The Johannes Schöner globes are a series of globes made by Johannes Schöner (1477–1547), the first being made in 1515. Schöner's globes are some of the oldest still in existence.
Globes The Johannes Schöner Globe (1515), a printed globe, was made in 1515. Two exemplars survive, one at the Historisches Museum in Frankfurt and the other at the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek, at Weimar. There can be little doubt that Schöner was familiar with the globe made in Nuremberg by Martin Behaim in 1492. An inscription across the northern part of America, says: “This part of the island has been discovered by order of the King of Castile”. This is matched by another inscription off America’s east coast: “The more southerly part of this island was discovered by order of the King of Portugal”; that is, America is called in both an island. Schöner accompanied his globe with an explanatory treatise, Luculentissima quaedam terrae totius descriptio (“A Most Lucid Description of All Lands”). It contained a description of America: America or Amerige, the New World and fourth part of the globe, so called after its discoverer, Americo Vesputius, a wise and astute man, who discovered it in the year 1497. The people there are primitive, tall and of comely build. They live on fish they catch in the sea. They have nor villages with houses nor roofed dwellings, apart from the large tree leaves under which they are protected from the heat of the sun but not from the rain. There are so many different kinds of animals there. They worship the heavens and the stars. In some places they have homes made in the shape of bells. Red parrots and also those of other colours are found there. This island is of marvellous but not yet certainly known size. Both sexes, men and women, are in the habit of going about no otherwise as than their mothers bore them. The people there are called Cannibals, Anthropophages who eat their enemies.
The Johannes Schöner Globe (1520), a manuscript globe, was made in 1520. It bears the following inscription:
This globe, embracing the immeasurable Earth with its parts / And the smooth winding shape of the body of the world / Was made into a sphere by the observant study of a certain two men and the expenditure of one of them, / Johannes Seyler, who bore the cost of all that he considered suitable for its use; / The other, Johannes Schoener, skilled in many arts, / Suitably wound this mass and composed it into rotundity. / And marked upon it everywhere printed shapes, / When from the birth of the Saviour we counted a thousand five hundred years plus four lustra / And the sun passed through the 16th degree of Libra. [29 September 1520]. On Schöner's 1515 and 1520 globes, AMERICA is shown as an island, as he explained in the Luculentissima: "America, the fourth part of the world, and the other islands belonging to it." And, "In this way it may be known that the Earth is in four parts and that the first three parts are continent, that is, terra firma, but that the fourth is an island, for it is seen to be surrounded everywhere by the sea”. This is drawn from the Cosmographiae Introductio of Martin Waldseemüller, which said:
Hitherto [the whole earth] has been divided into three parts, Europe, Africa, and Asia… Now, these parts of the earth have been more extensively explored and a fourth part has been discovered by Amerigo Vespucci... Thus the earth is now known to be divided into four parts. The first three parts are continent, while the fourth is an island, inasmuch as it is found to be surrounded on all sides by the sea. Another inscription on it describes America and its people, drawn from the Mundus Novus:
This land is everywhere inhabited and considered by many another part of the world. The women and men go about either utterly naked or decorated with roots plaited with birds' feathers of various colours, and with their lips pierced. Many live communally. They have no religion. They frequently wage war. They eat the human flesh of their captives. The air is so mild that many live to 150 years and beyond. When, occasionally, they feel that they are about to become unwell they are quickly cured by the roots of herbs. Lions, serpents and other fearsome beasts breed here. There are very thick woods of scented trees, as cassia, cedar, brazilwood and pines of various kinds. Here are pearls and gold in the greatest quantity. It was discovered in the years around 1492 in successive voyages by the Spanish and Portuguese, the leaders of which were, first, the Genoese Christopher Colombus, second, Pedro Alvares [Cabral] and third, Amerigo Vespucci. The Johannes Schöner Globe (1523), a printed globe, was made in 1523. It was considered to have been lost until identified by Frederick Caspar Wieder in 1925. This attribution has however been refuted since then.
The Johannes Schöner's printed Weimar Globe (1533) was made in 1533. It shows North America as part of Asia and also shows a large southern continent. He wrote a treatise. the Opusculum Geographicum, to accompany this globe. In this, he described the cosmographic approach he had used in constructing his globe: “I had to hand marine charts drawn in excellent characters, and news of great price and value which I located to concord, as much as possible, with astronomical positions”. (Opusc. Geogr., Pt.I, cap.ix). On Schoener's 1523 and 1533 globes, AMERICA is shown as a part of Asia, as he explained in the Opusculum Geographicum:
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