Plihál Katalin:
SOURCES OF MAPS INTRODUCING HUNGARY AND TRANSYLVANIA (1528-1709)
(theses)
The first detailed printed map of on Hungary was made by Lazar in 1528. Then there was a separated map on the region of Transylvania dwelt by Saxons published by Johann Honter in Brassó (now Brasov). Later some time between 1546 and 1548, the same person made a new and detaailed map of Transylvania. From the latter only a few graments can be found now - but in its century it must have been well-known, since Sebastian Münster and János Zsámboky also used it themselves!

The political and military circumstances were appropriate for drawing and impowing maps that show the whole country neither in Hungarian Kingdom nor in Transylvania. Despite all these facto there were some new detailed maps of our country - following one - another not too frequently and showing only this or that part of the country. They were made by Wolfgang Lazius (1552-1556), Nicolaus Angielus (1566), Martin Stier (1664) and Giovanni Morando Visconti (1699).

Does it possibly mean that the maps on Hungary and Transylvania didn't ever change their contents but when absolutely new and detailed maps got published? Where there any other sources which helped the different national publishers make their maps ond the areas in question? How and by which channels were the new pieces of information launched - if they were at all - in the 16th-17th centuries on these countries of Europe in the Netherlands, Germany, France etc? I have studied the names of places on the maps published throughout two centuries and got the following evidences:

  1. Mapmakers while collecting their data didn't ignore the work of their predecessors. I coudn't find a maps the data of which would be based on one source only. (Eg. In the atlases of Ortelius there are a lot of maps entitled "Transilvania" which were published between 1570 and 1612 and their contens are not exactly the same!)
  2. Hydrography sometimes seems to be similer - but it doesn't mean that the places have the same name on each of the maps.
  3. If we start analysing the names we find the prints of disappeered or still unknown maps - as it has dready happened sometimes in the past.
  4. Some new names appear after a political or a military event - and we can take also the connection between peregrination nad Hungarian maps into consideration for we haven't researched it before.
  5. Making maps thet time wasn't as simple and schematic as we could suggest it knowing the originecharts of the different authors.
  6. My conclusion is that all the publications looking equal can be considered unique - as only one new name on the plate of the former map would make the whole thing new.