1. Hartmann Schedel, liber Chronicarum (Nuremberg: Koberger, 1493), BSB Rar. 287, this is Schedel’s personal copy; Weltchronik (Nuremberg: Koberger, 1493) BSB 2 Inc.c.a. 2921. The colophon of the Latin edition reflects the date June 12, 1493, and the German edition, December 23, 1493. The most direct precedent for the map was the Ptolemy map included in the 1488 edition of Pomponius Mela’s Cosmographia printed by Erhard Ratdolt in Venice. See Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle, 115. For a recent facsimile of the 1493 German Weltchronik, see Hartmann Schedel and Stephan Fussel, Chronicle of the World: the Complete and Annotated Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 (Cologne: Taschen, 2001).
2. The map of the world in published editions of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia did not reflect changes introduced by the discoveries until 1507. The first printed Ptolemies to take new lands into consideration were two Roman editions (1507 and 1508), and one printed in Venice in 1511. Emendations to the vernacular Ptolemies were slower to appear. The German-language Ptolemies were primarily printed in Strasbourg between 1513 and 1522. See Angelika Wingen-Trennhaus, “‘Geographia’ von Ptolemaeus zu Pirckheimer. Die Editionsgeschichte eines geographischen Werkes” in Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums (1991), 1991, 66. In 1498, Hartmann Schedel catalogued his library and made a list of his cosmographical and geographical holdings. The Columbus letter, frequently reproduced by this time, does not appear on the list. Klaus Vogel questions the impact of such a letter that contained no exact information about the islands’ whereabouts and no precise navigational information. See Klaus A. Vogel, “Neue Horizonte der Kosmographie: Die kosmographischen Bücherlisten Hartmann Schedels (um 1498) und Konrad Peutingers (1523),” Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums (1991), 78.
3. Psalter World Map, British Library, Additional Ms. 28681, fol. 9r (map circa 9 cm in diameter). For bibliography on the Psalter Map, see P.D.A. Harvey, The Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and Their Context (London: British Library, 2006), 15–19.
4. For the various hands involved in this production, the printer Anton Koberger; the financiers Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister; as well as the two designers Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, see David Landau and Peter W Parshall. The Renaissance Print, 1470–1550 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 39.
5. See Alastair J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the later Middle Ages (London: Scolar Press, 1984) [second edition Philadephia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press, 1989], 5,103. Minnis points out that thirteenth-century exegesis shifted the focus from a divine auctor to the human authors of Scripture, with a concomitant emphasis on the literal and historical portions of the Bible.