After only a few weeks of silence, it's time for some more blogposting! As promised, this post's topic will be focused on this map:
Yes, that's right, it's the famous Fool's Cap Map of the World from 1595 (also known as Nosce te ipsum - Latin for "know thyself"), and a History academic at the University of Suffolk has recently published a book that delves into the story behind this map. While Nosce te ipsum, and other kinds of maps that are similar to it, are maps that I had already seen on display at the Secret Maps exhibition at the British Library many months ago, I have never had the time to get to know more about what the map's purpose was all about. Well, finally, I now have the chance.
As is typical of event posts, let's start by going into some details about the History academic that delivered the talk in the University's Waterfront Lecture Theatre on the evening of the 23rd of April. So,
Dr Michael Sauter is an Associate Professor of History, whose large magnitude of research projects, which includes intellectual crime in Weimar Germany, Euclidean geometry, as well as transcriptions of the Suffolk cookbooks, has taken him on a journey to university institutions all over the world, and besides the recent publication of the
Nosce te ipsum research in his book
"The Cartographic Fool", is currently undertaking a research project on libraries in colonial Latin America and its influence on global spatial knowledge.
That being said, let's get to the magnificent features of the map that this talk had brought us, and we're going to start off by saying that the first part of Michael's talk was just pure fun to listen to - as it was made perfectly clear from the outset that the map absolutely had no relationship with the things that were supposed to be interpreted as the map's meaning, namely Burton's theory that world society is mad, and the map is somehow tied to the theme of melancholy and other psychological galaxies. It was just... plain wrong.
So, instead of psychology, it was starting to become more apparent that we were going to be diving deep down into a world of Christian artefacts, stories of historic battles (which included the 1572 St Bartholomew's massacre, as well as the expulsion of Protestants from Antwerp), and biographies of Renaissance-era woodcutters and cartographers.
With the psychological myths dispelled from the get-go, it was now time to truly begin the
Nosce te ipsum journey, and starting off the adventure was Sebastian Brant and his 1494 publication,
Das Narrenschiff, a 112 verse satire book that was hugely popular across the Northern European territories. A few of the wood cuts in particular stood out as being related to the idea of cartographic foolery - but the woodcut that was the most important to me was the one that introduced the idea of a sacred orb, as you can see in the following picture that was taken from a copy of the book that was hosted on the
Internet Archive:
The next part of the talk ended up getting even more interesting, as we then went on to explore other prints that were inspired by Brant's vision of the world - you could tell that piracy was a lot more commonplace than you might think, albeit a world away from modern day counterfeiting and all the legal consequences that come with it. First, it was Coornhert's 1557 copy of Heraclitus and Democritus (pictured below), where two fools were stood draped over an orb, weeping and laughing, followed by Georgette de Montenay's 1571 directory of Christian emblems, where she ended up copying over 100 images from Brant's texts and using them to reject traditional images, instead choosing to accept a more Biblical interpretation of the world.
The fools are experiencing sadness and happiness...
And the rejection of spheres in Catholic maps just kept on going - Beza's theory from 1580 rejected the idea of a sphere, and Hondius' theory from 1589 just happened to agree on Beza's theory - it has become apparent that by this point, using pure spheres to depict geography have become an absolutely pointless abomination of an idea. The theme just kept on going in Typus Verae (where a 10 line verse morphed into 16), and even the maps in the Biblia Regia focused on theological problems, most notably the map appearing to show a land bridge connecting the Eurasian and North American landmasses - a mystery that appears to be strikingly similar to maps showing the land bridge connecting South America and Antarctica.
Having got the idea that spheres have now become pointless, we then got round to the big names that directly inspired the famous Nosce te ipsum - Jean de Fourmont, a French mapmaker believed to have originated from Paris, who made the 1575 fool's cap version, as well as Abraham Ortelius, who is the creator of the world's first known atlas, Typus Orbis Terrarum, as well as being the architect of a map projection that is still frequently used in geographical information systems today. Ortelius's view of his atlas turned out to be quite interesting, as his cosmopolitan network proved to be quite influential in the way he was making maps, and at one point, was joking that he was a terrestrial citizen of the world.
Oh yes... here is the map that kicked off modern day cartography...
Eventually, the talk ended on Michael's theory as to who may have made the iconic Nosce te ipsum map. It is believed to be Philip Galle, who was born in 1537 in Haarlem to a family of notables and moved to Antwerp in 1570 to work as a printmaker and sell his prints in the Catholic markets of the city, getting rid of his name in the process; while his handwriting on his other works appears to point to him being the maker of the map, it is no definitive smoking gun.
Unfortunately though, as I found out post-talk, the original Nosce te ipsum map was never directly used as inspiration for any fantasy stories, however, other maps and drawings that took inspiration from the original were used as inspiration for various types of fantasy and fiction series, such as the Batman series, where one of the characters, Harley Quinn, was dressed up in a fool's cap.
Conclusions from the event
To begin concluding my experiences of this event, I have to say that the Cartographic Fool talk exceeded all my expectations, and most definitely opened up my imagination to cartography in a way that I had never thought about before; it was a very well structured talk that revolved around how mapping techniques were linked to Renaissance-era religion and culture concepts, dispelling myths about the map's relationship to psychological concepts in the process. Ultimately, the talk ended up flowing along quite nicely in a complete loop right back to the beginning.
In a way, some of the discussion that related to religious depictions of geographical objects definitely gave away some of the vibes from quite a few of the Secret Maps talks that I had attended at the British Library, in particular the event on mapping the mysterious and the idea of the Korean Peninsula being depicted as a tiger, in line with general Korean tradition. And while the idea of the Nosce te ipsum map did not directly inspire fantasy authors, I felt that the concepts that revolved around the map, such as religion, political satire and the underpinning historical battles, could have very much been used to create fantasy stories and historical fiction stories.
Anyways, I hope that you have enjoyed this wild adventure into historical mapping, and if you are willing to fork out £99 to explore Renaissance Europe and its influences on mapping in more detail, I would strongly suggest that you check out Michael Sauter's book, The Cartographic Fool. Alternatively, if you are a University of Suffolk student, member of staff or alumni with access, copies of the book are also available in the University's library, which had just recently relocated to the Waterfront building in March 2026.
Signing off now,
Jakub
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