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• 1 2015-06-18T14:53:07-07:00 Frau Mauro Map 8 plain 2024-01-22T19:19:18-08:00 Il mappamondo di fra Mauro (1459)
  
  Commissioned by Portugese king Afonso V for his uncle Henry the Navigator, and created by a Venetian merchant-soldier turned hermetic monk, Fra Mauro's mappamundi represented a crowning achievement in late-medieval cartography.
  
  As related by Brooks (p. 185), Mauro consulted Portuguese maps of travels of the Atlantic coast as one source for his world map. Brooks describes the map as a "circular planisphere drawn on parchment that has been set by curators in a wooden frame" which measured "about six feet in diameter" (p. 186). 
  
  Frau Mauro identifies Prester John's kingdom as an immense sub-Saharan African territory, with the land of "Abassia" at its center. Brooks notes that "Abassia is depicted in the map with large castles and palaces that exceed those of any other African potentate in opulence, size, and quantity." (pp. 186-7). Mauro notes that Prester John's territory "is more extensive to the south of the sources of the Nile than to the north" (Brooks, p. 190). Brooks notes that Mauro even offered a defense of his African cartography on the map, asserting that the catography of the antiquarian geographers was outdated. 
  
  In an inscription, Frau Mauro details this land as possessing qualites of the terrestrial paradise (qtd in Brooks, p. 187):

  In the woods of this Abassia there is such a great quantity of honey that they do not bother to collect it. When in the winter the great rains wash these trees, that honey flows in some nearby lakes, and, thanks to the action of the sun, that water becomes like a wine, and the people of the place drink it in place of wine. 

  Speaking of the ruler of this land, Mauro relates

  "Prester John has more than 120 kingdoms under his dominion, in which there are more that 60 different languages" (10-I6, trans. Brooks)
  
  "Above the kingdom of Abbassia there is a very savage and idolotrous people who are separated from Abbassia by a river and by mountains, at the passes of which the kings of Abbassia have built great fortresses so that these peoples cannot pass and do harm to their country. These men are very strong and of great stature and they pay tribute to Prester John, King of Abassia, and certain thousands of these men serve him to his needs" (10-A38, trans. Brooks)

  
  The original copy made for King Afonso has not survived. 
  
  A high-resolution version of the map is viewable couresy of the Museo Galileo.