Das ganz Frankreich so vor zeiten Galia Narbonensis, Eugdonensis/Belgica und Celtica ist genent worden

Title

Das ganz Frankreich so vor zeiten Galia Narbonensis, Eugdonensis/Belgica und Celtica ist genent worden

Description

Map shows total France

ca. 1545

Artist

Ptolemy/Münster Sebastian (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münster (1488 – 1552) belongs tot he very important Comographers oft he Renaicance. He issued his first famous Cosmographia in 1544 with 24 double paged maps with German description of the world.It had numerous editions in different languages including Latin, French, Italian, English, and Czech. The last German edition was published in 1628, long after his death. The Cosmographia was one of the most successful and popular books of the 16th century. It passed through 24 editions in 100 years. This success was due to the notable woodcuts ,some by Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Deutsch, and David Kandel. It was most important in reviving geography in 16th-century Europe.His first geographic works were Germania descriptio (1530) and Mappa Europae (1536). In 1540 he published a Latin edition of Ptolemy's Geographia with illustrations. The 1550 edition contains cities, portraits, and costumes. These editions, printed in Germany, are the most valued of the Cosmographias. Claudius Ptolemy (arround 100- 160 a.C.) Geographia, gives a list of geographic coordinates of spherical longitude and latitude of almost ten thousand point locations on the earth surface, as they were known at his times. The list is organized in Tabulae which cor- respond to specific regions of the three known continents at that time, Africa, Asia and Europe. Research on Ptolemy’s Geographia has started at the University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in the eighties, focused mainly, but not exclusively, on data re- lated to territories which are now under the sovereignty of the modern Greek state. The World of Ptolemy is classified in Regions, since each Chapter is referred to one of them, giving by this way the concept of Atlas as it is understood today.

Historical Description

It is estimated that today's France was settled about 48,000 years ago. Important rock paintings from the Paleolithic period have been preserved in the Lascaux cave From 600 BC Chr. Phoenician and Greek traders founded bases on the Mediterranean coast, while Celts settled from the northwest the country that was later called by the Romans as Gaul. The French Middle Ages were marked by the rise of kingship in the constant struggle against the independence of the nobility and the secular violence of the monasteries and religious orders. Starting from today's Île-de-France, the Capetinians enforced the idea of a unitary state, which was underpinned by participation in various crusades. The Normans invaded Normandy repeatedly, hence its name; in 1066 they conquered England. A long series of armed conflicts with England began under Louis VII after Ludwig's divorced wife Eleonore von Poitou and Aquitaine married Heinrich Plantagenet in 1152 and thus about half of France's territory fell to England. Philip II August, together with the Hohenstaufen family, largely displaced England from France until 1299; the English king Henry III Ludwig IX. recognize as suzerain. From 1226 France became an inheritance monarchy; in 1250 Ludwig IX was one of the most powerful rulers in the West. In the 17th and 18th centuries, France held European leadership and supremacy. The political and cultural charisma was significant: The court of Louis XIV became the model for absolutist states throughout Europe and the French Revolution with the declaration of human and civil rights, together with occupations by Napoleon Bonaparte, started in many countries the time and again Setbacks interrupted development towards democracy.