Hungary on Two Portolan Charts by Angelino Dulcert (1325/30, 1339)

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Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to Angelo Cattaneo for his help.

Notes

Krisztina Irás is a doctoral student at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.

1. The name Angelino Dalorto appears on the 1325/30 chart, and it is generally accepted that he is the same person as Angelino Dulcert whose name is on the 1339 version. See A. R. Hinks, Portolan Charts of Angelino da Dalorto 1325 in the Collection of Prince Corsini at Florence, with a Note on the Surviving Charts and Atlases of the Fourteenth Century (London, Royal Geographical Society, 1929), and Tony Campbell, ‘Census of pre‐sixteenth‐century portolan charts’, Imago Mundi 38 (1986): 67–91. See also Tony Campbell, ‘Portolan charts from the late thirteenth century to 1500’, in The History of Cartography, Vol. 1. Cartography of Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. J. Brian Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987), 371–463. Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Père Marsili, une carte majorquine (1313) et ‘“L'ardua controversia des vents”’, Itineraria 5 (2006): 153–69, n.11, follows Campbell. The date of the earlier chart cannot be deciphered with certainty: see Campbell ‘Portolan charts’, 409.

2. A facsimile of the 1325/30 chart, published in 1929 by the Royal Geographical Society, London, may be found at the RGS (Map Room, Portfolio 20) and in the Bibliothèque national de France (BNF, DCP, Ge AA 2650). The original 1339 chart is Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, C.Pl. Ge B 696 Rés.

3. See Campbell ‘Census of pre‐sixteenth‐century portolan charts’ (note 1), 74, item 48, and Campbell, ‘Portolan charts’ (note 1), 425. The chart is drawn on a single skin with the neck. Dimensions are 52 × 102 cm. For a reproduction, see Youssouf Kamal, Monumenta cartographica Africae et Aegyptae, 5 vols. in 16 parts (Cairo, 1926–1951), vol. 4, fasc. 3, p. 1334; also Peter Whitfield, The Charting of the Oceans: Ten Centuries of Maritime Maps (London, The British Library, 1996), 20–21.

4. Other details in common between the signed and unsigned charts as regards Hungary include the depiction of the royal standard (Székesfehérvár), as on the 1339 chart; see text below. There is, however, only one pictorial place sign (for Székesfehérvár).

5. The straight‐line course of the Danube remained on many later fourteenth century and fifteenth century charts. For a reproduction of the Cortona chart, see Vera Armignacco, ‘Una carta nautical della Biblioteca dell'Accademia Etrusca di Cortona’, Rivista Geografica Italiana 64 (1957): 185–223.

6. I have examined as many charts as possible for my study of ‘Hungary on portolan charts’, a chapter in my forthcoming doctoral thesis ‘Cartographic Analysis of Portolan Charts with Use of Digital Methods’.

7. Transylvania is now part of Romania. Such border changes mean that many places referred to in this article now have non‐Hungarian (Slovak, Croatian, Romanian) names.

8. The castles represent the seven Saxon territories of Szeben, Ujegyház, Szászváros, Ko˝halom, Szerdahely, Segesvár and Szászsebes. In the middle of the 12th century King Géza II had settled Saxons in the uninhabited territories of Transylvania, and in 1224, a charter of privilege granted autonomy to them.

9. György Györffy, ‘Államszervezés’ (Organization of the state), in Magyarország története (The History of Hungary) (Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1984), 1: 820.

10. Charles I of Hungary (also known as Charles‐Robert of Anjou and Charles‐Robert of Hungary) was descended from Louis VIII of France and Stephen V of Hungary. Upon the death of Andrew III, the last of the Árpád dynasty, in 1300, Charles claimed the throne, but it took him some eight years to consolidate his power, and his reign is deemed to begin in 1309.

11. For the general context and political background, non‐Hungarian readers are advised to consult Claud Michaud, ‘The kingdoms of central Europe in the fourteenth century’, in the New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 6, c.1300–c.1415, ed. Michael Jones (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000), 735–63. Also see Magyar Kódex (Hungarian codex), vol. 2 (Budapest, Kossuth Kiadó, 1999).

12. Cattle were among the Hungarian commodities sent to northern Italy and to southern Germany; see Peter Spufford, ‘Trade in the fourteenth‐century Europe’, in the New Cambridge Medieval History (note 11), 155–208, at 202.

13. Venetian merchants traded furs of tigers, arctic animals and exotic species from Central Asia bought in the markets of Asia Minor (Spufford, ‘Trade in the fourteenth‐century Europe’ (see note 12), 165–66.

14. During the first half of the 14th century, the Austrian principality was ruled by the Habsburg archdukes Albrecht I and later his son Albrecht II. In 1359, Vienna became the centre of the Habsburg Empire.

15. For the so‐called ‘Meeting of Kings’ and the Treaty of Visegrád, see Bálint Hóman and Gyula Szekfu˝, Magyar történet (Hungarian history), vol. 2 (Budapest, Királyi Magyar Egyetemi Nyomda, 1939), 95–101; and Iván Bertényi, Magyarország az Ajouk korában (Hungary under of the Angevin kings) (Budapest, Gondolat, 1987), 69–72.