THE WORLDMAP OF JAN VAN EYCK Part 9
All the information in the previous entries can be added with a lot more to show that maps of the world were in the normal possession of the rulers of the late Middle Ages. In most cases they were hung up in private rooms, in studiolo’s or de retrets, in most estates of the princes and sovereigns as well as their libraries. But we may not loose out of sight the fact that the map of Van Eyck was made in connection with the plans for a crusade of Philippe the Good. So he made the map at the moment that the plans of the duke were getting very concrete in the late thirties of the 15th century.
The idea of a crusade runs like a red string through the life and international politics of Philippe the Good. Here is not the place to go further into that but some events of it are linked with Jan Van Eyck before his death in june 1441. Certainly the map of the world was made or at least begun before this date.
The terrible defeat in 1396 from John without Fear in Nicopolis against the Turks together with the horrible massacre of the prime of the western nobility by the troops of sultan Bajazet is a fact that led to a deep trauma for the house of Burgundy. Philippe the Good was the son and successor of the one who was beaten at Nicopolis and felt it as his duty to revenge this humiliation as well as the task to free the Holy Land from the hated Turks. When he was 5 years old he played the Turk in the park of the castle Hesdin and after his death his hart was transferred in 1473 to the Holy Chapel of the Grave at Jerusalem to put there to rest with his illustrious ancestors Gottfried de Bouillon and Baldwin of Flanders. The liberation of Jerusalem became an obsession for him and to a Spanish traveler Pero Tafur, who visited him in Brussels in 1438, after asking about the situation in the Turkish empire, he said bluntly the deep longing he had : el grant deseo que tenia de fazer la conquista de ierusalem. Le saint voyage as his chroniclers call it remains till the end of his life one of the mayor concerns of the Great Duke of the West. His great interest for this undertaken appears also from the content of his library in which beside Marino Sanudo Liber secretorum fidelium Crucis we find also a Godefroid de Bouillon, a Histoire de la Conquête de Constantinople, a Chronique abrégée de Jérusalem and a Livre d’Eracles.
The duke was busy on that moment to get this undertaken real and a few years before, in 1430, he had created the order of the gilded fleece. This foundation was also created in order to battle the Turks and the non-believers. The presence on his side of a Portuguese princess who grew up in her homeland with the same ideas, must have added to this longing. The battle against the non-believers, in casu the Moors in Africa is also a directory through the life and times of the Portuguese kingdom in the 15th century. Much significance we can add to the fact that he made Jean Germain as the first cancelor of the order, a man that became one of the greatest propagandists of the struggle against the Turks. On the 2 May 1451 on the occasion of the 8th meeting of the order in de head church in Mons, at a moment when the city of Constantinople was about to fall, he made a strong appeal to raise an army of crusaders (Discours du voyage d’Oultremer). Also meaningful is the entry in the order of Guillebert de Lannoy, a man familiar with the Holy Land and the Turkish Levant. He made in 1401 a trip of 2 years to Palestine and the Turkish empire. In 1420-1423 he went again to Jerusalem at the request of the kings of England and France and especially of the duke of Burgundy whom he called the principal esmouveur, the most important taker of the initiative. It was an elaborate exploration not only of the Holy Land but also of the complete Near East. Apparently the duke was very pleased with this servant and the information he brought, which was the raison he became one of the leading knights of the order of the gilded fleece. Another prospecting travel was made in 1433 by Bertrandon de la Broquière, servant of the duke. In his itinerary he tells that the Christians were in a bad shape under Turkish rule in the Holy Land en specially the Latin Christians : et de tous ceulx cy les Francz sont plus subjectz que nulz des autres.
Philippe collected a lot of information by means of legation and pilgrimages about the holy places. In that connection he sent in 1425-1426 Guiot, bastard of Burgundy and the lord of Roubaix, Jean de Lannoy, and 4 other members of the nobility on pilgrimage to the Holy Grave in Jerusalem. Anthoine, a painter of Lille, had to paint 18 pictures of escutcheons. These were made to hang in the church of the Holy Grave or in the church on the Mountain of Sion in Jerusalem.