CHAPTER V 



THE REVIVAL OF PTOLEMY 



In discussing the latest forms of the medieval mappa mundi, we 

 have had occasion to refer to the spreading knowledge of the 

 maps accompanying the Geography of Claudius Ptolemaeus in 

 the fifteenth century, and possibly earlier. We may now 

 examine the circumstances in which copies of the text and 

 maps became available in western Europe, first in manuscript 

 and later with engraved maps in printed volumes. 



The earliest surviving manuscripts of Ptolemy's geo- 

 graphical treatise, in Greek, date from the end of the twelfth 

 or the early thirteenth century. Of these there are two versions, 

 the 'A' recension accompanied by twenty-seven maps, and the 

 *B', with sixty-four. A copy of the 'A' recension was obtained 

 from Constantinople in 1400 by the Florentine patron of letters, 

 Palla Strozzi, who persuaded Manuel Chrysolorus to translate 

 the text into Latin. Chrysolorus, the founder of Greek studies in 

 Italy, was unable to carry through the task, and it was then 

 undertaken by his pupil, Jacopo Angelus of Scarparia, who 

 completed it about 1406. His translation met with criticism, 

 but, corrected and emended by a succession of editors, it 

 formed the basis of all the printed texts for a century. It was 

 first printed, without maps, at Vicenza in 1475. The maps were 

 redrawn and their legends translated from the twenty-seven 

 maps of the 'A' recension in the first decade of the century 

 by two Florentines, Francesco di Lappaccino and Dominico 

 di Boninsegni: the 'B' recension was never made available in 

 translation to western Europe, though details from the maps 

 were on occasion inserted in the others. 



The original manuscript of Angelus' translation and the first 

 maps of the Latin version have not survived, but manuscripts 

 are extant from the third decade of the century, for example, 

 that prepared under the direction of Cardinal Guillaume 

 Fillestre in 1427 (known as the Nancy codex). This codex 



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