concerning the defeat and captivity of Francis I at the Battle of Pavia. However, it is his fame as a geographer that has lasted, principally through the globe that he constructed c1527.

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 1524 letter from Antwerp 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.)

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.

As noted by Jan Denucé, we probably have a fairly faithful image of the lost globe in Oronce Fine’s map of 1531, who adopted the views of Monachus.

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 on the hemispheres shown in the pamphlet, which bear the inscription in Latin which translates:"This part of the coastline that has been revealed to us by voyages is not yet evident". A paragraph in the text explains:

  To the south, land has been found in two places south of America toward the South Pole, stretching in longitude 43 degrees westward, to latitude south sometimes to 54, sometimes 53, sometimes 55 degrees as the topography reveals. Moreover in the year 1526 a land has been discovered at 0 degrees longitude and 52 degrees south latitude, parts of which are empty of inhabitants. The rest of the Austral coasts still lie in obscurity, but to me it seems very likely that that part of the Earth is not overspread and covered by the Ocean. Indeed it is conjectured and argued that vast and extensive regions and islands lie there, but because of the distances between places and the infertile nature of the soil, they are less frequented.

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 (This hemisphere of the globe is granted to the King of Spain/Portugal). 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. In his accompanying tract, De Orbis Situ, he said: "Maximilian Transylvanus recently published a letter concerning the Moluccas islands, which exist in the sea called variously the Mar del Sur, or of the Sinae, or of Syn [China Sea], finally revealed to the men of our age excellently, and clearly all in the portion and dominion of the King of Spain, except for Java and Porne or Borneo, of which a part toward the west is subject to the King of Portugal, the part which faces the east being subject to the King of Spain". It is therefore 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.