Both the Christian Bible and Aristotle's works suggest that water should entirely flood the earth. Though many ancient, medieval, and early modern Europeans relied on these works to understand and explore the relationships between water and earth, particularly sixteenth-century Europeans were especially concerned with why dry land existed. This book investigates why sixteenth-century Europeans were so interested in water's failure to submerge the earth when their predecessors had not been. Analyzing biblical commentaries as well as natural philosophical, geographical, and cosmographical texts from these periods, Lindsay Starkey shows that European sea voyages to the Southern Hemisphere combined with the traditional methods of European scholarship and religious reformations led sixteenth-century Europeans to reinterpret water and earth's ontological and spatial relationships. The manner in which they did so also sheds light on how we can respond to our current water crisis before it is too late.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Why Water?
- 1. Athens and Jerusalem on Water
- Part I: Water in Exegetical, Natural Philosophical, Cosmographical, and Geographical Texts of c.1000–1600
- 2. Gathering Water in Exegetical Texts
- 3. Defining Water in Natural Philosophical Texts
- 4. Describing and Depicting Water in Cosmographical and Geographical Texts
- Part II: Why Water
- 5. Water in Newly Rediscovered Ancient and Medieval Texts
- 6. Exploring the Created Universe through Water
- 7. Sea Voyages and the Water-Earth Relationship
- Afterword: The Redefinition of the Universe and the Twenty-First-Century Water Crisis
- General Bibliography
- Index
- List of Figures
- Fig. 1: Diagrammatic T-O map in Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies (Etymologiae, last quarter of eleventh century), British Library Royal 6 C l, fol. 108v. © British Library Board/Robana/Art Resource, New York.
- Fig. 2: Zonal map in Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio (De somno Scipionis, Paris: Giovanni Rivio, 1515). Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
- Fig. 3: Untitled world map in the 1482 Ulm edition of Ptolemy’s Geography (Cosmographia, edited by Nicolaus Germanus, Ulm: Lienhart Holle, 1482). Courtesy of the Newberry Library.
- Fig. 4: The world map in the 1513 Strasbourg edition of Ptolemy’s Geography (“Orbis typus universalis iuxta hydrographorum traditionam,” in Claudii Ptolemei viri Alexandrini mathematicae discipline philosophi doctissimi Geographiae opus, edited by Martin
- Fig. 5: The world map in Sebastian Münster’s Cosmography (“Ptolemaisch general tafel begreifend der halben undern weldt bescrybung” in Cosmographia, Basel, Henricus Petri, 1544). Courtesy of ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, persistent link, https://doi.org/10.3931/
- Fig. 6: The world map in the 1561 Viennese Italian vernacular edition of Ptolemy’s Geography (“Orbis descriptio,” in Girolamo Ruscelli, La geograpfia di Claudio Tolomeo Alessandrino, Venice: Vincenzo Valgrisi). Courtesy of the Newberry Library.
- Fig. 7: The world map in Abraham Ortelius’s Theater of the World (Theatrum orbis terrarum, Antwerp: Giles Coppens de Diest, 1570). (A) Typus orbis terrarum 1, photo: Album/Art Resource, New York. (B) Typus orbis terrarum 2, courtesy of Universitätbiblioth
- Fig. 8: The world map from Rumold and Gerard Mercator’s Atlas (“Orbis terrae compendiosa descriptio,” in Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi et fabricati figura, Duisberg, 1595). Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
- Fig. 9: World map in Martin Waldseemüller’s Universal Cosmography of 1507 (Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptolemaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque lustrationes, St.-Dié). Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.
- Fig. 10: Detail of the world map in Martin Waldseemüller’s Universal Cosmography of 1507 (Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptolemaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque lustrationes, St. Dié). Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Geography and Map
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