When a Medieval Monk Crowdsourced the Most Accurate Map of the World, Creating “the Google Earth of the 1450s”

If we want to know the pre­cise geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion of, say, a par­tic­u­lar church in Madrid, video arcade in Tokyo or cof­fee shop in Addis Aba­ba, we can fig­ure it out in a mat­ter of sec­onds. This is, in his­tor­i­cal terms, a recent devel­op­ment indeed: many of us remem­ber when the most detailed car­to­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion we could get about dis­tant lands (or for that mat­ter, most of our own land) revealed to us only its cities and major roads — assum­ing we even had a world atlas at hand. Now, younger peo­ple take for grant­ed the knowl­edge of not just where every place in the world is, but what it looks like, what its prices are, and what its vis­i­tors have said about it.

We live today, in oth­er words, in the dream of Fra Mau­ro, the Venet­ian car­tog­ra­ph­er-monk of the late Mid­dle Ages who cre­at­ed the most detailed and accu­rate world map to that point in human his­to­ry. “As a young man, Fra Mau­ro had been a sol­dier and mer­chant of the famed Venice Mer­chant Fleet,” says the site of New World Car­to­graph­ic. “His trav­els with the fleet around the Mediter­ranean and the Mid­dle East result­ed in his becom­ing inter­est­ed in map­ping, and he even­tu­al­ly set­tled in the monastery of San Michelle on the island of Mura­no, in the Venice Lagoon, where he became a lay broth­er.” In the ear­ly 1450s, “he was com­mis­sioned by King Afon­so V of Por­tu­gal to cre­ate a map of the world.”

Por­tu­gal’s will to dom­i­nate world trade, which required the most detailed maps pos­si­ble, was matched by Fra Mau­ro’s will to gath­er infor­ma­tion about every cor­ner of Earth, no mat­ter how far-flung. And he could do that with­out leav­ing Venice: as Atlas Obscu­ra’s Adam Kessler writes, “Arab traders and world explor­ers passed through the port, giv­ing Fra Mau­ro an incom­pa­ra­ble source of gos­sip and tall tales about the world. The fall of Con­stan­tino­ple, occur­ring a few years before the map was fin­ished, would also have pro­vid­ed a rich source of well-trav­eled refugees, pre­sum­ably will­ing to swap their sto­ries for some bread or beer.” Not only did the map’s phys­i­cal cre­ation require a team of col­lab­o­ra­tors, the gath­er­ing of its con­tents relied upon the fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry equiv­a­lent of crowd­sourc­ing.

This chap­ter of car­to­graph­i­cal his­to­ry invites such tech­no­log­i­cal analo­gies: Kessler calls Fra Mau­ro’s com­plet­ed map­pa mun­di “the Google Earth of the 1450s.” Despite his reli­gious affil­i­a­tion with the monastery of San Michele, Fra Mau­ro’s efforts pro­duced an unprece­dent­ed­ly rad­i­cal ren­di­tion of the world. Break­ing with reli­gious tra­di­tion, he did­n’t put Jerusalem in the cen­ter; “the Gar­den of Eden was rel­e­gat­ed to a side­box, not shown in a real geo­graph­ic loca­tion.” His scrupu­lous­ness made him the first car­tog­ra­ph­er “to depict Japan as an island, and the first Euro­pean to show that you could sail all the way around Africa.” While his map was “the most accu­rate ever made at the time,” its more than 3,000 anno­ta­tions do con­tain plen­ty of tall tales, often of lit­er­al giants. But are they real­ly much less trust­wor­thy than the aver­age twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry user review?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World Map That Intro­duced Sci­en­tif­ic Map­mak­ing to the Medieval Islam­ic World (1154 AD)

Explore the Here­ford Map­pa Mun­di, the Largest Medieval Map Still in Exis­tence (Cir­ca 1300)

The Evo­lu­tion of the World Map: An Inven­tive Info­graph­ic Shows How Our Pic­ture of the World Changed Over 1,800 Years

Europe’s Old­est Map: Dis­cov­er the Saint-Bélec Slab (Cir­ca 2150–1600 BCE)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.


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Comments (19)
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  • Kay says:

    Why in the video would you say he had nev­er stepped foot out of Venice but he trav­eled all over with the fleet?

  • jshsh says:

    Good

  • Bob says:

    Because it’s two part expla­na­tion.

    1st) His trav­els with the fleet around the Mediter­ranean and the Mid­dle East result­ed in his becom­ing inter­est­ed in map­ping. this was the 1st step in his devel­op­ment of becom­ing a map mak­er or car­tog­ra­ph­er.
    2nd) Fra Mauro’s will to gath­er infor­ma­tion about every cor­ner of Earth, no mat­ter how far-flung. And he could do that with­out leav­ing Venice. Fra knowl­edge was lim­it­ed to Mediter­ranean and the Mid­dle East. He nev­er left Venice while he was cre­at­ing the world map and was depend­ing on both 1st and 2nd hand infor­ma­tion­al sources to cre­ate the map.

  • Aziz says:

    The Moroc­can Sherif Idris­si had cre­at­ed the most accu­rate world map cen­turies before the monk. The monk cre­at­ed noth­ing. He just “bor­rowed” oth­ers’ hard work like many oth­er Euro­pean sci­en­tists of that time.

  • Sandy says:

    Sherif Idris­si’s map was the most accu­rate avail­able *at his time.* Even the Arab world had more infor­ma­tion avail­able by Fra Mau­ro’s time, and Fra Mau­ro did exact­ly what Sherif Idris­si did — gath­er avail­able infor­ma­tion, and plot it onto parch­ment. His “cre­ation,” like Idris­si’s, was in the writ­ing-down.

  • GIS says:

    Aziz,

    I did pro­fes­sion­al car­tog­ra­phy for a cou­ple decades, ear­ly on using a GIS named, iron­i­cal­ly, IDRISI (went to ArcGIS/ArcMap lat­er). Idrisi’s maps are not bet­ter than Mau­ro’s, they’re dif­fer­ent. Idrisi had less knowl­edge to draw from and few­er tech­ni­cal means at his dis­pos­al (he died in 1165 after all). Mau­ro’s map was made with more info avail­able for many more regions, so has a lot more detail, so is nat­u­ral­ly more accu­rate.

    As Sandy says, “…Idrissi’s map was the most accu­rate avail­able *at his time.*” He was on the cut­ting edge *in the 12th cen­tu­ry*, and deserves great respect. Mau­ro was on the cut­ting edge in the 15th cen­tu­ry and deserves equal respect.

  • Denarius says:

    re Idris­si etc
    its worth not­ing that Idris­si was com­mis­sioned by Roger II of Sici­ly, along with oth­er Arab and Islam­ic car­tog­ra­phers and geo­g­ra­phers, to make the most author­i­ta­tive map/atlas of the world at the time (cir­ca 1138–1153) — cal­cu­lat­ing the cir­cum­fer­ence of the plan­et with an accu­ra­cy of with­in 10% (!) Along with many parch­ment maps, the com­plete map was appar­ent­ly cut into a 7′ slab of sil­ver, which is, unsur­pris­ing­ly, lost. Wikipedia has details: Tab­u­la Roge­ri­ana.

  • Jesse says:

    I would sug­gest to peo­ple that before being crit­i­cal of an arti­cle one might actu­al­ly try read­ing it for its con­tent, and absorbed what it actu­al­ly says. Ask­ing for clar­i­fi­ca­tion is one thing, but con­tra­dict­ing the author on a fact that they did­n’t claim is just poor com­pre­hen­sion on the read­er’s part. And since the poster who claims that col­lect­ing, orga­niz­ing, sort­ing, rat­i­fy­ing, lay­ing out, draw­ing and anno­tat­ing the world’s largest Map “at the time” isn’t cre­at­ing any­thing should nev­er say that to the face of any­one in pub­lish­ing, research, design, archi­tec­ture, edu­ca­tion, adver­tis­ing or any of the oth­er pur­suits of human cul­ture that add to our col­lect­ed body of knowl­edge. He or she might get punched in the head by a high­ly-offend­ed aca­d­e­m­ic- there­by ‘cre­at­ing’ a con­cus­sion. Hap­py now? Did you get your point across? “The monk cre­at­ed noth­ing” oth­er than the impe­tus for an inter­net arti­cle over half a mil­len­ni­um after his death because of a life-crown­ing achieve­ment of his intel­lect, artis­tic expres­sion and true pas­sion- pass­ing on the truth of the world around him …and all of us! Nope, did­n’t cre­ate a thing ..

  • Jesse says:

    I would sug­gest to peo­ple that before being crit­i­cal of an arti­cle one might actu­al­ly try read­ing it for its con­tent, and absorbed what it actu­al­ly says. Ask­ing for clar­i­fi­ca­tion is one thing, but con­tra­dict­ing the author on a fact that they did­n’t claim is just poor com­pre­hen­sion on the read­er’s part. And since the poster who claims that col­lect­ing, orga­niz­ing, sort­ing, rat­i­fy­ing, lay­ing out, draw­ing and anno­tat­ing the world’s largest Map “at the time” isn’t cre­at­ing any­thing, I would rec­om­mend that they should nev­er say that to the face of any­one who’s in pub­lish­ing, research, design, archi­tec­ture, edu­ca­tion, adver­tis­ing or any of the oth­er intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits of human cul­ture that add to our col­lect­ed body of knowl­edge. Such a feck­less action by an obvi­ous­ly unin­formed, inex­pe­ri­enced or dare I say igno­rant indi­vid­ual could, quite con­ceiv­ably, get one punched in the head by a high­ly-offend­ed aca­d­e­m­ic- there­by ‘cre­at­ing’ a con­cus­sion. Hap­py now? Did you get your point across? “The monk cre­at­ed noth­ing” oth­er than the impe­tus for an inter­net arti­cle over half a mil­len­ni­um after his death because of a life-crown­ing achieve­ment using his intel­lect, artis­tic expres­sion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and true pas­sion- pass­ing on the truth of the world around him …and all of us! Nope, did­n’t cre­ate a thing ..

  • Winsikxsternerskit says:

    07- 08–02-03–014ort hid­den mid dri­ve pimph.

  • Greg Niemeyer says:

    Either the map or your arti­cle is upside down.

  • Greg Niemeyer says:

    Either the map or your arti­cle is upside down. Please fix!

  • محمد غيته says:

    العالم المسلم التدريس صاحب هذه الخريطة اللتى
    سرقها مدعى العلم

  • Gregory Dearth says:

    The map isn’t upside down.

    North did­n’t become “UP” on a map real­ly until the 16th cen­tu­ry. So a lot of car­tog­ra­phers before then did their own ori­en­ta­tions. Some parts of the world had the north=up con­cept well before the 16th cen­tu­ry but it was­n’t real­ly a uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed idea that every­one had to adhere to. In 1450, nobody would have cared which way the map was ori­ent­ed as long as it worked.

  • A person who read the comments says:

    Lol the image is most def­i­nite­ly upside down.… You can tell by look­ing at the illus­tra­tions in the cor­ners lol A small.oversight as the scale of the image makes it not so easy to notice at a glance.

  • Nicky Pee says:

    >The Moroc­can Sherif Idris­si had cre­at­ed the most accu­rate world map cen­turies before the monk. The monk cre­at­ed noth­ing. He just “bor­rowed” oth­ers’ hard work like many oth­er Euro­pean sci­en­tists of that time.

    Jesus Christ dude, have a cou­ple beers and relax. Human civ­i­liza­tion is built on its pre­de­ces­sors and its con­tem­po­raries. No one *tru­ly* invents some­thing from noth­ing. These maps are per­fect exam­ples — they both required the com­bined knowl­edge of thou­sands of peo­ple, per­haps even mil­lions when you con­sid­er the resources and sailors required to explore the land and sea of Earth.

    Sherif Idris­si and “the monk” were broth­ers of a sort, sep­a­rat­ed by time and space. Instead of get­ting frus­trat­ed and divi­sive, why not find joy in the com­bined con­tri­bu­tions of Chris­tians, Mus­lims, Bud­dhists, etc. to the advanced civ­i­liza­tion we enjoy today. Sci­ence is the great­est col­lab­o­ra­tion of human­i­ty.

  • E.A. Blair says:

    Chi­nese maps of this same peri­od typ­i­cal­ly had south as the “up” direc­tion. Dwarvish maps of Mid­dle-Earth use east.

  • E.A. Blair says:

    Fra Mauaro’s work was sig­nif­i­cant enough to have a region of lunar high­lands just south of Mare Imbri­um named after him. It was the land­ing site of the Apol­lo 14 mis­sion in 1971.

  • maggie says:

    Call me what­ev­er, but the map is exquis­ite­ly beau­ti­ful, & read­ing this arti­cle has giv­en me goose­bumps.
    Thank you so much for this serendip­i­tous edu­ca­tion.
    I am grate­ful.
    ~m

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