Note 514 — Chapter VI · THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.

Footnote 514: Martin Behaim was born at Nuremberg in 1436, and is said to have been a pupil of the celebrated astronomer, Regiomontanus, author of the first almanac published in Europe, and of Ephemerides, of priceless value to navigators. He visited Portugal about 1480, invented a new kind of astrolabe, and sailed with it in 1484 as cosmographer in Diego Cam's voyage to the Congo. On his return to Lisbon he was knighted, and presently went to live on the island of Fayal, of which his wife's father was governor. He was a friend of Columbus. Toward 1492 he visited Nuremberg, to look after some family affairs, and while there "he gratified some of his townspeople by embodying in a globe the geographical views which prevailed in the maritime countries; and the globe was finished before Columbus had yet accomplished his voyage. The next year (1493) Behaim returned to Portugal; and after having been sent to the Low Countries on a diplomatic mission, he was captured by English cruisers and carried to England. Escaping finally, and reaching the Continent, he passes from our view in 1494, and is scarcely heard of again." (Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., ii. 104.) He died in May, 1506. A ridiculous story that he anticipated Columbus in the discovery of America originated in the misunderstanding of an interpolated passage in the Latin text of Schedel's Registrum, Nuremberg, 1498, p. 290 (the so-called Nuremberg Chronicle). See Winsor, op. cit. ii. 34; Major's Prince Henry, p. 326; Humboldt, Examen critique, tom. i.p. 256; Murr, Diplomatische Geschichte des Ritters Behaim, Nuremberg, 1778; Cladera, Investigaciones históricas, Madrid, 1794; Harrisse, Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, pp. 37-43.—The globe made by Behaim may now be seen in the city hall at Nuremberg. It "is made of papier-maché, covered with gypsum, and over this a parchment surface received the drawing; it is twenty inches in diameter." (Winsor, op. cit. ii. 105.) The portion west of the 330th meridian is evidently copied from Toscanelli's map. I give below (p. 429) a sketch (from Winsor, after Ruge's Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 230) of Behaim's ocean, with the outline of the American continent superimposed in the proper place.[Back to Main Text]