Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. | Page 5

John I.; (2) Oliveiro Martins' Sons of Don John I.; (3) A. Herculano's History of Portugal; (4) Osbernus de Expugnatione Lixbonensi.
VII. For Chapter VII. (Henry's position in 1415): Azurara's Discovery and Conquest of Guinea.
VIII. For Chapter VIII. (Ceuta): (1) Azurara's Chronicle of the Conquest of Ceuta; (2) Azurara's Discovery of Guinea.
IX. For Chapter IX. (Henry's Settlement at Sagres): (1) Azurara's Guinea; (2) De Barro's Asia; (3) Wauwerman's Henri le Navigateur et l'��cole Portugaise de Sagres.
X. For Chapter X. (Cape Bojador and the Azores): (1) Azurara's Guinea; (2) O. Martins' Sons of Don John I.
XI. For Chapter XI. (Henry's Political Life, 1433-41): (1) Pina's Chronicle of King Edward; (2) O. Martins' Sons of Don John I.; (3) Azurara's Chronicle of John I.; (4) Pina's Chronicle of Affonso V.
XII. For Chapter XII. (From Boyador to Cape Verde).--(1) Azurara's Guinea; (2) De Barros; (3) Pina's Chronicle of Affonso V.; (4) O. Martins' Sons of Don John I.
For Chapters XIII. to the end.--(1) Azurara's Discovery and Conquest of Guinea; (2) Narratives of Cadamosto and Diego Gomez; (3) Pina's Chronicle of Affonso V.; (4) Prince Henry's Charters.
The three modern lives of Prince Henry which I have chiefly consulted are:
R.H. Major's Henry the Navigator, Wapp?us' Heinrich der Seeffahrer, and De Weer's Prinz Heinrich, with O. Martins' Lives of the Infants of the House of Aviz in his Sons of Don John I.
The maps and illustrations have been planned in a regular series.
I. As to the former, they are meant to show in an historical succession the course of geographical advance in Christendom down to the death of Prince Henry (1460). Setting aside the Ptolemy, which represents the knowledge of the world at its height in the pre-Christian civilisation, and the Edrisi which represents the Arabic followers of Ptolemy, whose influence upon early Christian geography was very marked, all the maps reproduced belong to the science of the Christian ages and countries. The two Mappe-mondes above referred to are both placed in the introductory chapter, and are treated only as the most important examples of the science which the Gr?co-Roman Empire bequeathed to Christendom, but which between the seventh and thirteenth centuries was chiefly worked upon by the Arabs. Among early Christian maps, that of St. Sever, possibly of the eighth century, the Anglo-Saxon map of the tenth century, the Turin Map of the eleventh, and the Spanish map of the twelfth (1109), represent very crude and simple types of sketches of the world, in which within a square or oblong surrounded by the ocean a few prominent features only, such as the main divisions of countries, are attempted. The Anglo-Saxon example, though greatly superior to the others given here, essentially belongs to this kind of work, where some little truth is preserved by a happy ignorance of the travellers' tales that came into fashion later, but where there is only the vaguest and most general knowledge of geographical facts.
On the other hand, in the next group, to which the Psalter map is allied, and in which the Hereford map is our best example, mythical learning--drawn from books like Pliny, Solinus, St. Isidore, and Martianus Capella, which collected stories of beasts and monsters, stones and men, divine, human, and natural marvels on the principle Credo quia impossible--has overpowered every other consideration, and a map of the world becomes a great picture-book of curious objects, in which the very central and primary interest of geography is lost. But by the side of and almost at the same time as these specimens of geographical mythology, geographical science had taken a new start in the coast charts or portolani of Balearic and Italian seamen, some specimens of which form our next set of maps.
Dulcert's portolano of 1339 and the Laurentian of 1351 are two of the best examples of this kind of work, which gave us our first really accurate map of any part of the globe, but which for some time was entirely confined to coast drawing, and was meant to supply the practical wants of captains, pilots, and seamen. The Catalan atlas of 1375-6 shows the portolano type extended to a real Mappa Mundi; the elaborate carefulness and sumptuousness of this example prepares us for the still higher work of Andrea Bianco and of Benincasa in the fifteenth century. As the Laurentian portolano of 1351 commemorates the voyage of 1341 and marks its discoveries in the Atlantic islands, so the Catalan map of 1375-6 commemorates the Catalan voyage of 1346, and gives the best and most up-to-date picture of the N.W. African coast as it was known before Prince Henry's discoveries.
Last of these groups of maps is that of examples from Henry's own age, such as the Fra Mauro map of 1459 or the maps of Andrea Bianco and Benincasa (e.g., 1436, 1448, 1468), among which the first-named