The Leardo Map of the World, 1452 or 1453 / In the Collections of the American Geographical Society

AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY LIBRARY SERIES NO. 4
In the Collections of the American Geographical Society
BY JOHN KIRTLAND WRIGHT, Ph.D. Librarian, American Geographical Society
WITH A NOTE ON THE REPRODUCTION OF THE MAP BY A. B. HOEN
AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY BROADWAY AT 156TH STREET NEW YORK 1928
COPYRIGHT, 1928 BY THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
RUMFORD PRESS CONCORD, N. H.
In the first two lines the cartographer makes an excursion into the realm of theology. According to Dr. Arthur C. McGiffert, to whom the present writer submitted the passage, this part of the inscription is “evidently not the work of a theologian, for it makes God the creator ‘of all things created and un created’ (the credal phrase is ‘things visible and invisible’), and in the next clause runs the Trinity (‘three persons and one common substance’) and the person of Christ together as if they were the same thing. There are reminiscences of the Nicene creed, but the whole is theologically a hodge-podge.”
The astronomical details are followed in the third paragraph by the explanation of the calendar. The latter consists of eight concentric circles, of which the innermost gives the dates of Easter for ninety-five years, from April 1, 1453, to April 10, 1547; when Easter falls in April, A is written in the small compartment, when in March, M ; leap years are designated by B (“bissextile years”).
It should be noted first that east is at the top of the map and Jerusalem at the center; hence the long axis of the Mediterranean runs vertically up the southern half of the disk.
With the exception of the Red Sea, appropriately colored, the seas are uniformly blue. The lands are left the natural color of the bleached parchment except for a fiery red region in the far south bearing the legend: “Desert uninhabited because of heat,” and a dreary brown waste in the far north marked: “Desert uninhabited because of cold.” Islands are tinted either red or yellow, with green patches in the interior of Great Britain and Ireland. The only other natural features depicted are mountains, rivers, and lakes, although certain deserts are mentioned in legends. Mountain ranges are represented by rows of mounds, alternately red, green, and blue, and each rising symmetrically in two or three steps. Rivers are blue and, as frequently on medieval maps, sometimes connect one sea with another, or at least have common sources. A yellow lake, labeled “Sandy Sea,” lies in the midst of the Sahara.