Franciscus Monachus

Franciscus Monachus, (c. 1490-1565) was born Frans Smunck in Mechelen (or Malines) in the Duchy of Brabant (in modern-day Belgium). His Latinised name, adopted when he matriculated at the University of Louvain, is translated as simply Francis the monk. "Franciscus Monachus" was identified as the Latinized form of his name, Frans Smunck in his obituary notice. He is remembered as the cartographer who created the first terrestrial globe in the Low Countries.

He studied and taught at the university from about 1510 to 1530 and numbered Gemma Frisius among his students. He was also an important influence on Gerardus Mercator. Very little is known of his life and the accounts which do exist are very brief. On leaving Louvain (Leuven) he returned the short distance to Mechelen where he spent the rest of his life in the monastery there. This was no backwater for the Great Council of Mechelen was the supreme court of Low Countries and would be frequented by the highest in the land.

The monks of Mechelen were Minorite Friars, a humble order which was critical of the corruption of the established Church, so much so that over the years its members had been harassed, excommunicated and burned at the stake. They were undoubtedly under suspicion by the hard-line Inquisitors of Louvain University, men such as Ruard Tapper who said of heretics "It is no great matter whether those that die on this account be guilty or innocent, provided we terrify the people by these examples; which generally succeeds best, when persons eminent for learning, riches, nobility or high stations, are thus sacrificed." Monachus had other additional reasons to come to the notice of the authorities.

The profession of monk was not in conflict with intellectual inquiry. Monachus, the monk, has been variously described as a court cosmographer and astrologer, the court in question being that of the Emperor Charles V and his regent, Margaret of Austria. However, it is his fame as a geographer that has lasted, principally through the globe that he constructed c1527.

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