# Talk:Gerardus Mercator

Why was Mercator charged with heresy? Just that remark alone is not going to tell us much. — Shinobu 10:21, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

This is a notable and relevant fact, in and of itself, which should be included. I have an excellent source that I will check with regard to this question and will add it as a reference to further verify and validate the claim. ChristineBushMV (talk) 20:20, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

According to Paolo Novaresio(in The Explorers, 1996, Stewart, Tabori and Chang, ISBN 155670-495-X), "the Atlas by Gerhard Kremer, a.k.a Geradus Mercator; published in 1596" - as of now, the article claims he was dead by this time, and that in 1595 further sheets were published by his son.  This should be dealt with, by some explanation of the apparently complicated publishing history of the Atlas. (The book also claims the atlas was 24 pages, BTW.) JesseW(not logged in) 01:10, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I move that the 'modern impersonation' picture be cut. It doesn't really look like him, plus we don't have much of an idea of what Mercator looked like anyway. Isn't the portrait at the top enough?

I have done the deed. The rather drab  Titian (school  of) portrait has been replaced by a shiny coloured version of the portrait at the beginning of the Atlas. When I rewrote this page in 2016 I didn't know about this portrait. Nor did I know that Titian was a great favourite of the Habsburgs in Brussels. Peter Mercator (talk) 22:20, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

What is meant by "Dutch"? It seems to indicate that his descent was different from where he was born or lived. The Netherlands in this period included Flanders. "Dutch descent" seems meaningless unless his descent would be non-Flemish, in which case it should be more specific. It's like saying that Churchill was an Englishman of British descent.
On the other hand, I'm not sure Rupelmonde was in Flanders - I would say Brabant - in which case Mercator would not have been Flemish. Piet 10:38, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I've removed the Dutch descent, if anyone puts it back please be more specific. Piet 14:46, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

this seems an odd usage...
"Twenty-two such pairs of Mercator globes have survived."
Are there 44 surviving globes?  I've never heard anyone refer to a globe as "a pair" as one might with pants or eyeglasses.
It says on the bottom conversation herethat it means matching terrestial & celestial globes.142.22.115.48 (talk) 18:12, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

How is the name Mercator supposed to be pronounced?  I've habitually used /mə'keɪtɚ/, probably partly influenced by Parallel 9, though I'm guessing this isn't the true pronunciation.  I've more recently heard /'mɜ:kətɚ/.  Can anybody provide evidence of how the name actually is supposed to be pronounced? -- Smjg (talk) 18:41, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I changed the nationality in the intro from Belgian to "France and Holy Roman Empire". The reason is that Belgium did not exist in the 16th century; it was founded in 1830. Mercator's birth place was in France; he then moved to Duisburg in the Holy Roman Empire, so naming both of those countries is the best solution. Of course, there was really no concept of nationality in the 16th century, so this must remain somewhat arbitrary; but it would certainly be misleading to refer to a country that didn't exist yet. Chl (talk) 22:55, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I've just been reading Nicholas Crane's book on Mercator and note that, although he was born in Rupelmonde near Antwerp, he spent the first five to six years of his life in the town of Gangelt, in modern Germany. His parents had gone to Rupelmonde to escape the effects of a failed harvest in 1511 and returned to Gangelt in 1512, before finally returning in 1517. I suggest that this be worked into the article. Scartboy (talk) 17:00, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

The method of making globes out of papier-mâché was not developed by Mercator but was already being used by Johannes Schöner at the beginning of the 16th century. Schöner was the first to mass produce printed pairs of globes (matching celestial and terrestrial globes) and Gemma Frisius, who taught Mercator how to make globes, copied Schöner's globes. Thony C. (talk) 17:45, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

The Mercator Museum has been reported by an earlier anonymous visitor to be located in Rupelmonde. This might be an interesting path of further inquiry worthy of inclusion here. ChristineBushMV (talk) 20:20, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I would like to modify the opening of this section to read:
"Mercator was born in the town of Rupelmonde where he was named Gerard de Kremer or de Cremer. He was raised in Gangelt in the Duchy of Jülich, the home town of his parents."
The reason for this change is to avoid the cliché biographical opening which asserts one is born with a name and breaks a long sentence into two, easier to parse sentences. ChristineBushMV (talk) 16:10, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Seems good to me Thony C. (talk) 05:52, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
Looks good! I've implemented it. Oreo Priest talk 07:49, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
Thank you. ChristineBushMV (talk) 16:47, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I intend to make a substantial revision (and extension) of this article over the course of the next few weeks. Please bear with me if it looks a little scrappy at times and includes inevitable typos. I have made a start by  making a (first) redraft of  the lead. I intend to say more on the problems of Mercator's nationality in the first of the main sections. Peter Mercator (talk) 14:01, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

This reconstruction has taken a lot longer than expected! I have removed the "under construction" banner but I have more material to add on globes, mathematical instruments and magnetism. The text could benefit from copy editing and polishing. The references need double checking and provision of archive links where appropriate. All of this will happen over the forthcoming weeks (and months). Feedback and comments would be welcome and I hope the article may be upgraded from "start" class.  Peter Mercator (talk) 21:35, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

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I removed the section suggesting that there is an ongoing battle about Mercators nationality; this is a complete fabrication and full of errors and weird ommisions. 

Nation-states (and therefore nationality) are generally seen as a 19th century phenomemon, which makes it an ahistorical category to begin with for an early 16th century cartographer. The Dutch nationality (in a very strictly defined way) is one of the earliest European nationalities to develop (16th century) but the German nationality - like most other European nationalities - is much more recent; a Flemish nationality is even more recent than the German one.
To suggest that Mercator was (part) German because his parents lived in a village less (!) than 1500 meters (!) from the modern Dutch border is ridiculous. It's confusing and misleading, because it attempts to use post-19th century terminology on a man who lived in the early modern era. To an uninformed reader, it might suggest (as a 'German') he was culturally/linguistically/politically close to someone from Hamburg, Berlin or Munich ... when in reality the inhabitants of those cities barely saw themselves as Germans at the time.
The village in which Mercators parents lived, spoke (and to a limited extent still speaks) dialects which are more closely related to modern Dutch than to modern German. The county of Jüllich (Gullik in Dutch and the local dialect) was even administered by the Dutch Republic for a brief time. In other words, if this place is supposed to anchor a German identity, it fails to do so. Even today, as a border region, this area is on the cultural fringe of what is typically considered to be German.
Mentioning a few obscure German writers from the 19th century (the highpoint of German nationalism, nation forming and a whole lot of discredited pan-German(ic) ideologies) is not the same as mentioning modern historical ethnographic research.
The article mentioned the County of Flanders being part of the Holy Roman Empire, but at the time of Mercators birth and untill the Treaty of Cambrai (1529) the fief was legally part of France.
If, as the article claimed: "Many (...) Germans still claim Mercator as their own" then why doesn't the German wikipedia article mention this dispute? In fact, why doesn't the article refer to him as being German even once?
In short, this whole "dispute" is original research at best and made up nonsense at worst. It's anachronistic and completely untenable, hence the removal. Mercatorian (talk) 18:36, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Actually, you are wrong with regards to the county of Flanders. Flanders as a county had a dual status: during the Middle Ages the land from the North Sea up to the river Scheldt was part of France ("Kroon-Vlaanderen" or "Flandre Royale"), and thus a fief from the French King. But the "Land van Aalst" & large parts of the "Land van Waes" namely the area between the Scheldt up to the border of the Duchy of Brabant was part of the Holy Roman Empire and was called "Rijksvlaanderen"/"Flandre Imperial" and was a fief from the Emperor. The Count of Flanders thus was a vassal of two monarchs: for the largest part of his territory to the King, and for the smaller part to the Emperor. But it's this smaller part which important here because it contained Rupelmonde. Rupelmonde was a bordertown (border between the county of Flanders and the Duchy of Brabant) and was part of Rijks-Vlaanderen, and thus the HRE. Rupelmonde thus was never a part of the Medieval Kingdom of France. Further: Flanders was annexed to the HRE in 1493 by the Treaty of Senlis and that status was later reconfirmed by 2 treaties in the 1520s between Charles V and Francis I. -- fdewaele, 10 January 2019, 23:11 CET.
I'm aware of this, but Rupelmonde lies on the western bank of the Scheldt and was not part of the "Land van Aalst". As far as treaties go, the legal claim of France of the areas was not finalized untill the aforementioned Treaty of Cambrai. In any case, your remark is beside the point. Wether part of the HRE or France, wether legally or in practice it has no correlation with nationalities. Mercatorian (talk) 14:17, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
Looking for common ground, we can all agree that he was from Flanders, so "Flemish" seems the only relevant designation. "Dutch" is not at all used in English to refer to those from the Southern Netherlands (and "Southern Dutch" just isn't a thing), although "Netherlandish" is now in use among art historians. Splitting hairs about when exactly the French dropped their claim to Flanders is like arguing that English monarchs only stopped being kings of France when they themselves dropped their claim to be. A more relevant question would be which ruler of Flanders was the last to do homage to the king of France. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 15:25, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
But in any case, if this doctoral dissertation is to be believed, fdewaele is quite right that Rupelmonde was within the Land van Waas (NOT "Land van Aalst"), which despite being on the west bank of the Scheldt was nevertheless already in medieval times formally dependent on the Empire rather than on France. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 16:50, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
That's quite correct. As I said the Land van Aalst and large parts of the Waasland, including Rupelmonde, were part of Rijks-Vlaanderen, which was HRE. Stating that Mercator was born in a French fief is totally incorrect. That particular mentioning should be removed from the infobox as factually and historically incorrect.-- fdewaele, 11 January 2019: 18:18 CET.
The area, definition and political afiliation (whether in practice or de jure) of the Waasland area is blurry at best. This being the High Middle Ages in an area a stones throw away from Antwerp, Ghent and Bruges, it wouldn't surpise me if a myriad of local treatises and practices bore close to no similarity to the treaties of the high nobility which claimed the land. Fact is that it was only in the Treaty of Cambrai the French King formally and definitively renounced his claims to County of Flanders West of the Scheldt, which includes Rupelmonde ... what that's worth, if it should be mentioned or how that played out in practice ... I don't know. I'd also like to remark that the doctoral thesis you refered to mentioned Rupelmonde being an enclave witin the castellany of Waas.  What I do know is that this is not worth a lot of thought in this particular topic ... I'd suggest you go to work on Imperial Flanders and/or Royal Flanders instead.
In fact, this entire discussion is besides the main point which was the false an anachronistic claim that Mercator was born (part) German when it came to his nationality. If someone here want's to state explicitly that Rupelmonde was part of the Holy Roman Empire ... go ahead. It would be close to describing some obscure little mountain village in Bulgaria as "Arbanasi, European Union". Far more usefull would be to mention that he was born close to a geopolitical crossroad and near the greatest cities to be found North of the Alps at the time.
So, if nobody disputes the fact that he was not German ... the main point stands and I have nothing more to add to that debate. As for the term use to describe his political/ethnic affiliation as close as can be done in the Middle Ages ... I'd support either Southern Dutch (which is a term in English, but especially so in Dutch) or Flemish. Mercatorian (talk) 15:42, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

The text says he was accused of "heresy (Lutheranye)", where I guess 'Lutheranye' is supposed to be something like "Lutherism" in some unspecified language. Googling for "Lutheranye" gives almost entirely refs traceable to this article; it is not in a vast Dutch dictionary - https://www.woorden.org/woord/Lutheranye (said to be the largest in the world). There is one occurrence (page 15 in this book: https://books.google.co.jp/books?hl=fr&lr=&id=D5ZVAAAAcAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=%22Lutheranye%22&ots=zZCGcV-g19&sig=1uf2yBIms-_CYC_9tJYJLFJlfAc&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22Lutheranye%22&f=false ... but all in all it looks like an error. So I'm changing it to "Lutheran heresy", but if anyone knows a lot more Dutch than I do and can come up with a proper answer, please do. Imaginatorium (talk) 13:18, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I am not qualified to judge whether a correction must be made here, or if the paragraph is correct as written. I hope someone with actual expertise will check this. Under the "Works" section, at the end of the bullet point section that starts with the boldfaced text "1554 Europe", appears the text, "The map used a cordiform projection. It was revised by Mercator in 1572 and again by Rumold for the 1595 atlas. The 1995 map uses a different projection." (bold emphasis mine) Is 1995 supposed to read 1595? Or is it truly referring to a late 20th-century map? If 1595, it should just be corrected. If truly 1995, then what 1995 map? That should be clarified. Eqstokes (talk) 21:59, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

Is obviously a typing error, have corrected Thony C. (talk) 04:53, 18 August 2025 (UTC)