Antique Map: Scherer: Rare Polar Projection, 2 Wonderful Cartouches, Munich 1702

Description: Map 96 Antique Map: Scherer: Rare Polar Projection, 2 Wonderful Cartouches, Munich 1702 Repraesentatio Geographica Itineris Maritimi Navis Victoriae in quq ex Personis CCXXXVII Finita Navigatione Rediere Tantum XVIII qua solo indvsio tectae et faces accensas manibus praeferentes in basilica hispalensi se voto exsolverunt vii sept, ann.ndxxii Munich FYI: That translates to:A Geographical Representation of the Sea Route of the Naval Ship “Victory” in which 237 People Completed the (circum) Navigation of the World. Only18 of them returned. Covered with soil and bearing lighted torches in their hands, they entered the Basilica of Hispania to express gratitude. Sept. 7, 1702 NOTE: I fell (again) last month and I’m now 87. My wife (and I) are anxious to find homes for the treasures we have collected in our 57 years of marriage. The day after I fell, I offered this map to an Auction House for consignment. They MAY list it and might sell it (hammer price) for $1750. And IF they do, (a) the buyer will have to pay 25% more: $2187.5, and (b) I will get 10% less: $1,575! Do you want to make an offer (e.g. $1700) that – even with eBay’s fees -- is fair – and saves YOU some money? If you are at all interested, please read the listing below. There is much to be learned and I worked collecting this information. Special Features: Extremely rare (north) Polar ProjectionCartouche at LL of the Navy Ship “Victory” Cartouce at LR of the 18 survivors of the ship bearing torches and entering the BasilicaCalifornia as an IslandTraces Magellan's 3 year circumnavigation. Special Note: This map, more than any other I have ever seen or read about, comments on the current status of America!Read this listing as you would for any map for sale, but take a moment to AT LEAST SKIM the blog material at the end of the listing.Magellen’s journey 500 years ago actually established what we now think of as the real world (warts and all).And the Polar projection established a framework for “understanding” religious/racial differences.We all know that “exploration and conquest” was brutal and greedy; what I did not know, but should have understood, was that it colored how we drew our maps! Condition: Clean, clear image, no stains or stray marks. Full Margins on all four sides. No offsetting, or bleed thru; blank on the backUnframedPaper size 15” x 11”Image size 14” x 9 ¼”Uncolored Guide to the Photos:Photos #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 & #6 are of our map.Photo # 7 is a download of this map from Barry Lawrence Ruderman, Antique Maps Inc. (sold)Photo # 8 is a download from Old World Atlas, Action 162, Lot 16. Estimated at $950-$1,200 hammer; it sold for $700 4/26/2017.Photo # 9 is from the Australian National LibraryPhoto # 10 is from WikimediaPhoto # 11is a screen shot of the image used by Five Centuries after Magellan See Footnotes below …. Guest Editor: I, Harald Leuba, am listing this map on eBay with the permission of the eBay account holder, my wife of 57 years: Nancy Kingsbury, aka "Showjudge". She is worried about how to find homes for our "stuff" when I die -- > if I die before her. We have enjoyed living with this map in our collection, but as I age, (I am now 87), I feel that I ought to protect the map from becoming lost in some 2nd hand store and, more importantly, I need to protect Nancy from having to cope with how to harvest its reasonable value in a time of personal stress. [In other words: We are downsizing!]...... I bought this map from John Faupel, of Antique Atlas, East Grinstead, Kent UK. I bought it some 30 years ago; it was his item #17 in his Catalog No. 98.I have misplaced my file of his catalogs. {Did I mention I am 87 years old?} However Google works wonders: If I put: Repraesentatio Geographica Itineris Maritimi Navi Victoriae In ...Into Google with quotes: There are 5 hits! The first is from Barry Lawrence Rudderman, Antique Maps, Inc.He has sold the map, but offers a large scale digital download for $29.95. Cartographer: Heinrich SchererTitle: Repraesentatio Geographica Itineris Maritimi Navi Victoriae In Qua Ex Personis CCXXXVII Finita Navigatione… MDXXII Publication Place/Date Munich / 1702Image Dimensions 14 x 9 inchesDescription: Celebrating Magellan's Circumnavigation in 1522A striking map of the world on Cassini's projection by Heinrich Scherer.California is shown as an Island. Nova Hollandia is now clearly separated from Nova Guinea, although without a Southern Coastline. Northwest and Northeast passages are shown. New Zealand appears, although only a part of its coastline is known.The map shows Magellan's circumnavigation of the world, with the route and dates. The map is ringed by various cartouches and elegant decorative scenes.BLR has sold their mapPhoto # 7 here is a download from the Archives on the BLR site.This is clearly the same map as ours.….The second Google hit is for Old World Auctions, which had this map for sale in Action 162, Lot 16. Estimated at $950-$1,200 hammer; it sold for $700 4/26/2017.Photo # 8 here is a download from that catalog. Again: this is clearly our map! …The third Google hit is from the National Library of Australia, aka TROVE.Again, this is clearly the same map! See Photo # 9 [Not for sale, of course.] …The fourth Google hit is from Wikimedia. And, again, but for the very attradctove color, this is our map.See Photo # 10. [Not for sale, of course.] …The fifth Google hit is from a UK site [CORE] making reference to the National Library of Australia: “Hemispherical map of the world viewed from the Arctic showing the tracks of Magellan in 1522. He died en route in the Phillipines on 27 April 1521. Australia appears as Nova Hollandia.; Illustrations on side panels.; Dedication in decorative cartouche: Navis dicta victoria duce Magellane prima circumvecia per orbem terraquev diebus 1124.; Also available in an electronic version via the Internet at: [blocked] Note: “Navis dicta victoria duce Magellane prima circumvecia per orbem terraquev diebus 1124”Translates as: “The ship called Victory, led by Magellan, made the first circumnavigation of the world in 1124 days. …As far as I can tell, there is NO antique copy of this map for sale on-line today!….Many museums have a copy, but none of the originals are for sale, although some museums will sell a digital copy, as will Barry Lawrence Ruderman if you ask. We KNOW what this map is; what is it worth to --- us/you? My comment: If you are interested enough in maps to be considering an original, as opposed to a modern re-print copy, you know that the plates for antique maps were often reused/reprinted/recycled/revised and that there are many different (related) versions available today. You will also know that maps were not usually stand-alone images. They appeared in bibles, histories, and even in atlases! Last October, Barry Ruderman came to our house to look at our maps with a view to his acquiring the whole collection. He was warmly professional and lived up to his reputation for expertise. He said that our maps had been well cared for and were in good condition. He put an estimated market value on this map of $____.--> if he were to offer it for sale in his business. {Of course, (1) since he has to make a profit in his business, he did not offer us that much!}AND{Of course, (2) since he does not have this map for sale now, nor does he show it in his archives, you can’t even get a digital copy from them. Antique maps have doubled in price in the past ten years; I paid $1250 for this map in 1995. I realize that this is not a “pretty” map, but it is an IMPORTANT map. We are looking for a “good home” for the maps in our collection. How about: $2000? Take a look and Buy it Now, or make an offer......Our map has not been framed. Our map is not colored.The margins are fine on all four sides.The image is clear and clean; the paper is flat, but of course the folds still show – on the back. The map is in pristine condition. Please help us find a new home for this treasure. Thank you for looking. Harald & Nancy P.S. Inflation? NO! When I bought my first map, there was silver in our US coinage. When I was in college, I could buy a gallon of gas for a silver quarter and mail a letter home for 4ç. I can NOW buy much more than a gallon gas, for the value of that silver quarter, AND postage is now 60ç. Antique maps have doubled in price in the last ten years. Are they a store of value? I think so, but whether they are or not, they can be a permanent source of pleasure. P.P.S We are using the proceeds of this sale, not to add “dollars” to our bank account, but to support local charities (to help neighbors who have lost income due to covid)!We hope you enjoy your acquisition and have warm feelings about helping others: A&D, LAT, BR, and GD stay in their homes (forestall eviction!) and giving peace of mind to Nancy and me, that the antiques in our custody have been given new homes - where they will be appreciated - and continue to appreciate!……You ought to read the following. I’m glad I did! from The Internationalist and International Institutions and Global Governance ProgramFive Centuries after Magellan, Globalization Needs to Grow Up—and Fast On this anniversary of Magellan's first expedition to circumnavigate the globe, we should reflect on the trajectory globalization has taken—and adopt a more cosmopolitan approach to life on our shrinking planet. ………………………..photo # 9 of Map ……………..c………. Heinrich Scherer’s Magellanic world map entitled "Representatio Geographica Itineris Maritimi Navis Victoriae...," showing the route of Magellan's circumnavigation and the Victoria, the only remaining ship from Magellan's armada. Photo by VCG Wilson/Corbis via Getty ImagesBlog Post by Stewart M. Patrick and Kyle L. EvanoffSeptember 20, 2019 9:49 am (EST) Ferdinand Magellan did not intend to circumnavigate the globe when he departed Spain five hundred years ago, on September 20, 1519, in command of two hundred some-odd men aboard five ships. Nor did he succeed in doing so. The legendary Portuguese explorer, serving King Charles V of Spain, met a violent end in the Philippines, oceans away from his Iberian home. It was left to the Basque captain Juan Sebastian Elcano to lead the expedition to its destination in the Moluccas, and subsequently to steer the sole surviving ship, the carrack Victoria, and its eighteen remaining circumnavigators back to Europe and into the history books.Although replete with cruelty, privation, and death, this three-year circuit marked a seminal moment in the history of globalization. It was the first human activity conducted on a planetary scale—the beginning of a sprawling “geodrama,” according to Harvard historian Joyce E. Chaplin.More on:Global GovernanceGlobalizationInequalityClimate ChangeSovereigntyThe first circumnavigation inaugurated the threading of the planet, initially by sailing ships and later by steamers, railroads, telegraph, airplanes, satellites, fiber-optic cables, and more. In the weaving of this global tapestry, distances became far less daunting. Today, people, goods, and information circle a world in constant motion, covering intercontinental distances in the span of hours or even seconds rather than years, encountering few of the obstacles or hazards Magellan faced. The planet, in many practical respects, has shrunk.The World This WeekA weekly digest of the latest from CFR on the biggest foreign policy stories of the week, featuring briefs, opinions, and explainers. Every Friday.Email Address">View all newsletters >What has not changed in equal measure is our collective mindset about the world. Five centuries after Magellan embarked on his voyage, humanity still clings to anachronistic dreams and obsessions of geographic mastery, economic exploitation, and planetary dominance. We have yet to come to terms with the practical realities and ethical obligations of life on an integrated planet. To survive and thrive on a world that has grown both smaller and more interconnected, humanity needs to adopt a more mature approach to globalization. This new, planetary politics should recognize that cosmopolitanism—the conviction that humans belong to a single community, united by a common morality—is not simply an ideal. It is an imperative that must inform how we delineate societies, respond to new technologies, manage the global economy, view and treat each other, interact with the natural world, and countless other aspects of political life. A Long AdolescenceMagellan undertook his voyage to fill his purse and in service of Spanish imperial ambitions. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas had granted to Portugal, among other things, an effective monopoly on trade with the Spice Islands of Southeast Asia via the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean. Charles V pledged support for Magellan’s expedition to discover a Western ocean route to the Moluccas in hopes of establishing a viable Spanish spice trade and undermining rival Portugal.The world of the early sixteenth century was a ruthless and unforgiving one of imperial rivalries, predatory commerce, religious obscurantism and superstition, political oppression, and intergroup violence. Magellan’s discovery of the strait that bears his name, and the confirmation of riches in the East, reinforced a European scramble for overseas empire. The result was a rapacious, proprietary approach to globalization, in which trade routes existed to be monopolized, overseas territories to be carved, and new lands to be “opened” to the world, but at tremendous cost, not only to the conquered but (often) to the conquerors.Indeed, death was a defining feature of early circumnavigations, with crew mortality frequently exceeding 80 percent. Beyond poor medical knowledge, such attrition reflected the yawning chasm between the planetary scale on which Europeans were suddenly operating and the still-primitive state of their seafaring technologies, logistics networks, geographic knowledge, cultural understanding, and—not least—moral philosophy.Over the next several centuries, both the forms and norms of European overseas empire would evolve. Settler colonies, including in the Americas, would emerge. A massive transatlantic slave trade would help colonial powers extract wealth from the New World. Wars among mercantilist empires would occur on a global scale. Finally, in the late nineteenth century, Europeans would carve up a vast continent in the infamous “Scramble for Africa.” In principle, the creation of the United Nations system after World War II marked the twilight of the imperial approach to globalization personified in Magellan. Waves of subsequent decolonization dismantled formal empires, giving rise instead to a system of independent states ostensibly equal in sovereign rights, if not power. New principles of collective security promised to temper great power rivalries and the causes and conduct of war. Mercantilism and imperial preferences entered into disfavor, and open multilateral trade based on non-discrimination and reciprocity became a polestar for the international economic system. Universal standards of human rights and humanitarian principles, codified into international law, promised to liberate individuals from arbitrary rule and oppression, as well as the atrocities they had experienced from time immemorial. Finally, a waxing environmental consciousness suggested that nature was not a limitless realm to be dominated and exploited but rather the ecological foundation for human survival and even a valuable entity unto itself.In fact, a closer look reveals substantial continuity globalization as it took shape some five centuries ago and its more modern variant.The promise and pitfalls of sovereignty. Magellan’s benefactor, Charles V, was not only king of Spain but also the Holy Roman Emperor, the titular head of a sprawling confederation of overlapping kingdoms, duchies, and city-states. A relic of the feudal age, the empire’s days were numbered. A century after Magellan set off on his voyage, the Thirty Years War began. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended it, represented a milestone in the establishment of state sovereignty as the fundamental principle of political organization within Europe. Three centuries later, as decolonization accelerated, sovereignty became the undisputed requirement for full membership in world politics, entitling its bearer to recognition under international law and entrée into the halls of diplomacy.This organizing principle is an integral element of the modern international system. What it has struggled to deliver, however, is effective international cooperation on shared global dilemmas. This is apparent in intensifying technology competition, enduring economic injustice, and rampant disregard for humanitarian principles. It is also obvious in the case of climate change, history’s most daunting collective action problem.Technological Opportunity and Perils: Technological advances, in the form of caravels, muskets, and other innovations, facilitated Europe’s dramatic imperial expansion and its consequences. Similarly, transformative innovation is underway today, and its dizzying pace raises urgent questions of how to divvy up its benefits and manage its risks. Aspirational calls for artificial intelligence (AI) to benefit all humanity, as exemplified in the Asilomar AI Principles, imply that broad gains should be shared irrespective of political boundaries. Political leaders, meanwhile, are determined to pursue national primacy in cutting edge technologies like AI, 5G, and quantum computing. The resultant acrimonious technology competition scarcens opportunities for collaboration in basic research and impedes cross-pollination of talent and ideas, to the detriment of global welfare.More worrisome, the zero-sum thinking that motivates such competition heightens risks that innovations will be weaponized. Since 1945, the specter of nuclear catastrophe has loomed over humanity, a testament to the mismatch between our scientific ingenuity and our retrograde morality. Our lack of cosmopolitan sensibilities risks crippling multilateral efforts to govern potentially destabilizing technologies in newer fields as well. The world is doing little, for example, to ensure that miraculous advances in genomics do not lead to disaster, in the intentional, inadvertent, or accidental use of pandemic-producing bioweapons. Nor has the world negotiated norms to mitigate novel forms of digital conflict, including grey zone cyber aggression and the weaponization of social media. Meanwhile, a budding arms race in outer space threatens to overwhelm urgently needed agreement on new rules that could (among other benefits) facilitate space situational awareness and traffic management, mitigate debris, defend the planet from collisions with near-Earth objects, and govern the private sector’s development of satellite mega-constellations and other extraterrestrial ventures. Getting a handle on these problems requires first and foremost moving beyond the gridlock and inefficacy that have too often characterized international institutions.Economic Prosperity and Injustice: With the partial exception of settler colonies, the economic model for European empire was overwhelmingly extractive, with resources from the periphery benefitting the imperial metropole. This model reached its apotheosis after the 1885 Congo Conference in Berlin, where colonial powers carved up the African continent with little reference to local desires, political identities, or economic viability. Today, formal empires may be receding into memory, but exploitative dynamics often persist, particularly in resource-rich fragile states whose often venal regimes are happy to collude with multinational corporations in siphoning off national wealth that could be used to meet basic human needs. Actors in rich countries, including national governments, facilitate this extraction by maintaining an opaque global financial system in which beneficial ownership of assets tends to remain veiled and in which intermediary providers of corporate services are often complicit in illicit transactions. The hyperglobalization of recent decades has also distorted the world economy by rewarding capital far more than labor and generating obscene levels of inequality within countries. Its proponents have courted political backlash, protectionism, and discrimination as its shortcomings have become increasingly apparent. The abandonment of the embedded liberalism that was at the heart of the post–World War II economic system in favor of a more unconstrained global capitalism—replete with leverage and liquidity—wreaked havoc during the 2008 financial crisis. Beyond the vagaries of the financial world, movements toward a more equitable globalization, including greater corporate social responsibility, have grown more prominent. Nevertheless, the obligations of corporations, including to their home and host countries and the citizens therein, remain a matter of fierce debate.Governments’ commitments to national competitiveness, if taken too far, can be counterproductive at home and calamitous abroad. The Trump administration’s protectionist policies are a misguided effort to resurrect beleaguered industries and force adjustments on trading partners, while undermining the rules-based commercial order centered on the World Trade Organization. But the United States is hardly the only nation to have embraced discriminatory trade barriers or beggar-thy-neighbor policies. Like the post-1945 compromise of embedded liberalism at the heart of Bretton Woods, today’s global economy must be re-founded, on the basis of a new cosmopolitan social bargain, one that balances shared multilateral rules ensuring equal treatment with sufficient national autonomy for governments to pursue social welfare objectives, including high employment and strong safety nets against global economic vicissitudes. Human Rights and Atrocities: Even in the context of the Spanish Inquisition, the barbarities that Magellan inflicted on natives he encountered, as well as his own sailors (in the case of mutinies), shock modern consciences. They were hardly exceptional. Troubled by the gruesome treatment of Amerindians at the hands of the conquistadores, Spanish Catholic theologians Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco di Vitoria argued strenuously against their enslavement on legal and philosophical grounds. The subsequent development of universal human rights standards, albeit at an agonizingly slow pace over ensuing centuries, counts as one of the greatest legacies of the Enlightenment. And yet even here, theological and pseudo-scientific arguments for racial hierarchies have provided grounds for discrimination, persecution, and even genocide into the present-day.Notwithstanding the post–World War II “rights revolution” within the context of the United Nations, the global march of human rights remains a work in progress. Authoritarian regimes routinely violate human rights, while state and non-state combatants regularly transgress international humanitarian law. Freedom House has documented a 13-year democratic recession, as well as growing assertiveness of authoritarian and populist leaders in challenging fundamental civil and political liberties, constitutional checks and balances, and provisions to protect minorities and other vulnerable populations. These outrages underscore the inherent tension between a global political system founded on sovereignty and non-intervention and growing transnational exposure to the suffering of strangers. The sovereignty principle suggests that our duties to fellow citizens are superior to those obligations we owe humanity as a whole, but global integration complicates this ethical reasoning, by exposing us to human suffering abroad and enhancing our means to correct injustices abroad. As our awareness and our capabilities increase, so does our cosmopolitan obligation to serve as our brothers’ keepers.Environmental Domination and Stewardship: At the forefront of the European imperial project was a conviction not only of civilizational (and racial) superiority, but of human mastery over the natural world. Nature was a thing to be marveled at and cataloged. But it was also a thing to be brought to heel and transformed for human needs.And transform it we did. By 2019, humans had altered three-quarters of the Earth’s ice-free surface, and wild spaces had been reduced by half. Humans have cleared forests, devoted rangeland to grazing, mined mountaintops, paved the countryside, built sprawling cities, altered the course of rivers, reclaimed coastlines, deposited waste in landfills, drilled into Earth’s crust, and built 250,000 dams—at a rate of one per day. Biodiversity is cratering, and Earth is facing the sixth major extinction in its 4.5 billion year history—thanks to us. The oceans, meanwhile, are warmer than they have been in more than 100,000 years. By the end of the century, they will be more acidic than they have been in 14 million years. These changes are endangering the survival of marine life, including the phytoplankton that absorbs 50 percent of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. And of course in the atmosphere, thanks to still-rising greenhouse gas emissions, current carbon dioxide concentrations are now 35% greater than preindustrial levels and higher than at any time in the last 65 million years. Scientists predict that by 2070, Earth will be hotter than it has been for the last 125,000 years.Earth’s ecological crises cry out for a cosmopolitan approach. Multilateral negotiations among sovereign governments have proven woefully inadequate, even the much-ballyhooed Paris agreement, which seems unlikely to achieve its fallback position of no more than a 2 degrees Celsius rise from preindustrial levels. Five centuries after Magellan’s voyage affirmed our collective existence on a single round planet, we are increasingly struck by our dependence on a healthy biosphere for survival—and by the need for dramatic action not only by states but from all levels and segments of society—regional, subnational, civil society, the private sector, and individuals.The Cosmopolitan ImperativeWhen Magellan embarked from Spain five hundred years ago, philosophers and theologians were aware of humanity’s shared cosmic location on planet Earth. Magellan’s expedition, in the imperial fashion of the time, produced the first circumnavigators, the first to personify the vast processes of globalization. Since 1519, of course, the world—and humanity’s understanding of it—have evolved dramatically. Today, a confluence of rapid technological change, gaping economic inequality, widespread human suffering, and unprecedented ecological degradation signal the need for a similar evolution in our conceptualization of the world and of the politics needed to shape its future. Adequate responses to shared global challenges require the cultivation of a new, pragmatic cosmopolitanism.Political thinkers and leaders have long viewed cosmopolitanism as an ideal. Today, we must remedy our failure to recognize it as the imperative it is, essential for advancing our shared prosperity and safeguarding our collective survival. As the planet that we call home gets ever smaller, its perils are becoming more numerous and complex. We must adapt to this changing reality, recognizing that greater concern for our fellow humans, for Mother Nature, and for the world that we inhabit is no mere aspiration but a practical necessity. We are all in this together. SEE ALSO:Magellan’s itinerary, the Jesuits, and the centre around the North PoleBY JACK KEILO ( JACQUES KEILO ) · PUBLISHED 08/12/2015 · UPDATED 09/12/2015Scherer's world map (c.1700), centred on the North Pole, detail“While the map is never the reality, in such ways it helps to create a different reality. Once embedded in the published text the lines on the map acquire an authority that may be hard to dislodge.” (J. B. Harley, Deconstructing the Map)The Ship Victoria’s Journey, a map by Heinrich Scherer, c. 1700, in the Atlas Novus collectionThis map shows the circumnavigation journey of the ship Victoria of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition, from and to Sevilla, thus the first ship ever to circumnavigate the Planet (1519-1522 CE).Heinrich Scherer, the cartographer (1628-1704) was from Bavaria and close to the ruling House of Bavaria. He was a deeply religious Catholic (He was a Jesuit), in a century when most cartographers and mappers were from Protestant Netherlands. Scherer embedded his maps with religious symbolism of his Faith, a practice quite common that time. He was a professor of Mathematics and Hebrew, and was true to his scientific principles in his maps. But, apparently, he conceived geography in a rather original way: his maps show it as the study, analysis and representation of [human-constructed] space. Thus he embedded his convictions in his maps without necessarily betraying his scientific knowledge.On his map we can read: “Repræsentatio geographica itineris maritimi navis Victoriæ in qua ex personis CCXXXVII finita navigatione rediere tantum XVIII quæ solo indusio tectæ et faces accensas manibus præferentes in basilica hispalensi se voto exsolverunt VII Sept. ann. MDXXII”. Representation of the journey the ship of Magellan, Victoria, made between 1518 and 1522.We can analyse some features of the map before speaking of its projection, centred on the North Pole: 1-The “parts of the World” are clear and distinct by their colours. California is still represented as an isle, and the now-Australia was “New Holland” by that time.2-The effect of Europe’s maritime Great Discoveries is clear: the world map is adorned with a representation of the ship Victoria, to the left. It is the only remaining ship from Magellan’s Armada de Molucca that sailed from Seville in 1519 in search of a westward route to the Spice Islands. On the right, the few expedition survivors (18 out of the original 237) are shown making their way to the Santa Marea de la Victoria church in Seville, where they went to give thanks for their safe return. The title cartouche includes the date of their return, September 7, 1522. Fol. A The North Pole as a centre and the Jesuit MissionThe choice of a north polar projection is quite interesting: the world is centred on its “empty heart” on the North Pole. In this map the North Pole is not the “margin” but the very centre of the Globe. Such a projection was and is still rarely used, as it is centred on an “empty” part of the Earth. But we can find the reasons why Scherer chose it:First, this projection can show circumnavigation journeys: In a “traditional” projection there would be a rupture and discontinuity between the Americas and Asia, through the Pacific Ocean. Thus the Victoria’s journey would seem cut into two. But in a north polar projection the journey itinerary is more or less “circular” and more tue to the journey’s “circumnavigating” mission.But there might be a deeper and more important reason: Heinrich Scherer was a Jesuit and his weltanschauung was shaped by Jesuit ideas and doctrines. And we think that there was a religious “jesuitic” reason for his map. Here is another very similar map of his atlas, Societas Iesu Per universum mundum diffusa Praedicat Christi Evangelium, a map showing Jesuit presence in the world and the Jesuit diffusion of Christian message. On lower left Ignatius de Loyola is teaching, and on lower right Francis Xavier is preaching in Asia, while on upper right Andrés de Oviedo, Latin patriarch of Ethiopia, is declaring the Faith; a very religious map…Society of Jesus in the world, map by Heinrich Scherer, c.1703And the north polar projection is convenient for the map: the Jesuit missionary work is on the “periphery” of our Planet. Europe’s new worlds which came out of the Great Discoveries, hence “peripheries”, were the terrain of Jesuit work [1]. Of course, Jesuits worked a lot on Europe: but in our map the outcome of the Great Discoveries is the most important feature. The centre is the North Pole as it is the only only which permits us to view all the world “on the same side” of Europe. The Jesuits (and thus the Good Word) are present all around the world, near the centre (in Europe) and on the periphery, as we can see in Latin America, Asia and Africa. The Jesuit presence around the whole Globe is thanks to the European Age of Discovery and the circumnavigation of the Planet: we can see causality between the two maps.In other terms such projection makes the second map a natural reason of the first and “glorifies” the Jesuit Mission around the world. This Mission is, of a geographical point of view, a result of the Magellan’s cicumnavigating journey.The centre, again, is what we construct and what we perceive as centre. Space is not only about geometry, it is also about geography: constructed tridimensional extent. In representations the centre is sometimes chosen to justify the periphery, and this map is an example of this choice. ————————————-[1] The work on the periphery is still very important in the Jesuit thought. For example, we can find a great reference to it in the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium: “Each Christian and every community must discern the path that the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the “peripheries” in need of the light of the Gospel.” The work “out of one’s comfort zone” is still a cornerstone of Jesuit Mission. For example, we see it today in the life and work of Father Frans van der Lugt (1938-2014) who refused to leave his parish in Homs, Syria, taken into the atrocities of civil war, and was killed by armed men.

Price: 1999 USD

Location: Potomac, Maryland

End Time: 2023-12-12T23:28:16.000Z

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