1596 - 1655
The Dutch-German mathematician and cosmographer Andreas Cellarius is well known to map historians and historians of astronomy as the author of the Harmonia Macrocosmica (first published in 1660), a folio-sized work that is commonly regarded to be one of the most spectacular cosmographical atlases that was published in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Until recently nearly nothing was known about the life and background of Andreas Cellarius, who, on the title page of the Harmonia Macrocosmica, identified himself as the headmaster (rector) of the Latin School at Hoorn. He further stated that he came from the German Rhineland area known as the Pfaltz, but neither the town or the year of his birth were known, nor when and where he died. Recent research in the municipal archives of Amsterdam, Hoorn and The Hague has now made it possible to provide the following sketch of his life and career.
Andreas Cellarius was born around the year 1596 in Neuhausen, a small town near Worms. He was the son of Andreas Cellarius, who was a pastor in Neuhausen from 1596 to 1599 and later moved to Heidelberg – the name of his mother is not known. After his education at the Sapierzkolleg in Heidelberg, Andreas Cellarius enrolled as a student at the University of Heidelberg in 1614 but it is not known how long he studied there or which lectures he followed.
During the next decade, the whereabouts of Andreas Cellarius are unknown. It has been surmised, on the evidence of his later publications on Poland and on the art of fortification, that he may have travelled through Poland during this period and may even have pursued a military career there but archival evidence for this is lacking.
Exactly when Andreas Cellarius settled in Holland is not known but in 1625 he is mentioned in the marriage records of the city of Amsterdam as a 30-year old schoolmaster from ‘Niewhousen’. He married Catharina Eltmans in the same year and his first son, also named Andreas after his grandfather and great-grandfather, was born in the next year. Although archival records are lacking, it appears that Andreas Cellarius worked as a schoolmaster at the Latin School on the Koestraat near the Oude Zijds.
Around 1630 Andreas Cellarius moved to The Hague where he was employed as a schoolmaster at the Latin School in the former St. Agnietenklooster on the Zuilingstraat. Two sons, Johannes and Joris, were born in The Hague in 1631 and 1635.
In 1637 Andreas Cellarius moved to Hoorn, where he was appointed as headmaster (rector) of the Latin School in the former Ceciliaklooster.
Andreas Cellarius resigned as rector in early 1665 and he died in November of the same year. He was buried in a rented grave near to the choir in the Grote Kerk of Hoorn.
All of Andreas Cellarius’s scholarly works were published during his rectorship in Hoorn.
His earliest known publication was on fortification, the mathematical science of designing impregnable city walls and defence systems, and was entitled Architectura Militaris, oder Gründtliche Underweisung der heuttiges tages so wohl in Niederlandt als andern örttern gebräuchlichen Fortification oder Vestungsbau. It was written in German and was published in 1645 by the Amsterdam publisher Jodocus Janssonius (an unchanged reprint appeared in 1656).
In 1652 the Amsterdam publisher Gillis Jansz Valckenier printed his description of Poland, entitled Regni Poloniae, Magnique ducatus Lituaniae: Omniumque regionum juri Polonico Subjectorum: Novissima descriptio, Urbium potissimarum icones elegantissimas & delinitionem hujus Regni Geographicam oculis sujiciens. It was reprinted in 1659 and a Dutch translation, entitled Het Koninckrijck Poolen en toebehoorende landen: Vervaatende een korte doch klaare beschrijvinghe aller Landtschappen en Steden, in dit Ryck gelegen, was published in 1660 by Gillis Jansz Valckenier & Hendrik Prins.
Andreas Cellarius also wrote a few laudatory poems on Henrick Bruno, the assistant rector of the Latin School in Hoorn and a former tutor of Constantijn and Christiaan Huygens, which were printed in Bruno’s Hooghe-Liedt (a Dutch versification of Solomon’s Song of Songs).
His best known work, the Harmonia Macrocosmica, was published in 1660 (a reprint was issued in 1661) by the Amsterdam publisher Johannes Janssonius as a cosmographical supplement to his Atlas Novus. Andreas Cellarius had already started working on this atlas before 1647 and intended it to be a historical introduction for a two-volume treatise on cosmography but the second part was never published.
The plates of his Harmonia Macrocosmica were reprinted (without the Latin commentary) in 1708 by the Amsterdam publishers Gerard Valk and Petrus Schenk.
Click here to see some samples of maps by Chatelain
Dictionary of map makers
An illustrated list of makers of maps, charts and globes from the earliest time of cartography to present.
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