The "Geographia" of Ptolemy between the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and beyond

Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geography is usually considered a revolutionary moment in the development of geographic science and of the cartographic production in western Europe. At that time it’s used to give the start to Renaissance, at least concerning geographic science. In fact, the knowledge of Ptolemy’s works was something of great importance in the discovery of America too and generally in the development of voyages of discovery. The Middle Ages seemed to be definitely over. During that period cartography was particularly characterized by allegoric and symbolic representation, due to a mystic and transcendent outlook on the world. Nevertheless this progress was not so easy and linear as it’s used to be represented: Ptolemy was known in the western Europe since the XII century, when the latin translation of Astronomy was divulged, as Dante Alighieri’s Commedia shows, among the works of that period: this one was deeply biased by Ptolemy’s cosmic vision even though through the intermediation of Saint Thomas’ works. Other latin authors, like Virgil, Pliny, Pomponius Mela and Titus Livy, were known too: they excited the geographic interest of Francesco Petrarca (the author of Itinerarium to Holy Land, that was drafted at the writing desk, but never concretely carried out) and of Giovanni Boccaccio (the geographic dictionary De montibus kept as a model the encyclopaedic Pliny’s Naturalis Historia). In the XV century the knowledge of the classics increased because of the discovery of new codices completely forgotten classics works. Furthermore the medieval heritage, that was connected to a fanciful, mystic and transcendent world, which sometimes too maps had brought the traces of, was non forgotten, in spite of the common interest for Classics and the cultural importance, that the more and more wide discoveries of ancient books by humanists assumed. The analysis of some handwritten and printed editions of Ptolemy’s Geography reveals not even a progress, but a progressive bending to a fanciful geography, that we are used to consider to be typical of Middle Ages, and to a use of signs and symbols less and less scientific. In XVI century Ptolemy’s works left off being the landmark of scientific geography, for navigators and merchants, and they were investigated above all by humanists and learned people: this fact shows that the cultural needs of that period were directed to keep a medieval tradition, that was for other ways regarded to be out-of-date. To this end some interesting indicators sited in the various Ptolemy’s editions, such as the representation of mountains, of cities and as the presence of illustrative vignettes, are tested out.