The university authorities, though, were not as confident that such contemplations were free of heresy. For them, the Earth was the focus of the universe, the unequivocal center of everything, and arguments about order, proportion, and beauty were at best irrelevant and at worst a direct challenge to Holy Writ.
Aristotle had also taught that the oikoumene, the habitable world, was limited to the regions of Europe, Asia, and North Africa that lay between the frozen northern zone and the blistering heat of the torrid zone. There was, he said, a symmetrical arrangement to the South, although the southern temperate zone remained uninhabited. Since the first centuries of the Christian Church, philosophers and theologians had pointed out that only descendants of the animals in Noahs Ark safely in the northern zone could have survived the Flood. That was a view which the church of Mercators day supported, studiously ignoring the fact that sailors over the previous hundred years had encountered both animals and human beings around the equator and farther south.
For several hundred years, the physical reality of Aristotle had been accepted as fitting most closely with the Christian belief in an all-powerful, eternal Creator; experimentation, measurement, and empirical questioning that might throw Aristotles conclusions into doubt were not allowed by the Church. The challenge to Aristotle was as much part of the Reformation as were the attacks on corruption in the Church. Luthers delight when he declared triumphantly, Aristotle is going downhill, and perhaps he will go all the way down into hell,9 reflected Aristotles position as one of the Catholic Churchs central pillars against reform. Revolution was no less threatening to the authorities because it was in the mind; pull one brick from the towering building of medieval philosophy, faith, and theology, they believed, and the whole structure might come tumbling down.
FOR TWO YEARS Mercator continued quietly with his studies, avoiding any clash with the authorities, until he was awarded his magisterii gradum. The masters degree would have allowed him to progress from the Faculty of Arts to further studies in medicine, Church law, civil law, or theology, as Gemma had done. Instead, as he stood on the threshold of the academic career he must have dreamed of, he gave the first sign of the inner turmoil he was suffering. He remained a member of the university, subject to its rules and regulations and crucially, as he would discover entitled to its protection, but he abandoned his formal course of study. He left Leuven in 1532 for nearby Antwerp.
Many years later, Mercator admitted that as a young man at Leuven, he had begun to have his first doubts about the wisdom of the philosophers, and to believe that the contemplation of nature, science, and the natural world might offer a better insight into Gods will. When I understood how the world of Genesis and Moses did not agree in many ways with Aristotle and the rest of the philosophers, then I began to doubt the truth of all the philosophers, and to test it against the mysteries of nature.10 Those words about his youthful doubts, taken from a treatise on Genesis published after his death, seem calm and judicious, but his actions at the time suggested that they hid an agonizing mental struggle.
Almost certainly, it was with these cogitations on the incompatibility of Aristotle and Genesis that the first seeds of Mercators lifelong interest in synthesizing the various ancient and medieval accounts of history were sown. Whether his thoughts were written down for eventual publication or not, they were to develop more than thirty years later into his Chronologia and Cosmographia.
The reasons behind his decision to leave Leuven will never be known for certain, nor will the reaction of his great-uncle, who had spent so many years building his own career in the Church and keeping quiet about his reformist ideas. Mercator was not expelled he claimed later11 that he left alone, and of my own volition and he kept open the option of returning to the university. Perhaps he had no clear idea at the time of what he would do or how he would live outside the walls of the College of the Castle. Yet in choosing Antwerp as his destination, he threw his religious belief, his academic future, even his life into jeopardy.
Chapter Six Doubts and Dangers
THE ROAD TO ANTWERP took Mercator through the town of Mechelen, about halfway from Leuven. There is no way of knowing whether he broke his journey then and even stayed for a brief while, but once he reached Antwerp he would certainly have heard about the books, maps, and ideas that were emanating from the town. Mechelen buzzed with intellectual life. The great port city of Antwerp was unchallenged as the mercantile and commercial center of the region, and Leuven was the finest academic institution of northern Europe, but fate and the whims of mighty families had made the little town of Mechelen, under its massive thirteenth-century Cathedral of St. Rombout, a hotbed of intellectual debate and creativity. There, away from the dead hand of the university authorities, the challenging ideas of a new world found expression.
In the early years of the sixteenth century, the town had gone through a brief period of glittering prosperity, home to the court of the young Charles Vs regent, Margaret of Austria. Charles himself, though born in Ghent, spent the first sixteen years of his life in Mechelen, surrounded by artists and philosophers such as the German engraver Albrecht Dürer, the humanist thinker Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Sir Thomas More, future chancellor of King Henry VIII of England. There were also spies, sending back information to their masters in the various courts of Europe about the humanist and occasionally anti-Catholic ideas that were expressed in the town. The composer and copyist Petrus Alamire* worked as a musician at the court and at various times supplied secret reports to Charless advisers and to King Henry in England.
Even though Mechelens glory was fading by the time Mercator traveled there in the early 1530s, the prosperity that came with such fame remained. Many businesses had been attracted to the town among them, the burgeoning trade of printing. Mechelen was known as one of the most important centers in the Low Countries for the rapidly developing technology, and that in turn had encouraged geographers and mapmakers, giving it a widespread reputation as a place of geographic study.
Gemma Frisius and his circle were in touch with some of the towns brightest intellectual flames, among them Frans Smunck, or Franciscus Monachus. If one of them sent Mercator to meet him, it would have been done discreetly, because Franciscus was a marked man; but it seems likely that the young student paid him several visits during his months in Antwerp. Franciscus was one of a religious community known as the Minorite Friars, who believed that by practicing complete self-denial, poverty, and humility, they would lead the world back to pure Christianity. They had been outspoken in their criticism of corruption in the Church for more than two centuries, and at various times, some of their leaders had gone so far as to question the legitimacy of the papacy itself, so that members of the order had been harassed, excommunicated, even burned at the stake. Such a history meant that, at best, the Friars were regarded with suspicion by the Inquisition and the university authorities but Franciscus had a dangerous reputation of his own as well.
Gemma Frisius and his circle were in touch with some of the towns brightest intellectual flames, among them Frans Smunck, or Franciscus Monachus. If one of them sent Mercator to meet him, it would have been done discreetly, because Franciscus was a marked man; but it seems likely that the young student paid him several visits during his months in Antwerp. Franciscus was one of a religious community known as the Minorite Friars, who believed that by practicing complete self-denial, poverty, and humility, they would lead the world back to pure Christianity. They had been outspoken in their criticism of corruption in the Church for more than two centuries, and at various times, some of their leaders had gone so far as to question the legitimacy of the papacy itself, so that members of the order had been harassed, excommunicated, even burned at the stake. Such a history meant that, at best, the Friars were regarded with suspicion by the Inquisition and the university authorities but Franciscus had a dangerous reputation of his own as well.
A few years before, he had constructed the first globe to be seen in the Low Countries, along with a short book and a world map. The globe has been lost, but his map shows that he was one of the most advanced geographic thinkers of his day. When it was produced in 1526, the American continents had gradually taken shape after Magellans voyage around the southern tip, and Franciscus had done his best to incorporate the latest discoveries of the expeditions that had been pushing northward up its western coastline. North America floundered in a blur of guesswork, depicted as an outgrowth of Asia, and a narrow channel was shown cutting the isthmus to South America, almost foreshadowing the Panama Canal 375 years later. Petrus Apianus had shown such a channel in his world map of 1520, but he had achieved nothing like the accuracy of Franciscus Monachuss depiction of South America.
Franciscus Monachuss worldview
British Library, London, Rare Books and Maps Collections
Franciscuss thoughts ran in more perilous channels as well. By the time Mercator met him he was in his midforties and was known as a critic of the Aristotelian ideas that were at the center of religious orthodoxy, a believer in the importance of observation and measurement, and a man who challenged accepted wisdom. The message of his map had been that exploration, pushing westward to the Indies, was a profitable enterprise, while in his book he had derided the rubbish of Ptolemy, and by implication denied the truth of Aristotles view of a five-zoned world.
The jumble of fact, rumor, report, and conjecture that surrounded the emerging Americas, let alone Franciscuss contemptuous view of the great Ptolemy, might have been meat enough for discussion between the two men, but their meetings seem to have ranged over the whole story of the Creation and the history of the world. These were more controversial studies by far than consideration of the coastline of the Americas.
For obvious reasons, Mercator never spoke about his time at Mechelen. How often he traveled there, when or even whether he saw Franciscus, how long he stayed if they did meet, who else might have been with them, were all secrets he took to his grave. Despite the dangers involved, the two men did write to each other, though their letters have been lost. Events a decade later suggest that the religious authorities, at least, believed that their contents would have been enough to damn Mercator as a heretic.
IN ANTWERP, days stretched into weeks, and weeks into months, and still Mercator stayed away from the university. He seems to have been deep in study, agonizing over the conflicts between the world he saw and the world Aristotle described, between reason and the Bible, no doubt debating whether he could return to an institution that stifled original thought as Leuven did. The pleas of the doctors and professors, instructing him to return, were all ignored. It is a mark of how much he was valued as a scholar that when he did eventually go back, they swallowed their pride and readmitted him into the university.1
The practicalities of making a living from his knowledge soon took hold. Even with the support of the University of Leuven, a delight in nature and in the order and proportion of Creation would never put bread on his table. Philosophy, as his friend and first biographer Walter Ghim put it, would not enable him to support a family in the years to come.2 By contrast, geography globes and maps, like those he had probably seen in Franciscuss cell among the Minorite Friars was of continuing interest to wealthy sponsors. Mercators religious anxieties, his fascination with new ideas, his interest in the developing picture of the world were all genuine enough, but his later business career showed that he had a shrewd idea of where his own material interests lay and it was not with the study of philosophy.
Mercator had been granted a license by the university to teach his own classes to young students, but private tuition was never more than a temporary way to support oneself. Through Gemma Frisius, he began to establish contacts and friendships of his own, developing his acquaintance with the young Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, who was clearly a valuable patron for the future. Mercator needed little instruction in how to make himself agreeable to such an influential figure. Your Grace, Your Reverence, and most reverend master are among the phrases with which his correspondence with the young bishop of Arras was larded. Throughout his career, the effusive dedications of maps, globes, and books to powerful sponsors like Granvelle and his father would bear witness to Mercators passion for developing a network of influential friends. Such contacts were invaluable to a talented and ambitious man with a career to find and no wealth on which to establish it.
Gemma, with the help of a local goldsmith, Gaspard van der Heyden, had established a workshop in Leuven several years before, to design and make scientific instruments and globes, and in the early 1530s he invited Mercator to join them. Such an invitation was immensely flattering, a mark of considerable respect from someone whose good opinion was valuable, and Mercator had no hesitation in accepting it.
Chapter Seven Gemmas Globe
UNDER THE INFLUENCE of the painters, philosophers, and thinkers who thronged his aunts court in Mechelen, the awkward young Charles V grew into a cultured and sophisticated patron of artists and craftsmen, with his own collection of paintings and works of art. Other leading figures in the Low Countries followed his example. Antoine de Granvelle built a collection in the archbishops palace in Mechelen that eventually included at least seven paintings by Peter Brueghel, already one of the most popular artists of his day.1 Prosperous local merchants and government officials bought paintings as well: The royal tax collector Niclaes Jonghelinck2 outdid even Granvelle with a collection of sixteen or more Brueghels, and when Jean Noirot, a former minister of the mint, was declared bankrupt in 1572, his creditors were able to auction off dozens of paintings by leading Flemish artists. Art was a flourishing business: The guild lists in sixteenth-century Antwerp show no fewer than 300 artists and 124 goldsmiths living and working in a city of around 150,000 people.