Matthias Ringmann

Matthias Ringmann (1482–1511), also known as Philesius Vogesigena, was an Alsatian German humanist scholar and cosmographer. Along with cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, he is credited with the first documented usage of the word America, on the 1507 map Universalis Cosmographia in honour of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

Biography

Ringmann was born in 1482 in the small farming village of Eichhoffen, Alsace. In 1498 he enrolled at the University of Heidelberg and then went on to study at the University of Paris. He pursued a course of studies typical for a humanist of the day, including Greek, Latin, classical literature, history, mathematics and cosmography. In 1505 he settled in Strassburg, worked at a printing press, and began to study Ptolemy's Geography.

Mundus Novus, a book attributed to Amerigo Vespucci, was widely published throughout Europe after 1504. An edition was published in Rome in 1504 by Eucharius Silber and a copy of this was brought to Strassburg by Johannes Michaelis, a Swedish apostolic notary from Vyborg in Karelia, who had been present at a papal consistory in Rome held to receive the Portuguese ambassador, when the voyages of Vespucci and other recent Portuguese voyages and discoveries were discussed. Ringmann was familiar with the speculation of classical authors that a giant, unknown continent lay on the other side of the world and he became convinced that this is what Vespucci had encountered. Ringmann reprinted Mundus Novus in August 1505 in De Ora antarctica per regem Portugallie pridem inventa (The antarctic country discovered some time since by the King of Portugal).