Maps and Mapmakers of Transylvania
Maps and Mapmakers of Transylvania

Summary/Abstract: The early mapping of Transylvania – and for the purpose of this paper here I will also include the area known as the Partium and also the Temeş Banat region – not surprisingly, has been closely connected to Central Europe in general and to Hungary in particular. The so-called T-O maps, where the east is uppermost, consist of a horizontal line separating Asia at the top from Europe and Africa below is formed by the River Don (Tanais), the Sea of Azov, the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmora, the Aegean, and the Nile (Ebstorf map, Hereford Mappa Mundi). The first new map of Central Europe was made by Nicolaus Cusanus (1401-1464) in the middle of the 15th century. The Eichstadt edition, published in 1491, for the first time shows the name TRANSILVANIA not only once, but twice, and SEPTEM CASTRA for good measure. The pride of Hungarian cartography, Lázár’s map of Hungary was published in 1528 preceding Lily’s map of England by nearly 20 years. The abundance of place-names on Lazarus’s map is remarkable. In comparison to earlier maps, where, at most, some fifty or so names appeared, on Lázár’s map a total of over 1300 settlements are named, more than 200 in Transylvania. The first map of Transylvania was published in 1532, just four years after Lázár’s masterpiece. It was the work of Johannes Honterus (1498-1549) of Braşov, the great teacher and religious reformer of that city. Honterus’s cartographic masterpiece, however, was CHOROGRAPHIA TRANSYLVANIAE Sybemburgen. First to issue maps of uniform size, bound in a book, was Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598), who in 1570 published his THEATRUM ORBIS TERRARUM, containing 53 maps. Although Ortelius had deliberately set out to produce only one map of each country, he nevertheless included three maps covering the area of the Kingdom of Hungary: HUNGARIAE by Wolfgang Lazius (1514-1565) SCHLAVONIAE, CROATIAE … by Augustin Hirschvogel (1503-1553), and TRANSYLVANIA by Johannes Sambucus (1531-1584). It was Gerhard Mercator (1512-1594), who used the term "atlas" first as the title for his ATLAS SIVE COSMOGRAPHICAE MEDITATIONES, published in 1585, 1589, 1595 and in a single combined volume again in 1595. Mercator’s TRANSYLVANIA was first published in Volume III in 1595, and again in the combined edition during the same year. Péter Bod decided to illustrate his church history and “take the reader along the dotted lines” with the help of these four maps, as they represent the first maps of the continents with Hungarian toponyms and terminology and by a Transylvanian. Both Honterus and Bod, although two centuries apart, used maps as educational tools illustrating history and disseminating knowledge.

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