Abraham Ortelius Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Please explain Theatrum Orbis Terrarum? Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the "first modern atlas" (of 53 maps).
Did Abraham contribute to this?
Did Abraham Ortelius contribute to Theatrum Orbis Terrarum?
On 20 May 1570, Gilles Coppens de Diest at Antwerp issued Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the "first modern atlas" (of 53 maps). Three Latin editions of this (besides a Dutch, a French and a German edition) appeared before the end of 1572; twenty-five editions came out before Ortelius' death in 1598; and several others were published subsequently, for the atlas continued to be in demand until about 1612. Most of the maps were admittedly reproductions (a list of 87 authors is given in the first Theatrum by Ortelius himself, growing to 183 names in the 1601 Latin edition), and many discrepancies of delineation or nomenclature occur. Errors, of course, abound, both in general conceptions and in detail; thus South America is initially very faulty in outline, but corrected in the 1587 French edition, and in Scotland the Grampians lie between the Forth and the Clyde; but, taken as a whole, this atlas with its accompanying text was a monument of rare erudition and industry. Its immediate precursor and prototype was a collection of thirty-eight maps of European lands, and of Asia, Africa, Tartary and Egypt, gathered together by the wealth and enterprise, and through the agents, of Ortelius' friend and patron, Gillis Hooftman (1521-1581), lord of Cleydael and Aertselaer: most of these were printed in Rome, eight or nine only in the Southern Netherlands.  In 1573 Ortelius published seventeen supplementary maps under the title Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum. Four more Additamenta were to follow, the last one appearing in 1597. He also had a keen interest and formed a fine collection of coins, medals and antiques, and this resulted in the book (also in 1573, published by Philippe Galle of Antwerp) Deorum dearumque capita ... ex Museo Ortelii (reprinted in 1582, 1602, 1612, 1680, 1683 and finally in 1699 by Gronovius, Thesaurus Graecarum Antiquitatum. vol. vii).  The Theatrum Orbis Terrarum inspired a six volume work entitled Civitates orbis terrarum edited by Georg Braun and illustrated by Frans Hogenberg with the assistance of Ortelius himself, who visited England to see his friend John Dee in Mortlake in 1577 and Braun tells of Ortelius putting pebbles in cracks in Temple Church, Bristol, being crushed by the vibration of the bells in the description on the back of 'Brightovve' Map 2, Third Edition 1581 CANNOTANSWER
In 1573 Ortelius published seventeen supplementary maps under the title Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum.
Abraham Ortelius (; also Ortels, Orthellius, Wortels; 4 or 14 April 152728 June 1598) was a Brabantian cartographer, geographer, and cosmographer, conventionally recognized as the creator of the first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World). Along with Gemma Frisius and Gerardus Mercator, Ortelius is generally considered one of the founders of the Netherlandish school of cartography and geography. He was a notable figure of this school in its golden age (approximately 1570s–1670s) and an important geographer of Spain during the age of discovery. The publication of his atlas in 1570 is often considered as the official beginning of the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography. He was the first person proposing that the continents were joined before drifting to their present positions.

Life
Ortelius was born on either 4 April or 14 April 1527 in the city of Antwerp, which was then in the Habsburg Netherlands (modern-day Belgium). The Orthellius family were originally from Augsburg, a Free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1535, the family had fallen under suspicion of Protestantism. Following the death of Ortelius's father, his uncle Jacobus van Meteren returned from religious exile in England to take care of Ortelius. Abraham remained close to his cousin Emanuel van Meteren, who would later move to London. In 1575 he was appointed geographer to the king of Spain, Philip II, on the recommendation of Arias Montanus, who vouched for his orthodoxy.

He travelled extensively in Europe and is specifically known to have traveled throughout the Seventeen Provinces; in southern, western, northern, and eastern Germany (e.g., 1560, 1575–1576); France (1559–1560); England and Ireland (1576); and Italy (1578, and perhaps two or three times between 1550 and 1558).

Beginning as a map-engraver, in 1547 he entered the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke as an illuminator of maps. He supplemented his income trading in books, prints, and maps, and his journeys included yearly visits to the Frankfurt book and print fair, where he met Gerardus Mercator in 1554. In 1560, however, when travelling with Mercator to Trier, Lorraine, and Poitiers, he seems to have been attracted, largely by Mercator's influence, towards the career of a scientific geographer.

He died in Antwerp.

Map publisher
 
In 1564 he published his first map, Typus Orbis Terrarum, an eight-leaved wall map of the world, on which he identified the Regio Patalis with Locach as a northward extension of the Terra Australis, reaching as far as New Guinea. This map subsequently appeared in reduced form in the Terrarum (the only extant copy is in now at Basel University Library). He also published a two-sheet map of Egypt in 1565, a plan of the Brittenburg castle on the coast of the Netherlands in 1568, an eight-sheet map of Asia in 1567, and a six-sheet map of Spain before the appearance of his atlas.

In England Ortelius's contacts included William Camden, Richard Hakluyt, Thomas Penny, Puritan controversialist William Charke, and Humphrey Llwyd, who would contribute the map of England and Wales to Ortelius's 1573 edition of the Theatrum.

In 1578 he laid the basis of a critical treatment of ancient geography by his Synonymia geographica (issued by the Plantin press at Antwerp and republished in expanded form as Thesaurus geographicus in 1587 and again expanded in 1596. In this last edition, Ortelius considers the possibility of continental drift, a hypothesis proved correct only centuries later).

In 1596 he received a presentation from Antwerp city, similar to that afterwards bestowed on Rubens. His death on 28 June 1598 and his burial in the church of St. Michael's Abbey, Antwerp, were marked by public mourning. The inscription on his tombstone reads: Quietis cultor sine lite, uxore, prole ("served quietly, without accusation, wife, and offspring").

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum

On 20 May 1570, Gilles Coppens de Diest at Antwerp issued Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the "first modern atlas" (of 53 maps). Three Latin editions of this (besides a Dutch, a French, and a German edition) appeared before the end of 1572; twenty-five editions came out before Ortelius's death in 1598; and several others were published subsequently, for the atlas continued to be in demand until about 1612. Most of the maps were admittedly reproductions (a list of 87 authors is given in the first Theatrum by Ortelius himself, growing to 183 names in the 1601 Latin edition), and many discrepancies of delineation or nomenclature occur. Errors, of course, abound, both in general conceptions and in detail; thus South America is initially very faulty in outline, but corrected in the 1587 French edition, and in Scotland, the Grampians lie between the Forth and the Clyde; but, taken as a whole, this atlas with its accompanying text was a monument of rare erudition and industry. Its immediate precursor and prototype was a collection of thirty-eight maps of European lands, and of Asia, Africa, Tartary, and Egypt, gathered together by the wealth and enterprise, and through the agents, of Ortelius's friend and patron, Gillis Hooftman (1521–1581), lord of Cleydael and Aertselaar: most of these were printed in Rome, eight or nine only in the Southern Netherlands.

In 1573, Ortelius published seventeen supplementary maps under the title Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum. Four more Additamenta were to follow, the last one appearing in 1597. He also had a keen interest and formed a fine collection of coins, medals and antiques, and this resulted in the book (also in 1573, published by Philippe Galle of Antwerp) Deorum dearumque capita ... ex Museo Ortelii ("Heads of the gods and goddesses... from the Ortelius Museum"); reprinted in 1582, 1602, 1612, 1680, 1683 and finally in 1699 by Gronovius, Thesaurus Graecarum Antiquitatum ("Treasury of Greek Antiquities", vol. vii).

The Theatrum Orbis Terrarum inspired a six-volume work titled Civitates orbis terrarum, edited by Georg Braun and illustrated by Frans Hogenberg with the assistance of Ortelius himself, who visited England to see his friend John Dee in Mortlake in 1577, and Braun tells of Ortelius putting pebbles in cracks in Temple Church, Bristol, being crushed by the vibration of the bells.

Later maps

In 1579 Ortelius brought out his Nomenclator Ptolemaicus and started his Parergon (a series of maps illustrating ancient history, sacred and secular). He also published Itinerarium per nonnullas Galliae Belgicae partes (at the Plantin press in 1584, and reprinted in 1630, 1661 in Hegenitius, Itin. Frisio-Hoil., in 1667 by Verbiest, and finally in 1757 in Leuven), a record of a journey in Belgium and the Rhineland made in 1575. In 1589 he published Maris Pacifici, the first dedicated map of the Pacific to be printed. Among his last works were an edition of Caesar (C. I. Caesaris omnia quae extant, Leiden, Raphelingen, 1593), and the Aurei saeculi imago, sive Germanorum veterum vita, mores, ritus et religio. (Philippe Galle, Antwerp, 1596). He also aided Welser in his edition of the Peutinger Table in 1598.

Contrary to popular belief, Abraham Ortelius, who had no children, never lived at the Mercator-Orteliushuis (Kloosterstraat 11–17, Antwerpen), but lived at his sister's house (Kloosterstraat 33–35, Antwerpen).

Modern use of maps
Originals of Ortelius's maps are popular collectors' items and often sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Facsimiles of his maps are also available from many retailers. A map he made of North and South America is also included in the world's largest commercially available jigsaw puzzle, which is of four world maps. This puzzle is made by Ravensburger, measures  × , and has over 18,000 pieces.

Imagining continental drift
Ortelius was the first to underline the geometrical similarity between the coasts of America and Europe-Africa and to propose continental drift as an explanation. Kious described Ortelius's thoughts in this way:

Ortelius's observations of continental juxtaposition and his proposal of rupture and separation went unnoticed until the late 20th century. However, they were repeated in 18th and 19th century and later by Alfred Wegener, who published his hypothesis of continental drift in 1912 and in following years. Because his publications were widely available in German and English and because he adduced geological support for the idea, Wegener is credited by most geologists as the first to recognize the possibility of continental drift. Frank Bursley Taylor (in 1908) was also an early advocate of continental drift.  During the 1960s geophysical and geological evidence for seafloor spreading at mid-oceanic ridges became increasingly compelling to geologists (e.g. Hess, 1960) and finally established continental drift as an ongoing global mechanism. After more than three centuries, Ortelius's supposition of continental drift was proven correct.

Bibliography

 
 
 Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. Gedruckt zu Nuermberg durch Johann Koler Anno MDLXXII. Mit einer Einführung und Erläuterungen von Ute Schneider. Second unchanged edition (2. unveränd. Aufl). Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007.

Notes

References

Sources
 
 
 
 
  (an edition of Ortelius's letters)
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  (Translated from the fourth revised German edition.)

Further reading

See also
 Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World)
 History of cartography
 Early modern Netherlandish cartography
 Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography

External links 

 

16th-century Flemish cartographers
1527 births
1598 deaths
Early modern Netherlandish cartography
Belgian cartographers
Belgian geographers
Scientists from Antwerp
People from the Duchy of Brabant
Flemish geographers
Abraham and the Idol Shop is a midrash that appears in Genesis Rabbah chapter 38.  It is a post-biblical story imagining the early life of Abraham.  The commentary explains what happened to Abraham when he was a young boy working in his father's idol shop.  The story has been used as a way to discuss monotheism and faith in general.

Characters

Abraham
Abraham is the first patriarch and is seen as the father of the four Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baháʼí Faith. The later life of Abraham is told in the book of Genesis Chapters 11–25.  The missing years of Abraham's early childhood are explained through a series of Midrashim.

Terah
Terah is a Biblical figure from the book of Genesis. He is the father of three children including the Patriarch Abraham.  According to Jewish tradition, Terah was an idolater.  Terah also made and sold idols, as the Midrash Genesis Rabbah 38 explains.

Haran
Haran is the son of Terah, brother of Abraham, and the father of Lot.  Haran died in Ur of the Chaldees, in the presence of his father, Terah.

Nimrod
Nimrod is a descendant of Noah and is considered to be a "mighty one on the earth."  There is no description of a biblical interaction between Nimrod and Abraham. According to many Jewish and Islamic sources, the two did meet, and their meeting was symbolic of the confrontation between either: 
 good (Abraham) and evil (Nimrod) or
 monotheism (Abraham) and polytheism (Nimrod)

Basis of the Midrash
The Midrash is based on Genesis 11:28, “And Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.” The question the rabbis are trying to answer with the Midrash is why and how did Haran die in the presence of his father.

Content of the Midrash
According to Genesis Rabbah 38.13, Ḥiyya b. Abba, a third-generation Amora, told following story: 

Terah was an idol manufacturer who once went away and left Abraham in charge of the store. A man walked in and wished to buy an idol. Abraham asked him how old he was and the man responded “50 years old.” Abraham then said, “You are 50 years old and would worship a day old statue!” At this point the man left, ashamed.

Later, a woman walked into the store and wanted to make an offering to the idols. So Abraham took a stick, smashed the idols and placed the stick in the hand of the largest idol. When Terah returned, he asked Abraham what happened to all the idols. Abraham told him that a woman came in to make an offering to the idols. The idols argued about which one should eat the offering first, then the largest idol took the stick and smashed all the other idols. Terah responded by saying that they are only statues and have no knowledge. Whereupon Abraham responded by saying that you deny their knowledge, yet you worship them! At this point, Terah took Abraham to Nimrod.

Nimrod proclaims to Abraham that we should worship fire. Abraham responds that water puts out fire. So Nimrod declares they worship water. Abraham responds that clouds hold water. So Nimrod declares they worship clouds. Abraham responds that wind pushes clouds. So Nimrod declares they worship wind. Abraham responds that people withstand wind.

Nimrod becomes angry with Abraham and declares that Abraham shall be cast into the fire, and if Abraham is correct, i.e. that there is a real God, then that God will save him. Abraham is cast into the fire and is saved by God.

Abraham's brother Haran sees what happened and says that he believes in the God of Abraham. Haran is thrown into the fire, and is not saved by God. Hence the verse in Genesis 11:28, “And Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.”

The Midrash is not the only mention of this story—the Quran discusses the story in great detail as well.

Discussions relating to the Midrash
There are several different ways in which this Midrash has been discussed. This Midrash can be interpreted as an example of persecution against those of monotheistic beliefs during a time when polytheism dominated.

The Midrash has also been discussed in the contexts of complete, unquestioned faith. This comes from the idea that Abraham did not need proof of God before being cast into the fire, which is why God saved him. On the other hand, Haran needed to see that Abraham would be saved by God before believing, and because of this, Haran was not saved from the fire by God.

The Midrash is also used by James Kugel, the chair of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel, in his book The Bible As It Was, published in 1997 by Harvard University, to look at how stories from the Bible have been changed to how they are taught in the modern day. His analysis deals with how in modern times, Abraham came to be seen as the only monotheist. Kugel's interpretation continues in the tradition of looking at this midrash as part of the analysis of monotheism.

References

Abraham
Midrash Rabba
Monotheism
Nimrod Abraham of Farshut was an abbot and is a saint of the Coptic Church, and by extension all of the Oriental Orthodox Churches. His feast day in the calendar of saints of the Coptic Church is February 12.

Life
He was born in Farshut, near the modern city of Hiww. His parents, who were Christians and locally important figures, died when Abraham was twelve. The next year, Abraham tried unsuccessfully to persuade his sister to retain her virginity.

Thereafter, Abraham left to join the monastery of Pachomius at Pbow. This monastery was at the time under the direction of Pshintbahse. There Abraham devoted himself to trying to achieve the monastic ideals.

Abraham was elected abbot of the monastery on the death of Pshintbahse. Shortly thereafter, Justinian I requested that Abraham be brought to Constantinople, in an attempt to bring those monks who still rejected the decision of the Council of Chalcedon into communion with the greater church. The exact time of this event is unknown, but it is believed to have been between 535 and 548. Abraham brought with him four monks. Upon arrival, Justianian summoned them and informed them that they would either accept the decision of the Council or lose their positions. Abraham refused to entertain the idea, and was removed as archimandrite.

Theodora tried to persuade Justinian to change his mind, seemingly to no avail.  Abraham himself stated in a letter to his monks that he preferred to remain in exile rather than subscribe to a faith contrary to that of Athanasius. Abraham did return to Egypt, however, possibly due to persuasion from Theodora.

Pancharis had been appointed to replace Abraham as archimandrite at Pbow. Abraham first went to the monastery of Shenoute, where he made a  copy of the Rule. Then he set up a new monastery at Farshut with two other monks from the monastery of Moses. The new monastery contained a well and a garden. The number of monks grew, however, making it necessary for the buildings to be expanded. He also founded a convent of nuns at roughly the same time.

Late in life, Abraham received a vision in which Pachomius, Petronius, and Shenouda the Archimandrite appeared to him, informing him of his upcoming death.

Some people have suggested that this Abraham might be identical to the Abraham of Scetes commemorated in the same calendar on January 4.

References

Further reading
Holweck, F. G. A Biographical Dictionary of the Saints. St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co. 1924.

Year of birth uncertain
6th-century deaths
Egyptian abbots
Coptic Orthodox saints
6th-century Christian saints
Egyptian Christian monks
Year of death unknown