SKETCH OF GERARD MERC AT OR. 407 



Mercator expressed a full appreciation of the importance of astron- 

 omy as connected with geography. That science was then cultivated 

 largely in connection with astrology and was invoked in the solution 

 of the most trivial questions. For this he had a profound contempt, 

 while he believed in the significance of celestial phenomena and ex- 

 tolled the study of them. " The purposes for which the luminaries of 

 the sky are created," he said, "are much higher than to assist in the 

 predictions of the astrologers. Those lights exist to reveal to man the 

 omnipotence, the majesty, and the divinity of his Creator, and not to 

 be at the service of the vanity of the astrologers. They exist to mark 

 the revolutions of the centuries ; it is for this that they become ob- 

 scured and are dissolved to announce the end of ages and proclaim 

 judgment upon the world. It was thus that in the time of the passion 

 of Christ, when the law was to be changed, Dionysius the Areopagite 

 was permitted to see an eclipse. It was thus that Joshua perceived 

 the astounding action of the hand of God in the spectacle of the sun. 

 These bodies exist to mark the limits of days and years ; and the 

 stars, which glow by night in the firmament, shine upon the earth, 

 and point out by their position the annual course of the sun." Merca- 

 tor had collated the results of his studies on this subject, and had an- 

 nounced for publication a work embodying them, when death pre- 

 vented his carrying out his intention. 



Among the larger works mentioned by various authors as having 

 been executed by Mercator, are the maps of Palestine, Flanders, Eu- 

 rope, Great Britain, Lorraine, the terrestrial and celestial globes al- 

 ready mentioned, and a great planisphere. These were all larger than 

 the maps of the atlas. None of them, except the planisphere, are now 

 known to be in existence. A few loose sheets from the plates of the 

 atlas, preserved in collections at Brussels, London, the Hague, and St. 

 Petersburg, constitute the chief part of the works of this class known 

 to be by him that are now extant. For his chorography of Palestine 

 "Amplissirna Terrae Sanctse Descriptio" ("Most Ample Description 

 of the Holy Land "), Mercator had to depend upon the best authorities 

 he could command "the testimony of an unknown traveler" and 

 they have not been identified. He is credited, however, with having 

 made good use of the critical faculty in the composition of the work. 

 It had the honor of having been sought for by the learned Andre Masius 

 for the illustration of his commentary on the book of Joshua, who, in 

 a letter to Georges Cassander, spoke of it in the most complimentary 

 terms. The map of Flanders was produced after the spending of 

 three years in personal surveys of the country, and appeared in 1540. 

 It exists now only in reduced copies in the " Theatrum " of Ortelius 

 and in Mercator's atlas ; but the historian Jacques Marchantius, who 

 had seen it, says that it surpassed all the maps of all other geogra- 

 phers. The map of Lorraine was also made after personal surveys, in 

 the prosecution of which the author appears to have been exposed- to 



