by Alfred Moldovan, MD.

Amongst Dr Moldovan’s collection of Holy Land material, which he has been amassing in America over the past ten years, is a sixteenth century plan of Jerusalem which scholars and collectors had thought was lost for ever. Here he discusses the early printed plans of Jerusalem, setting the stage for the De Angelis map and tracing the impact of his exciting find on later plans of the city.

IN A NUMBER of books on the Holy Land, published between 1584 and 1609. there are references to an accurate plan of Jerusalem made by a Franciscan, Antonio de Angelis, which was published in Rome in 1578.

In 1892, in an article on the maps and plans of Palestine, the famed bibliographer of Holy Land cartography, Reinhold Röhricht, wrote: 'Unfortunately, this work [of Antonio de Angelis]  has to this time not been seen by any Palestinographer and we are therefore left only with conjectures . . . A great deal of light would be shed . . . if the plans of Antonio would for once become accessible to us.'

Hermann Meyer, a scholar of Jerusalem cartography, in his 1971 study of Jerusalem prints and views wrote: 'Not a single copy is at present known in any library or collection.' In a previous work he had written: 'It is not possible to offer definite proof of the conjecture, but it must be assumed that the design composed by an industrious and gifted Franciscan Father was not intended for sale but was one of the treasures which served as a special point of attraction for the guests who during their stay in Jerusalem lived in the "Casa Nuova" (the Franciscan Hostel).'



This 'lost' map of Antonio de Angelis was found two years ago in almost perfect condition in a large folio volume of English history printed in 1724. To understand its role in Jerusalem cartography, it is necessary to examine some of the history of the city's maps and prints .

Jerusalem occupies a central role in the three major Western religions. Each regards it as a Holy City with sites to be visited and venerated and each has a major point of reference. For the Christians it is the Holy Sepulchre, the site of the burial of Jesus; for the Jews it is the Western Wall, the remnant of the Holy Temple that stood in Jerusalem from 516 B.C. to 70 A.D. when it was destroyed by the Romans. The Mosque of Omar for the Mohammedans marks the place from which Mohammed was taken to heaven and also contains the rock on which Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac. These sites have inspired pilgrimages to Jerusalem from earliest times. Accounts of such journeys, from the first recorded in the year 300 A. D., an itinerary of Antonini Augusto, to the present time, have often contained maps and drawings done on the spot. Despite this, many arc imaginary. These numerous manuscripts and printed accounts of pilgrimages to the Holy Land and Jerusalem have been collated by several bibliographers, the most important of whom were Titus Tobler, and Reinhold Röhricht. Because of the anti-iconographic attitudes of the Moslem and Jewish religions, there is a paucity of illustration in the works of such pilgrims. Christians had no such interdictions, however, and there are illustrations and maps in numerous early manuscripts, such as those reproduced in the Saga of Jerusalem, the Holy City.

Jerusalem has been represented in views and maps as Jerusalem of the past, of the present and the future. In the past, as the site of the many holy places venerated by the religious; in the present, to describe and aid pilgrims in finding the shrines, to confirm the religious belief of those who made the maps, and to show the future city of  the Messiah.



Apart from the religious interdictions, the political climate of Jerusalem was not always conducive to map making. The political and religious nature of the rulers of the Holy Land made accurate studies very difficult if not impossible at times. The corruption and intrigue of the local petty rulers appointed by the distant Sultans in Constantinople, made life in the Holy Land a hazardous enterprise for the non-Moslems from many countries.  Cornelis De Bruyn in his book of travels (here in the English edition:  A Voyage to the Levant . . .  and the Holy Land, 1702) gives us a vivid account of the precautions that he had to take in preparing his panorama of the city: '[On the 3rd of November, 1682] I set out for the Mount of Olives in order to sketch the city. . . I was accompanied by two Franciscan Fathers who were always on guard to prevent anyone from observing my doings. As a matter of precaution we had a basket filled with provisions and wine in readiness in order to impress casual passers-by with the idea that we were having a picnic. But despite this I was sometimes compelled to discontinue my work and wait for another day because of the danger.' The first pilgrim to the Holy Land to give us an accurate depiction of Jerusalem was Bernhard von Breydenbach (1440-1497) a  canon of Mainz. His pilgrimage was made in 1483, and included in his party was Erhard Reuwich, a professional artist hired to make sketches of the important sites on the trip. On his return to Germany, Reuwich published the itinerary as Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam (Mainz. 1486). It includes a very large woodcut map of Palestine as viewed from the west and an inset view of Jerusalem seen from the east (from the Mount of Olives). This remained a favoured viewpoint since it overlooks the most important places.

Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle (Nuremberg, Anton Koberger, 1493), a history of the world containing numerous woodcut views made by Michael Wohlgemut (1434-1519, the teacher of Albrecht Durer) and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff includes Jerusalem and the Destruction of Jerusalem which are the first imaginary views of the city to be printed.


Sebastian Münster (1489-1552) was one of the most important Christian Hebraists  of the sixteenth century. His translation of the Hebrew Bible, published in Basle in 1534, was recognised as a major contribution to the scholarship of the day. He was also a mathematician, cosmographer and cartographer. His Cosmogra¬phy (Basle, Henri Petri, 1544) included a woodcut view of Jerusalem made by Jacob Clauser (whose monogram appears on the bottom right of the engraving). This imaginary view of the Holy City was copied from an unknown source. The artist, never having seen Jerusalem, drew the buildings to reflect the contemporary European architecture rather than the actual appearance of the time. The Cosmography of Münster, with the woodcut view by Clauser went through thirty six editions in five languages. The Jerusalem view was also copied many times. One of the most sophisticated of these imitations appears as a superimposition on a map of the Holy Land published by Gerard de Jode (1509 -1591) in his Speculum Orbis Terrarum (Antwerp, 1578). A second edition was published by his son, Cornelis de Jode. The maps were engraved by the brothers Jan and Lucas van Doetichum after the description of Tilemann Stella (1529 -1589).


Peter Laicksteen, a Dutch astronomer, visited the Holy Land in 1556 and drew two maps of Jerusalem, one from on-site observations and one as a reconstruction from descriptions in the Gospels. These parallel maps were published in Antwerp in 1570 by Christiaan Sgrooten (1532 -1608), the Royal Geographer to Philip II of Spain, and copied by Frans Hogenberg (1535 -1590) in the first volume of the Civitates Orbis Terrarum published in 1572 by George Braun in Cologne. This parallel view is the first time in the history of mapmaking that a comparison had been made between the existing and historical topography. Braun and Hogenberg also published, in Volume II of the Civitates, a bird's eye view of Jerusalem as seen from the east.

This brings the story up to the time of the De Angelis plan. In the second half of the sixteenth century the Christian community of Jerusalem was divided into many antagonistic and warring sects with conflicting claims to the Holy Places. The rise of Protestantism also introduced a new scepticism as to the authenticity of the sites as identified in Catholic tradition. The most perplexing problem was the location of the Holy Sepulchre . As Jewish law at the time of the death of Jesus forbade the burial of anyone within the walls of the city it became important to ascertain the true course of the ancient wall that had been destroyed by the Romans and reconstructed by Hadrian in 135 A.D. Only then could it be proved that when the Empress Helena in the fourth century built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre over the site of the burial of Jesus, it was outside the old third wall of Jerusalem.

Of all the Christian communities, the most influential and established was a branch of the Franciscan Order, the Franciscans Minor Observant, who considered themselves the custodians of the Holy Land and guided the Christian pilgrims to the shrines. These friars, having volunteered for service in the Holy Land, lived a very arduous existance in the Convents of St. Saviour, the Holy Sepulchre and Bethlehem. Their chief (Custos) was rotated about every three years.

When Antonio de Angelis of Lecce in Apulia arrived in Jerusalem in 1570, one of the Franciscans, Gianfrancesco Della Salandra of Basilicata was searching for archaeological evidence to substantiate the claims for the location of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Della Salandra helped him obtain exact drawings and measurements of the sites in Jerusalem. De Angelis was a skilled artist and topographer who remained in Jerusalem for seven years before returning to Rome. (In 1579 he was appointed Custos, but refused the position).


It was on 8th September 1578, in Rome at the Convent of Santa Maria Araceli, that De Angelis published his plan. It is a large copper engraving measuring 55 x 81 in (140 x 206 cm) on two sheets joined in the middle and is in mint condition except that the edges have been trimmed (probably to conform to the folio volume in which it was inserted). It is a bird's eye view of the city as seen from the east and in a ribbon, supported by two putti, HIERUSALM is inscribed. A compass in the right hand corner uses a cross to point to the Holy City. The right hand side of the map has a long cartouche containing a numbered legend identifying the Holy Places. The cartouche is supported by a winged angel's face, and surmounted by the coat of arms of the Franciscan Order (the crossed bare arms of Jesus and the sleeved arm of St. Francis, each containing the stigmata in the palms, superimposed on the cross, rising from Golgotha.) Below the cartouche is the map scale corresponding to '200 steps,' a sixteenth century Roman 'passo' measuring about half a metre. In the lower left corner is a cartouche with a dedication to Cardinal Francisco Alciati (1522 -1580), the Vice Protector of the Franciscan Order. Alciati, a man of high erudition, lived in the Vatican and held many other important positions. He was, among other things, a Papal delegate to the Council of Trent (1545 - 63). The cartouche is surmounted by the Alciati family coat of arms, which includes a rampant elk (Alce), denoting the city from which the family took its name. Below the cartouche is inscribed ‘Marius Cartaro incidebat.' Cartaro, born in Viterbo, worked in Rome from at least 1560. He is known to have been in Rome in 1581 acting as executor of Antonio Lafreri's estate. After leaving Rome he worked in Naples in the Royal Library. His last  known work was published in 1613.

Robert Almagià describes fifteen known works by Cartaro, all that were available at the time of his study in 1913. These he divided into three groups: globes, maps and city plans. It is for the city plan that Cartaro is best known, and of the seven described, the most famous was one of Rome done over a long period and published in 1576. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Antonio de Angelis took his drawings of Jerusalem to Cartaro for reproduction.

Although the beautiful and almost contemporary plan by Claudio Duchetti has no topographic validity, since it was not based on actual drawings, the impact of De Angelis's work on subsequent plans of Jerusalem was considerable. This is revealed in the printed comments attached to their own work by artists and publishers who produced later plans of the city. Christiaan van Adrichem (1533 -1585), a Dutch clergyman, published a map of Jerusalem in his pamphlet, Jerusalem, et suburbia eius sicut tempore Christi fluvuit . . .  (Cologne, (1584). This map was reproduced in his more extensive opus, Theatrum Terrae Sanctae et Biblicarum Historiarum,  Cologne 1590. It is a mixture of fact and fancy combining a reconstruction of historical Jerusalem with actual topographical data. We know of his access to up-to-date information from a comment in his extensive bibliography of the sources he used: 'A topographic drawing of the City of Jerusalem, by Antonio de Angelis, of the Friars Minor, who lived for a long time in Jerusalem, published in 1578 in Rome, at the Convent of Santa Maria Araceli. D. Gaspard A. Cruce, of Antwerp, son of the most honourable Francois A. Cruce, most skillful doctor of law, as he was, some time ago, passing through Rome, showed me this topographic drawing, together with some antiquities concerning Jerusalem.'


Hermann Meyer points out that of the sixty-nine printed items listed by Adrichem, the De Angelis map is the only one whose ownership is listed. It shows the scarcity of the map only six years after it was printed. The next reference to the map appears in a description of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land by Giovanni Zuallart. He visited Jerusalem in 1586 and wrote a description of his pilgrimage in Il Devotissimo Viaggio di Gerusalemme, published in Rome in 1587 by Zanetti and Ruffinelli. The book contains a map of Jerusalem engraved by Natale Bonifacio. Since Zuallart was in Jerusalem for only twelve days, it is unlikely he was able to make any accurate drawings of the city. Although he does not allude to De Angelis in the first edition of his book, in the French edition (Le Tres Devot Voyage de Jerusalem, Antwerp, 1608) he mentions among other pilgrims' works he consulted, that: 'Father Antonio de Angelis, a Neapolitan from Lecce. bequeathed to us, in 1575 a very beautiful and very precise topographic portrait of the Holy New City, with the Holy Places inside the city and around it’.  De Angelis is also mentioned in a description by Hans Jacob Von und Zu Buochenbach Breuning, a traveller to the Middle East, who with some companions visited Jerusalem in 1579. He described his voyages in his book, Orientalische  Reyss . . .  published in Strasbourg, J. Caralo, 1612, which includes a plan of Jerusalem copied directly from the De Angelis map. In the introduction to Chapter VII he mentions the De Angelis plan, remarking that, 'as the drawing best conforms with my own personal observations I have for better reporting incorporated it in my description.’

The last historical reference is found in the work of Bernardino Amico, a member of the Franciscan order, who came to Jerusalem in 1593 and stayed five years. Gianfrancesco Della Salandra, who was Custos at that time, was the person who had helped De Angelis in his mapping of Jerusalem from 1570 to 1577. He assisted Amico to get exact measurements of the buildings and descriptions of the Holy sites. On his return to Rome his book, Trattato delle Piante et Imagini dei . . . Sacri Edifici di Terra Santa  was published in 1609 by the Medici Press of Foreign Languages. Amico states that he did not want to include a map of the City of Jerusalem in his book since he was unable to draw it properly because of the Moslem restrictions, but in order to satisfy his friends he included two plans (one from the Mount of Olives, the other from an imaginary point to the west): ‘Fr. Antonio d’Angioli, who having lived about eight years in these lands, made the following plan of the sacred city, with the help of the most Rev. Fr. Fra Francisco Della Salandra who later became Custos and had lived for a space of forty years in the Holy Land . . .  And I have not hesitated to embellish it and to correct it in some defects as anyone comparing this with the aforementioned one of Fra. Antonio will not fail to see.’

The maps and prints of this first edition were engraved by Antonio Tempesti (1555-1630), a well-known Florentine painter and print maker living in Rome. Only a few can have been produced because it immediately went out of print. The map of Jerusalem is a very faithful copy of the De Angelis map.

The second edition of Amico 's work was published in Florence in 1620 by Pietro Cecconcelli. For this edition the Jerusalem plate was engraved by Jacques Callot (1592 -1635), ‘without doubt the greatest French graphic artist of the seventeenth Century.’ From this last reference by Bernardino Amico in 1620 to the articles by Reinhold Röhricht in 1892, and of Hermann Meyer in 1971,  the map of Antonio de Angelis was not noted again in the many published descriptions of the Holy Land and Jerusalem.

The historical references made to the plan by Adrichem,  Zuallart, Breuning and Amico was the only evidence of its past existence. Now described and reproduced for the first time, the influential De Angelis plan can be restored to its rightful position in the history of Jerusalem cartography.

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COPYRIGHT September 1983 The Map Collector, All rights reserved.
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