LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

618 KRISTA ZAcH
to conclude, a few more considerations and question marks may be
added regarding Dimitrie Cantemir.
there is indisputable evidence and good testimony to Cantemir’s
autograph of a large hand-drawn map. there is internal evidence – the
author’s hints to the map in Descriptio Moldaviae – as well as external
evidence to this – letters and notes from French cartographers who claim
to have seen the autograph. We positively know that Dimitrie Cantemir
himself drew a map of Moldavia or had such a map drawn for his own use,
when writing Descriptio Moldaviae – in order to fill it in with the wealth of
data contained in the book, and also, in order to help the reader find his way
in a yet little known geographic and political space. We may assume that
Cantemir wanted his map of Moldavia to be a source of information first
and foremost. We do not know what his intentions regarding the pictorial
aspects of his map may have been – but why should he disregard these
common aspects of his day?
nevertheless, we do not know what Cantemir’s autograph map looked
like. taking into account the history of early Modern cartography and the
rather devious way to progress in mapping in 18 th century France, it does
not suffice to extrapolate from single maps of Moldavia ‘delineated’ and
printed later on that they are authentic “copies” of Cantemir’s map. here
again, the term “to copy” has to be understood in context with mapmaking
practise in the 16 th –18 th century – as shown above.
As far as copying goes, an attentive comparison of the exact rendering
of place- and river names on the French single maps of Moldavia with the
same names in Descriptio (supposedly, Cantemir’s map used latin) has
not yet been carried out. Good examples are prominent names like Brăila 74 ,
Cetatea Albă, Iaşi, Suceava rendered in a variety of versions.
In the absence of the autograph map, as well as of Cantemir’s authentic
coat of arms 75 on any of the known single maps other arguments have been
introduced here in order to explain why Cantemir’s name kept turning up
on later maps of Moldavia – on the so-called “copies”.
As a hypothesis, we may assume that there could have been an
intermediary copy between Cantemir’s hand-drawn map and the first
printed map of Moldavia (1737, Amsterdam) using the prince’s data.
Karten, Kartographie und Geschichte, ed. by KOLLER, Christophe – JUCKER-KUppER,
patrick. zürich 2009, 17-28, quotes pp. 17, 19, 23 f.
74 e. g.: Brailow (Blaeu 1663), Bryile (1737), Braila (1738/44), Brailov (1770).
75 See several examples in: CERNOVODEANU, Dan: Ştiinţa şi arta heraldică în
România. Bucureşti 1977, Plate lXXVii, p. 361 and also the frontispiece in the German
edition of Descriptio (1771) which bears Dimitrie Cantemir’s authentic coat of arms under
his engraved portrait: KANTEMIR, Beschreibung der Moldau.