The Megallanic Diaries 3

“Here Begins the Dark Sea”

A common misunderstanding among those who know a little more about the Magellan expedition than most is that its circumnavigation proved the earth is round. Some people said the same almost 500 years later about the famous photo of Earth from Apollo 8 in Moon orbit. Leaving aside the understanding of proof we wish to adopt for the consideration, the further implication, in the first instance, is that people didn’t already believe the earth round. One can’t say with any confidence what most people then believed (Gallup wasn’t polling in those days) but amongst the educated, the earth had been understood as round for centuries. Of course, the vast majority of people during the Middle Ages were uneducated, and then, as now – as much evidence now attests – there was little reliable correlation between education and reason or even reason’s fine young sibling or stalwart old aunt, common sense. Accordingly, many of Magellan’s mariners – who were not told of an intent to circumnavigate the globe – did fear nonetheless that simply venturing too far into the unknown of the Sea of Darkness, our Atlantic, would take them over the edge of the world.

They also believed in sea monsters. The fearful mythology of sea monsters remained prevalent enough that their depiction continued not uncommonly on maps of the world– mappa mundi – even decades after the Magellan voyage.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, mappa mundi were marvels of developing cartography, reflecting burgeoning navigational discovery and still evolving ideas of how to perceive the globe on which humans increasingly understood themselves to live. A just released book, Here Begins the Dark Sea: Venice, a Medieval Monk, and the Creation of the Most Accurate Map of the World, details the creation of this map around 1450, forty-two years before Columbus and seventy before Magellan’s voyage. This video offers much in little time.

The video notes that, of course, Fra Mauro’s map, despite its extraordinary advances and achievement, in the middle of the fifteenth century does not depict America or Australia. By 1507, on the Universalis Cosmographia, by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, twelve years before Magellan, America appears. But knowledge of the globe, its waters and landmasses, newly recognized or explored and mapped with increasing detail, was like any race toward technological and commercial development we would recognize today. It was secreted by nation and closely guarded. The Cosmographia had multiple influences and among them appears to have been the Cantino planisphere, a Portuguese mappa mundi smuggled from Portugal to Italy in 1502. It shows, among other revelations, Portugal’s progress along the Brazilian coast.

The Cantino planisphere (1502), Biblioteca Estense, Modena, Italy

No greater competition in exploration existed than that between Portugal and Spain, a deadly mistrust at the heart of the Magellan story. Spain had its own version of the map represented for Portugal by the Cantino planisphere. As with Portuguese captains, entrusted with its close care, every Spanish ship’s captain bore one aboard ship with him on any voyage, to which he, the navigator or cosmographer, and the ship’s pilot would make emendations as their voyages and explorations brought new knowledge of the globe. On completion of a voyage and return to Spain, the map would be submitted to the Casa de la Contratación de las Indias, the House of Commerce, established in 1503 to govern Spain’s New World commerce and colonization. The name of Spain’s map — its master, secret navigational map of the world — was the Padrón Real, the Royal Standard.

1529 version of the Padrón Real, reflecting expanded knowledge from the Magellan voyage

In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a fiercely proud and determined minor Portuguese noble of no wealth, who had devoted his adult life to service in war to the Portuguese Crown but who was no favorite of its King Manuel, took possession of a copy of the Padrón Real and pledged his oath to King Charles of Spain.

AJA