[MapHist] Martin Behaim's Libra in Guinea

Thu Apr 4 04:12:00 CEST 2002

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This message failed to be distributed yesterday in MapHist together with several others sent at the same time, because it had more than 20,000 characters, the limit of the list's messages.

I am resending it now in a slightly different version, without the quotations from old MapHist messages, to make it smaller. These quotations and the questions initiating the debate can be found in the archives on http://www.maphist.nl > archives (being these archives one more good thing that Peter has the great merit of creating and maintaining for the list).

<color><param>6666,3333,0000</param>QUESTION: MARTIN BEHAIM'S LIBRA IN GUINEA

TENTATIVE ANSWER:

Dear Jean Pierre Martin, Chris Hermansen, et al.

Returning to MapHist, I was informed that a long and enriching discussion had been maintained here during several weeks, dealing with the curious fact of the representation of the ecliptic in Behaim's globe, his depiction of Libra in the Gulf of Guinea, etc..

Here is what I can say about that.

There can be a good reason for the German-Azorean Martin Behaim -- a collaborator of the Portuguese king John II (the grandson, avenger, and political heir of the regent Prince Peter of Coimbra, and the one truly responsible for the Portuguese innovations and discoveries in the Gulf of Guinea and beyond, from 1982 to 1992...) --, to place the crossing of the ecliptic and the equator in the waters of Guinea, and depict there Libra (the symbol of scales, called "balança" in Portuguese).

There can be this reason: THE COAT-OF-ARMS OF PRINCE PETER (Infante Dom Pedro... the progressive Regent of the CrownŠ the one from Coimbra...
from Venice, the Fra Mauro... the book of Marco Polo... the true origins of the Portuguese Discoveries without the political myths of Prince Henry... my damnation as a Portuguese official historian... the 1997 shame of the 17th ICHC in Lisbon... Mr. Tony Campbell's worries...
etc., etc., etc....) HAS EXACTLY THE SYMBOL OF SCALES... And that symbol (meaning Justice, and the Crown's political support for the common people who bring market and modernization to the History of Mankind) continued to be used by his descendents Dukes of Coimbra and Aveiro, from a certain point together with the symbol of the Pelican, also used (together with the scales) by his grandson king John II (the tropical maritime bird from Africa... which is said to take blood from its own chest to feed the small ones...).

And the invention of astronomical navigation in the Atlantic with the use of new measure instruments such as the nautical astrolabe developed by the Portuguese at that time, c.1485 (the most important innovation brought by the 15th century Portuguese navigations), was being done exactly there, in that place, at that time, in the Gulf of Guinea...!
Done by whom? By king John's collaborators -- navigators and astronomers together... changing experiences... building something new...

Navigators such as Diogo de Azambuja from Montemor-o-Velho near Coimbra (the builder of Elmina castle in 1482), Diogo Cao from Montemor-o-Velho (the one who went until Namibia and crossed Skeleton Coast, 1482-1486), João Afonso de Aveiro (Nigeria, 1486) and Bartolomeu Dias (the one who later went in 1487-1488 to discover the cape of Good Hope...), and astronomers such as master Jose Vizinho (a Jewish cosmographer), Master Diogo Ortiz de Vilhegas or Calzadilla (a former astronomer from the Spanish Salamanca university, now working for the Portuguese...), Duarte Pacheco Pereira (later the author of the rutter "Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis" and a witness in the signing of the Tordesillas Treaty...) and most of all Master Rodrigo de Lucena, the "fisico-mor" and "cosmografo-mor" (chief-doctor and chief-cosmographer) in King John's service. Master Rodrigo de Lucena, whom we now know for sure, without any kind of doubt, was no less than the same man who had been, some decades before, the "fisico-mor" of his grand-father the Regent Prince Peter of Coimbra, the one truly responsible for the origins of the Portuguese Discoveries...!

This meaning that the chief doctor and cosmographer in king John's times (the times of the invention of astronomical navigation in the Gulf of GuineaŠ) was the same man who had had that same job, in the previous generation, with Prince Peter of Coimbra... (with Prince Peter, the Duke of Coimbra, markgraf of Treviso, and former Regent of the Portuguese Crown, murdered in 1449 in Alfarrobeira...). Master Rodrigo de Lucena, a man who had nothing to do with the insignificant and mythical figure of Prince Henry... the one of the childish myths, due to political reasons, such as the "School of Sagres"... etc, etc....).

And who was Martin Behaim? He was the German married with a Portuguese-Flemish woman in Azores, and one more of king John's men...
a little bit navigator, a little bit astronomer... Was he trying to make himself (in the famous globe that he had built in 1492 when he spent some time in his German homeland) look more navigator and more astronomer than he really was? It is possible, but no one can deny that, in fact, to a certain degree, he was a navigator with the Portuguese, and an astronomer in the beginnings of Portuguese nautical astronomy.

In the past, authors such as Joaquim Bensaude and Ravenstein were too fast to dismiss Behaim's contribution as being too exaggerate, and considered it indeed small. I myself accepted that (together with all other Portuguese historians). But now I think a little bit differently.
I think that Behaim's significance in Portuguese navigations and cosmography -- and Behaim's closeness with king John II -- was a-posteriori silenced, in the overall political process of a-posteriori silencing the enormous importance (in Portuguese internal affairs, and in overseas discoveries) of king John, called the "Perfect Prince", the grandson, avenger, and political heir, of the regent Prince Peter of Coimbra... (and "geographical heir"... heir of the Fra Mauro map which had been ordered to Portugal...)

Well... but some documents survived (such as the copy of the Fra Mauro map, c.1448-1459, in the Marciana Library in Venice...), and one of them is the Nurenberg Behaim Globe (even if with some inaccuracies and excessive claims...) -- and it is the oldest in the world... -- and IT SHOWS A SYMBOL OF SCALES IN THE GULF OF GUINEA...!

Thank you to the MapHist discussion group for calling attention, week after week, in February-March 2002, to that strange positioning of Libra in the Gulf of Guinea, the heart of the 15th century Portuguese Discoveries and invention of astronomical navigation by latitude (through the measuring of the Sun's position).

Funny thingŠ there is also a figure with scales in the carved scenes in relation with the construction of Guinea's Castelo da Mina (Elmina Castle) in the tombstone, in Montemor-o-Velho, near Coimbra, of the navigator Diogo de Azambuja (the Guinea team commander of Diogo Cao, Bartolomeu Dias, João Afonso de Aveiro and Martin Behaim).  Diogo de Azambuja is the same man who, after building the Elmina Castle in 1482, was at king John II's side in 1484 when the king, defending himself from a conspiracy led by the most important feudal landlords, had to kill with his own hands the third Duke of Viseu, heir of the first Duke, the mythical Prince Henry...

These people sure liked to depict and to carve scales... (and had complicated POLITICAL problems to solve...)

Best wishes for any possible future research on this. But probably it will be good to take into account not only matters of astronomy but also matters of Portuguese iconography and heraldry... AND 15th CENTURY POLITICSŠ (but let's hope that the 20th century Portuguese politicians and co-organizers of the 17th ICHC allow future researchers to talk about this... and permit the use of the word "political" in relation to 15th century affairs...).

With all best wishes for everybody

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