Inventio Fortunata - Authorship

Authorship

Mercator's contemporary, the 16th century English historian Richard Hakluyt, identifies the author of the Inventio as Nicholas of Lynn. Hakluyt apparently arrived at this conclusion because of Geoffrey Chaucer's mention of Nicholas in his Treatise on the Astrolabe. Hakluyt did not himself, of course, have a copy of the Inventio.

Nicholas was alive at the right time (very roughly- he is quite likely to have been a child in 1360), and had the right skills, but he was a Carmelite friar, not a Franciscan, and no earlier biographer indicates that he spent years travelling back and forth across the Atlantic on government business. There is another possible candidate, about whom, unfortunately, almost nothing is known. According to early 16th century literary historian John Bale, an Irishman named Hugh, who was a Franciscan, travelled widely in the 14th century, and wrote "a certain journey in one volume"- but again, whether or not this was the Inventio, no copy of it is known.