ORTELIUS
(ORTELS, WORTELS), ABRAHAM, next to Mercator the greatest geographer of
his age, was born at Antwerp on the 14th of April 1527, and died in the
same city on the 4th of July 1598. He was of German origin, his family
coming from Augsburg. He travelled extensively in western Europe; especially
in the Netherlands; south and west Germany (e.g. 1560, 1575, 1578);
France (1559-1560, &c.); England and Ireland (1577), and Italy
(1578, and perhaps twice or thrice between 1550 and 1558). Beginning as
a map-engraver (in 1547 he enters the Antwerp gild of St Luke as afsetter
van Karten), his early career is that of a business man, and most of
his journeys before 1560 are for commercial purposes (such as his yearly
visits to the Frankfort fair). In 1560, however, when travelling with Gerhard
Kremer (Mercator) to Trier, Lorraine and Poitiers, he seems to have been
attracted, largely by Mercator's influence, towards the career of a scientific
geographer; in particular he now devoted himself, at his friend's suggestion,
to the compilation of that atlas or Theatre of the World by which
he became famous. In 1564 he completed a mappemonde, which afterwards
appeared in the Theatrum. He also published a map of Egypt in 1565
a plan of Britenburg Castle on the coast of Holland, and perhaps a map
of Asia, before the appearance of his great work. In 1570 (May 20) was
issued, by Gilles Coppens de Diest at Antwerp, Ortelius' Theatre Orbis
Terrarium, the " first modern atlas” (of 53 maps). Three Latin editions
of this (besides a Flemish, a French and a German) appeared before the
end of 1572; twenty-five editions came out before Ortelius' death
in 1598; and several others were published subsequently, for the vogue
continued till about 1612. Most of the maps were admittedly reproductions
(a list of 87 authors is given by Ortelius himself), and many discrepancies
of delineation or nomenclature occur. Errors, of course, abound, both in
general conceptions and in detail; thus South America is very faulty in
outline, and in Scotland the Grampians lie between the Forth and the Clyde;
but, taken as a whole, this atlas with its accompanying text was a monument
of rare erudition and industry. Its immediate precursor and prototype was
a collection of thirty-eight maps of European lands, and of Asia, Africa,
Tartary and Egypt, gathered together by the wealth and enterprise, and
through the agents, of Ortelius' friend and patron, Gilles Hooft-man, lord
of Cleydael and Aertselaer: most of these were printed in Rome, eight or
nine only in Belgium. In 1573 Ortelius published seventeen supplementary
maps under the title of Addita-mentum Theatri Orbis Terrarium. By
this time he had formed a fine collection of coins, medals and antiques,
and this produced (also in 1573, published by Philippe Galle of Antwerp)
his Deorum dearemque capita... ex Museo Ortelii (reprinted in Gronovius,
Thes. Gr. Ant. vol. vii.). In 1575 he was appointed geographer to
the king of Spain, Philip II., on the recommendation of Arius Montanus,
who vouched for his orthodoxy (his family, as early as 1535, had fallen
under suspicion of Protestantism). In 1578 he laid the basis of a critical
treatment of ancient geography by his Synonymia geographica (issued
by the Plantin press at Antwerp and republished as Thesaurus geographicus
in 1596). In 1584 he brought out his Nomenclator Ptolemaicus, his
Parergon (a series of maps illustrating ancient history, sacred
and secular), and his Itinerarium per nonnullas Galliae Belgicae partes
(published at the Plantin press, and reprinted in Hegenitius, Itin.
Frisio-Holl.), a record of a journey in Belgium and the Rhineland made
in 1575. Among his last works were an edition of Caesar (C. I. Caesaris
omnia quae extant, Leiden, Raphelingen, 1593), and the Aurei saeculi
imago, sive Germanorum veterum sita (Philippe Galle, Antwerp, 1596).
He also aided Welser in his edition of the Peutinger Table in 1598. In
1596 he received a presentation from Antwerp city, similar to that afterwards
bestowed on Rubens; his death and burial (in St Michael's Abbey church)
in 1598 were marked by public mourning.
See Emmanuel van Meteren, Historia Belgica (Amsterdam,
1670); General Wauwermans, Histoire de l'école cartographique
belge et anversoise (Antwerp, 1895), and article "Ortelius” in Biographie
nationale (Belgian), vol. xvi. (Brussels, 1901); J. H. Hessels, Abraham's
Ortelii epistulae (Cambridge; England, 1887); Max Rooses, Ortelius
et Plantin (1880); Génard, "Généalogie d'Ortelius,"
in the Bulletin de la Soc. roy, de Géog. d'Anvers (1880 and
1881).
(C. R. B.)
Charles
Raymond Beazley
Eleventh Edition,
vol.20, p.332d-