Bible Dictionaries
Cartography

1910 New Catholic Dictionary

The art of drawing maps or charts, was carried on, in medieval times, in the monasteries; it has been greatly influenced by the work of Catholics.

• Domnus Nicolaus Germanus, a Benedictine monk (1466) was the first scholar to modernize Ptolemy and make him generally accessible.
• Cardinal Fillastre (1348-1428) had Ptolemy's maps drawn from a Greek original.
• John Ruysch (1460-1533), a Benedictine, published a famous map of the world representing the new Spanish and Portuguese discoveries in America.
• Canon Martin Waldseemüller (1475-1522) was responsible for the naming of America, being the first to use this name on a wall map and a globe.
• Martin Behaim (1459-1507), a German Catholic, constructed the oldest globe, now at Nuremberg.
• The most celebrated monument of medieval cartography, a map of the world, in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, was the work of a Camaldolese monk, Fra Mauro (1459).
• Abraham Ortelius (1527-98), a Catholic of Antwerp, made the first modern atlas which combined the maps of the world and contained a catalog of maps with the names of 99 cartographers who lived before 1570.
• The Jesuit missionaries made maps of the territory they explored and a famous map of the Chinese Empire (1717) was due to their efforts.