36 MAPS AND THEIR MAKERS 



Some time seems to have elapsed before they were generally 

 adopted by the navigators of the Mediterranean. As late as 

 1354, King Peter of Aragon considered it necessary to issue an 

 ordinance requiring each v^^ar galley to be furnished with two 

 sailing charts, an action, incidentally, which must have 

 stimulated the output of the Catalan chart makers, who were 

 then taking the lead in advancing cartography. 



If the seamen were not quick to adopt the chart, some 

 scholars appreciated its value at an early date. When Marino 

 Sanudo drew up his appeal to the Pope to revive the crusading 

 movement against the Turk, embodied in his 'Liber Secretorum 

 fidelium crucis', he included not only a written portolano, but 

 a set of charts, drawn by Petrus Vesconte, to provide accurate 

 information for the planning of the proposed campaign. 

 Vesconte was obliged to combine new and old sources of in- 

 formation as best he could — as may be plainly seen in his chart 

 of the eastern Mediterranean, where the respective contribu- 

 tions of portolan chart and medieval map can be distinguished 

 at a glance. A similar preliminary attempt to fit the new chart 

 into the traditional framework can also be observed in Dalorto's 

 work — for he shows himself well acquainted with the medieval 

 world maps. He inserts in the margin a small T-0 map; he 

 marks the limits of Europe with stereotyped phrases (*Europa 

 incipit ad Gallicia', *Finis Europae'), and has vignettes, e.g. 

 of the Tower of Babel, which recall the designs of the Hereford 

 Map. He was therefore a scholar, rather than a chart maker, 

 but was in touch with contemporary progress. 



From successive charts of the British Isles, we can form an 

 idea of the time required for new surveys to be incorporated 

 in the standard chart. On the 'Carte Pisane', Britain is repre- 

 sented in a very crude form, and lies outside the framework of 

 the main chart. From about 1325 a complete representation of 

 the British Isles is attempted, but obviously the cartographer 

 had little information about Scotland, and though he was 

 better informed about Ireland, that island is made too large in 

 comparison with England. An examination of Perrinus 

 Vesconte's outline of 1327 shows that in fact the only area 

 known at all accurately to him was southern England from the 

 Bristol Channel to the Thames estuary. To the north, the 



