Nicolas Sanson
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
cartographer, wrongly termed by some the creator of French geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
. He was born of an old Picardy
Picardy
This article is about the historical French province. For other uses, see Picardy .Picardy is a historical province of France, in the north of France...
family of Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
descent, at Abbeville
Abbeville
Abbeville is a commune in the Somme department in Picardie in northern France.-Location:Abbeville is located on the Somme River, from its modern mouth in the English Channel, and northwest of Amiens...
, on the 20th (or 31st) of December 1600, and was educated by the Jesuits at Amiens
Amiens
Amiens is a city and commune in northern France, north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in Picardy...
.
In 1627 he attracted the attention of Richelieu by a map of Gaul
Gaul
Gaul was a region of Western Europe during the Iron Age and Roman era, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg and Belgium, most of Switzerland, the western part of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the left bank of the Rhine. The Gauls were the speakers of...
which he had constructed (or at least begun) while only eighteen. He gave lessons in geography both to Louis XIII
Louis XIII of France
Louis XIII was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority...
and to Louis XIV
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
; and when Louis XIII, it is said, came to Abbeville, he preferred to be the guest of Sanson (then employed on the fortifications), instead of occupying the lodgings provided by the town. At the conclusion of this visit the king made Sanson a councillor of state.
Active from 1627, Sanson issued his first map of importance, the "Postes de France", which was published by Melchior Tavernier in 1632. After publishing several general atlases himself he became the associate of Pierre Mariette, a publisher of prints.
In 1647 Sanson accused the Jesuit Philippe Labbe
Philippe Labbe
Philippe Labbe was a French Jesuit writer on historical, geographical and philological questions.Born in Borges, he entered the Society of Jesus on 28 September 1623, at the age of 16. After literary, philosophical and theological studies, he successively taught classes of rhetoric and philosophy....
of plagiarizing him in his Pharus Galliae Antiquae; in 1648 he lost his eldest son Nicolas, killed during the Fronde
Fronde
The Fronde was a civil war in France, occurring in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War, which had begun in 1635. The word fronde means sling, which Parisian mobs used to smash the windows of supporters of Cardinal Mazarin....
. Among the friends of his later years was the great Condé
Condé
-Places in France:*Condé, Indre, in the Indre département*Condé-en-Brie, in the Aisne département*Condé-Folie, in the Somme département*Condé-lès-Autry, in the Ardennes département*Condé-lès-Herpy, in the Ardennes département...
. He died in Paris on the 7th of July 1667. Two younger sons, Adrien (d. 1708) and Guillaume (d. 1703), succeeded him as geographers to the king.
In 1692 Hubert Jaillot collected Sanson's maps in an Atlas nouveau. See also the 18th century editions of some of Sanson's works on Delamarche under the titles of Atlas de géographie ancienne and Atlas britannique; and the Catalogue des cartes et livres de géographie de Sanson (1702).
Principal works
Sanson's principal works are:- Galilee antiquae descriptio geographica (1627);
- Graeciae antiquae descriptio (1636);
- L'Empire romain (1637);
- Britannia, ou recherches de l'antiquité d'Abbeville (1638), in which he seeks to identify StraboStraboStrabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
's BritanniaBritanniaBritannia is an ancient term for Great Britain, and also a female personification of the island. The name is Latin, and derives from the Greek form Prettanike or Brettaniai, which originally designated a collection of islands with individual names, including Albion or Great Britain. However, by the...
with AbbevilleAbbevilleAbbeville is a commune in the Somme department in Picardie in northern France.-Location:Abbeville is located on the Somme River, from its modern mouth in the English Channel, and northwest of Amiens...
; - La France (1644);
- Tables méthodiques pour les divisions des Gaules (1644);
- L'Angleterre, l'Espagne, l'Italie et l'Allemagne (1644);
- Le Cours du Rhin (1646);
- In Pharum Galliae antiquae Philippi L'Abbe disquisitiones (1647-1648);
- Remarques sur la carte de l'ancienne Gaule de César (1651);
- L'Asie (1652);
- Index geographicus (1653);
- Les Estats de la Couronne d'Arragon en Espagne (1653);
- Geographia sacra (1653);
- L'Afrique (1656)