Martin (of) Behaim (October 6, 1459 – July 29, 1507), (or
Behem,
Boemia or
Bohemia) was a German
navigatorA navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation. The navigator's primary responsibility is to be aware of ship or aircraft position at all times. Responsibilities include planning the journey, advising the Captain or aircraft Commander of estimated timing to...
and
geographerA geographer is a scientist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's physical environment and human habitat.Though geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...
to the King of Portugal.
Behaim was born in
NurembergNuremberg is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. It is situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal and is Franconia's largest city. It is located about 170 kilometres north of Munich, at 49.27° N 11.5° E. The population is...
, according to one tradition, about 1436; according to Ghillany, as late as 1459 and was supposedly of Bohemian origin. He was drawn to
PortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east...
by participation in
FlandersFlanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands...
trade, and acquired a scientific reputation at the court of
John II of PortugalJoão II , the Perfect Prince , was the thirteenth king of Portugal and the Algarves...
.
Martin (of) Behaim (October 6, 1459 – July 29, 1507), (or
Behem,
Boemia or
Bohemia) was a German
navigatorA navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation. The navigator's primary responsibility is to be aware of ship or aircraft position at all times. Responsibilities include planning the journey, advising the Captain or aircraft Commander of estimated timing to...
and
geographerA geographer is a scientist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's physical environment and human habitat.Though geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...
to the King of Portugal.
Behaim was born in
NurembergNuremberg is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. It is situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal and is Franconia's largest city. It is located about 170 kilometres north of Munich, at 49.27° N 11.5° E. The population is...
, according to one tradition, about 1436; according to Ghillany, as late as 1459 and was supposedly of Bohemian origin. He was drawn to
PortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east...
by participation in
FlandersFlanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France, and the Netherlands...
trade, and acquired a scientific reputation at the court of
John II of PortugalJoão II , the Perfect Prince , was the thirteenth king of Portugal and the Algarves...
. As a pupil, real or supposed, of the astronomer
RegiomontanusJohannes Müller von Königsberg , known by his Latin pseudonym Regiomontanus, was an important German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer....
(i.e., Johann Müller of
KönigsbergKönigsberg was the capital of eastern Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945. It was founded by the Teutonic Knights just south of the Sambian peninsula in the year 1255 AD during the Northern Crusades and named for King Ottokar II of Bohemia...
in
FranconiaFranconia is a region of Germany comprising the northern parts of the modern state of Bavaria, a part of southern Thuringia, and a much smaller region in northeastern Baden-Württemberg called Heilbronn-Franken...
) he became (c. 1480) a member of a council appointed by King John for the furtherance of
navigationNavigation is the process of reading, and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks. The word navigate is derived from the Latin "navigare", meaning "to sail"...
.
His suggested introduction of the cross-staff into Portugal (an invention described by the Spanish Jew, Levi ben Gerson, in the 14th century) is a matter of controversy; many diverse instruments had been in use for centuries by Scandinavian, Greek, Roman, Arab, and Chinese navigators, the similarities of or differences between which are difficult to ascertain. His improvements in the
astrolabeAn astrolabe is a historical astronomical instrument used by classical astronomers, navigators, and astrologers. Its many uses include locating and predicting the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars; determining local time given local latitude and vice-versa; surveying; and...
were the introduction of brass instruments in place of cumbrous wooden ones; it seems likely that he helped to prepare better navigation tables than had yet been known in the Peninsula.
Behaim is thought to have accompanied
Diogo CãoDiogo Cão was a Portuguese explorer and one of the most remarkable navigators of the golden age of the discoveries, who made two voyages sailing along the west coast of Africa in the 1480s.He is well known in Angola, because of him the country was a Portuguese colony & has close ties with Portugal...
in his second expedition to
West AfricaWest Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries distributed over an area of approximately 5 million square km:*Benin...
, undertaken in 1485-86, reaching Cabo Negro in 15°40 S. and Cabo Ledo still farther on. Behaim's position in history is unsettled; it is suggested by his detractors that instead of sharing in this great voyage of discovery, the
NurembergNuremberg is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. It is situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal and is Franconia's largest city. It is located about 170 kilometres north of Munich, at 49.27° N 11.5° E. The population is...
er only sailed to the nearer coasts of
GuineaGuinea, officially Republic of Guinea , is a country in West Africa formerly known as French Guinea . The country's current population is estimated at 10,211,437 ....
, perhaps as far as the
Bight of BeninThe Bight of Benin is a bight on the western African coast that extends eastward for about 400 miles from Cape St. Paul to the Nun outlet of the Niger River. To the east it is continued by the Bight of Bonny...
, and possibly with José Visinho the astronomer and with João Afonso de Aveiro, in 1484-86.
However, Behaim's later history is as follows: on his return from his West African exploration to
LisbonLisbon is the capital and largest city of Portugal. It is also the seat of the district of Lisbon and the main city of the Lisbon region...
he was knighted by King John, who afterwards employed him in various capacities; but from the time of his marriage in 1486 he usually resided at Fayal in the
AzoresThe Azores is a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, about from Lisbon and about from the east coast of North America. The two westernmost Azorean islands actually lie on the North American plate...
, where his father-in-law, Jobst van Huerter, was governor of a Flemish colony.
Before Magellan?
The crown of Portugal used to buy exploration charts from all over the world, even if not accurate or from unknown/mythic regions. It is supposed that when in contact with the king
John II of PortugalJoão II , the Perfect Prince , was the thirteenth king of Portugal and the Algarves...
, Martin of Behaim could have sold a drawing about a mysterious passage in an unknown land.
Antonio PigafettaAntonio Pigafetta , was a Venetian scholar and traveller born in Vicenza. He travelled with the Portuguese captain Ferdinand Magellan and his Spanish crew on their trip to the Maluku Islands. During the voyage, he became a strict assistant of Magellano and kept an accurate journal which later...
, an Italian writer that accompanied Magellan's trip to discover a passage to the Pacific Ocean, cites that Magellan would have a partial drawing of the channel, analyzing it even before they have reached the land . Pigafetta cites that Magellan would have the second half of the drawing memorized, to avoid being killed in a mutiny and the passage being "discovered" by his Spanish officers. Although historians usually do not accept Behaim's influence on the discovery, it is fact that he is cited in the original Pigafetta's diary as the author of the original drawing of the channel. This drawing was never exposed.
Magellan himself stated he knew that south of America there was a sound that led to the Southern Sea which Balboa had discovered in 1513 at the Isthmus of Panama: he, Magalhães, had seen the sound on a map by Martin Behaim.
Pigafetta writes: "But Hernando knew that is was the question of a very mysterious strait by which one could sail and which he had seen described on a map in the Treasury of the King of Portugal, the map having been made by an excellent man called Martin de Boemia".
Martin Behaim has been repeatedly regarded in former times as the actual discoverer of the Magalhães Straits and even the whole of America - although he might have only made a copy of an original ancient sketch of the strait.
The Erdapfel
On a visit to his native city in 1492, he constructed his well known terrestrial
globeA globe is a three-dimensional scale model of Earth or other spheroid celestial body such as a planet, star, or moon...
, called "the
erdapfelThe Erdapfel produced by Martin Behaim in 1492 is considered to be one of the first terrestrial globes ever made. It is constructed of a metal ball overlaid with a map painted by Georg Glockendon....
" (the
earth apple), a word soon to be replaced by the potato from South America. Until recently it was preserved at the Nuremberg National Museum, on the same floor as Albrecht Dürer's galleries. (Nuremberg was the heart of the German Renaissance.) The influence of the African
PtolemyClaudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Greek ancestry. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer and a poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under the Roman Empire, and is believed to have been born in the town of...
, who bequeathed the world latitude and longitude, is apparent, but every attempt is made to incorporate the discoveries of the later
Middle AgesThe Middle Ages of European history is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. More specific starting and ending points are sometimes adopted by scholars to suit their respective specializations or current focus...
(
Marco PoloMarco Polo was a merchant from the Venetian Republic who wrote Il Milione, which introduced Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, voyaged through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for...
, etc.). The antiquity of this globe and the year of its execution, on the eve of the discovery of
AmericasThe Americas, or America, are lands in the Western hemisphere or New World, comprising the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions. America may be ambiguous in English, as it is more commonly used to refer to the United States of America...
, makes it not just the oldest but the most historically valuable globe extant. It has been moved to an undisclosed location, in fact, now that it can be studied at high resolution from all angles through the remarkable Behaim Digital Globe Project in Vienna. It corresponds particularly well with
ColumbusChristopher Columbus was a navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere...
's notion of the Earth, and makes the notion of a jump across that little Ocean Sea to the Far East irresistible; he and Behaim drew their information from the same sources. Though less navigationally accurate than the beautiful Catalonian
portolaniPortolan charts are navigational maps based on realistic descriptions of harbors and coasts. They were first made in the 1300s in Italy and Spain. The word portolan comes from the Italian adjective portolano, meaning "related to ports or harbours." These charts, actually rough maps, were based on...
charts of the 14th century, as a scientific work it is of enormous importance. It may be the first terrestrial globe every built, is tilted to spin at the correct angle, and is a veritable encyclopedia of the West's known world in the year 1492. The globe's survival is nothing short of miraculous. There is no indication that anyone heard of the long-ago subarctic island hopping that placed Icelanders briefly among hostile "Skraelings"—American Indians.
How to zoom and spin the Erdapfel online
The globe was photographed in high resolution from every angle in a long-term, high-profile, university photometric project, and may be viewed at http://www.ipf.tuwien.ac.at/teaching/vrml/behaim/24/behaim.html. Xj3D is a Java based X3D Toolkit and X3D Browser and may be downloaded from http://www.web3d.org/x3d/xj3d/.
Its West Africa is incorrect, though technology at the time made such calculations difficult; the
Cape VerdeThe Republic of Cape Verde is an island country, spanning an archipelago located in the Macaronesia ecoregion of the North Atlantic Ocean, off the western coast of Africa, opposite Mauritania and Senegal....
archipelago lies hundreds of miles out of its proper place; and the Atlantic is filled with mythological islands that were psychologically important to isolated Medieval Christendom—Antilia of the Seven Cities of the Christian Visigoth Kings would become the Antilles. Japan is 1500 miles offshore where Marco Polo had left it, putting it within tempting sailing distance of the Canaries. St. Brendan's Isle contains the entire Western Hemisphere in capsule form; the Earthapple is a map of just how unknowable the future is, and the difficulties of mapping the planet. Blunders of 16° are found in the localization of places the author claims to have visited: contemporary maps, at least in regard to continental features, seldom went wrong beyond 1°, but longitude was very difficult to ascertain before the invention of accurate clocks. It is generally agreed that Behaim had no share in transatlantic discovery though his globe suggests an easy sail to the East. Though
ColumbusChristopher Columbus was a navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere...
and he were apparently in Portugal at the same time, no connection between the two has been established. He died at Lisbon in 1507. His family rescued the globe from city hall before it went the way of so many out-of-date artifacts.