Martin Behaim

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Template:POV check Image:Martin Behaim.jpg Martin Behaim (October 6, 1459 – July 29, 1507), or Behem, was a navigator and geographer of great pretensions.

Behaim was born at Nuremberg, according to one tradition, about 1436; according to Ghillany, as late as 1459 and was supposedly of Bohemian origin. He was drawn to Portugal by participation in Flanders trade, and acquired a scientific reputation at the court of John II of Portugal. As a pupil, real or supposed, of the astronomer Regiomontanus (i.e., Johann Müller of Königsberg in Franconia) he became (c. 1480) a member of a council appointed by King John for the furtherance of navigation. His alleged 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; his improvements in the astrolabe were perhaps limited to the introduction of handy 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. From 1484-1485 he claimed to have accompanied Diogo Cão in his second expedition to West Africa, really undertaken in 1485-86, reaching Cabo Negro in 15°40 S. and Cabo Ledo still farther on. It is now disputed whether Behaim's claims are true; and it is suggested that instead of sharing in this great voyage of discovery, the Nuremberger only sailed to the nearer coasts of Guinea, perhaps as far as the Bight of Benin, and possibly with José Visinho the astronomer and with Joao Affonso d'Aveiro, in 1484-86. Martin's later history, as traditionally recorded, was as follows: on his return from his West African exploration to Lisbon 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 Azores, where his father-in-law, Jobst van Huerter, was governor of a Flemish colony. On a visit to his native city in 1492, he constructed his famous terrestrial globe, still 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 Ptolemy is strongly apparent, but every attempt is made to incorporate the discoveries of the later Middle Ages (Marco Polo, etc.). The antiquity of this globe and the year of its execution, on the eve of the discovery of Americas, make it not just the oldest but the most historically valuable globe extant. It corresponds well with Columbus's notion of the Earth; he and Behaim drew their information from the same sources. All globes are virtual worlds, but this antique provides a glimpse inside the European world on the eve of unparalleled change. Its surface is covered with legends and paintings, and the Erdapfel or Earthapple, as Behaim named it, could be described as a turning encyclopedia. (The state-funded Digital Globe Project has made it available as software for scholars and the interested layperson.) Though less navigationally accurate than the beautiful Catalonian portolani charts of the 14th century, as a scientific work it is of enormous importance.

Its West Africa is marvellously incorrect; the Cape Verde 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 Columbus 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.

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References

C. G. von Murr, Diplomatische Geschichte des beruhmten Ritters Behaim (1778)
A. von Humboldt, Kritische Untersuchungen (1836)
F. W. Ghillany, Geschichte des Seefahrers Martin Behaim (1853)
O. Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde, 214-215, 226, 251, and Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, esp. p. 90
Breusing, Zur Geschichte der Geographie (1869)
Eugen Gelcich in the Mittheilungen of the Vienna Geographical Society, vol. xxxvi. pp. 100, etc.
E. G. Ravenstein, Martin de Bohemia, (Lisbon, 1900), Martin Behaim, His Life and His Globe (London, 1909), and "Voyages of Diogo Cao and Bartholomeu Dias", 1482-1488, in Geographical Journal, Dec. 1900;

Martin Behaim

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