TITLE OF THE 1509 (STRASBURG) EDITION.
Not far from the same time a certain undated edition of the Cosmographiæ introductio appeared at Lyons, though no place is given. Of this edition there are two copies in the British Museum, and others in the Lenox and Barlow collections; but they all lack a map,[583] which is found in a copy first brought to public attention by the bookseller Tross, of Paris, in 1881,[584] and which is now owned by Mr. C. H. Kalbfleisch, of New York. Its date is uncertain. Harrisse (Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 63) placed it first in 1510, but later (Cabots, p. 182) he dated it about 1514, as Tross had already done. D’Avezac (Waltzemüller, p. 123) thinks it could not have been earlier than 1517.[585]
The chief interest of this map to us is the fact that it bears the words “America noviter reperta” on what stands for South America; and there is fair ground for supposing that it antedates all other printed maps yet known which bear this name.
At not far from the same time, fixed in this instance certainly in 1515, we find America on the earliest known globe of Schöner.[586] Probably printed to accompany this globe, is a rare little tract, issued the same year (1515) at Nuremberg, under the title of Luculentissima quædā terræ totius descriptio. In this Schöner speaks of a “fourth part of the globe, named after its discoverer, Americus Vespucius, a man of sagacious mind, who found it in 1497,” adopting the controverted date.[587]
Meanwhile the fame of Vespucius was prospering with the Vienna coterie. One of them, Georg Tanstetter, sometimes called Collimitius, was editing the De natura locorum librum of Albertus Magnus; and apparently after the book was printed he made with type a marginal note, to cite the profession of Vespucius that he had reached to fifty degrees south, as showing that there was habitable land so far towards the Southern Pole.[588]
Joachim Watt, or Vadianus, as he was called in his editorial Latin, had in 1515 adopted the new name of America, and repeated it in 1518, when he reproduced his letter in his edition of Pomponius Mela, as explained on another page.[589] Apian had been employed to make the mappemonde for it, which was to show the new discoveries. The map seems not to have been finished in time; but when it appeared, two years later (1520), in the new edition of Solinus, by Camers, though it bore the name of America on the southern main, it still preserved the legend in connection therewith which awarded the discovery to Columbus.[590] Watt now quarrelled with Camers, for they had worked jointly, and their two books are usually found in one cover, with Apian’s map between them. Returning to St. Gall, Vadianus practised there as a physician, and reissued his Mela at Basle in 1522, dedicating it to that Dr. Faber who had been the teacher of Ringmann in Paris eighteen years before.[591]
In 1522 Lorenz Friess, or Laurentius Phrysius, another of Duke René’s coterie, a correspondent of Vespucius, published a new edition of Ptolemy at the Grüninger press in Strasburg, in which the fame of Columbus and Vespucius is kept up in the usual equalizing way. The preface, by Thomas Ancuparius, sounds the praises of the Florentine, ascribing to him the discovery “of what we to-day call America;” the Admiral’s map, Tabula Terre Nove,[592] which Waldseemüller had published in the 1513 edition, is once more reproduced, with other of the maps of that edition, re-engraved on a reduced scale. The usual legend, crediting the discovery to Columbus, is shown in a section of the map, which is given in another place.[593] Phrysius acknowledges that the maps are essentially Waldseemüller’s, though they have some changes and additions; but he adds a new mappemonde of his own, putting the name America on the great southern main,—the first time of its appearing in any map of the Ptolemy series. A fac-simile is annexed.
There is thus far absolutely no proof that any one disputed the essential facts of the discovery by Columbus of the outlying islands of Asia, as the belief went, or denied him the credit of giving a new world to the crowns of Aragon and Castile, whether that were Asia or not. The maps which have come down to us, so far as they record anything, invariably give Columbus the credit. The detractors and panegyrists of Vespucius have asserted in turn that he was privy to the doings at St.-Dié and Strasburg, and that he was not; but proof is lacking for either proposition. No one can dispute, however, that he was dead before his name was applied to the new discoveries on any published map.
If indeed the date of 1497, as given by the St.-Dié publication, was correct, there might have been ground for adjudging his explorations of the mainland to have antedated those of Columbus; but the conclusion is irresistible that either the Spanish authorities did not know that such a claim had been made, or they deemed the date an error of the press; since to rely upon the claim would have helped them in their conflict with the heirs of Columbus, which began the year following the publication of that claim, or in 1508 and continued to vex all concerned till 1527; and during all that time Vespucius, as has been mentioned, is not named in the records of the proceedings. It is equally hard to believe that Ferdinand Columbus would have passed by a claim derogating from the fame of his father, if it had come to him as a positive assertion. That he knew of the St.-Dié tract we have direct evidence in his possession of a copy of it. That it did not trouble him we know also with as much confidence as negative testimony can impart; for we have no knowledge of his noticing it, but instead the positive assertion of a contemporary that he did not notice it.
The claim for Vespucius, however, was soon to be set up. In 1527 Las Casas began, if we may believe Quintana, the writing of his Historia.[594] It is not easy, however, to fix precisely the year when he tells us that the belief had become current of Vespucius being really the first to set his foot on the main. “Amerigo,” he tells us further,[595] “is said to have placed the name of America on maps,[596] thus sinfully failing toward the Admiral. If he purposely gave currency to this belief in his first setting foot on the main, it was a great wickedness; and if it was not done intentionally, it looks like it.” Las Casas still makes allowances, and fails of positive accusation, when again he speaks of “the injustice of Amerigo, or the injustice perhaps those who printed the Quattuor navigationes appear to have committed toward the Admiral;” and once more when he says that “foreign writers call the country America: it ought to be called Columba.” But he grows more positive as he goes on, when he wonders how Ferdinand Columbus, who had, as he says, Vespucius’ account, could have found nothing in it of deceit and injustice to object to.