Nicolaus Germanus

In the fifteenth century it was common for scholars and artisans to adopt a Latinized version of their birth name. Nicolaus Germanus is the Latin form of the name "Nicholas the German". His full birth name is unknown. His name is sometimes preceded by "Donnus" or "Donus", an abbreviated form of the Latin title Dominus ("Lord" or "Master"). ==Life==

Nothing is known about the early life of Nicolaus Germanus. He first appears in the records of the Reichenbach Priory (now in Baden-Württemberg) where he was prior of the Benedictine monastery in 1442. It appears that he was trained in cosmography around 1460 and arrived in Italy by 1464. He lived first in Florence where he compiled astrological tables and produced his first revision of Ptolemy's Geography in 1466. He later moved to Rome where he created a pair of globes and a world map for the Vatican Library in 1477. He continued to prepare updates and revisions of Ptolemy's atlas for several years. The last contemporary record of his activity comes from a fellow German scholar, Conrad Celtes, who met him in Florence and wrote that Nicolaus complained bitterly about others getting the glory and profit for his work. ==Works==

Ptolemy's Geographia Nicolaus Germanus was an influential figure in the modernization and popularization of Ptolemy's Geographia. At least fifteen manuscript copies of Geographia were authored by Germanus or immediately copied from his work. Except for the 1482 Florence edition, all versions printed in the fifteenth century were based on his manuscripts. Henricus Martellus Germanus also adopted the trapezoid projection in 1480 for his manuscript version of Geographia. The second recension (1466 to 1468) includes the twenty-seven tabulae antiquae and three new maps (tabulae modernae) covering northern Europe, Spain and France. His representation of the Scandinavian region, including Iceland and Greenland, reflected a more accurate depiction provided by Danish cartographer Claudius Clavus. The world map in this recension was drawn using the homeotheric projection which Ptolemy called superior but more difficult to construct. His last recension (1468 to 1482) added two more maps depicting Italy and Palestine and extended the world map to include northern Europe, although his placement of Iceland and Greenland were notably less accurate than his previous portrayal. The 1482 editions of Ulm and Berlinghieri contain the first modern maps (derived from Germanus) to appear in print. Germanus introduced other cartographic innovations including the use of dots or circles to mark the exact position of localities and dotted lines to indicate frontiers. Astrology Nicolaus Germanus was also a competent astrologer. In 1466 while in Florence, he prepared an astrological table for the Duke Borso d'Este which demonstrated his ability to calculate the positions of the planets for several years into the future. In Rome he prepared a similar astrological table for Pope Paul II. ==References==