ORTELIUS (WORTELS), ABRAHAM next to Mercator the greatest geographer of his age, was born at Antwerp on April 14, 1527, and died in the same city on July 4, 1598. He was of German origin, his family coming from Augsburg. He travelled extensively in western Europe. Beginning as a map engraver, he became a merchant, and most of his journeys be fore 156o were for commercial purposes. In 156o, however, when travelling with Gerhard Kremer (see MERCATOR, GER HARDUS), he became interested in scientific geography and began to prepare that atlas or Theatre of the World by which he became famous. In 1564 he completed a mappemonde, which afterwards appeared in the Theatrum. In 157o (May 2o) was issued, by Gilles Coppens de Diest at Antwerp, Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the "first modern atlas" (of 53 maps). Many editions, Flemish, Latin and German, appeared in his lifetime. Most of the maps were admittedly reproductions (a list of 87 authors is given by Ortelius himself), and many discrepancies of delinea tion or nomenclature occur ; but, taken as a whole, this atlas with its accompanying text was a monument of rare erudition and industry. In 1573 Ortelius published 17 supplementary maps under the title of Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum.
In 1575 Ortelius was appointed geographer to the king of Spain, Philip II., on the recommendation of Arius Montanus,
who vouched for his orthodoxy (his family, as early as 1535, had fallen under suspicion of Protestantism). Other important works are : Synonymia geographica (1578) ; Nomenclator Ptolemaicus (1584) ; his Parergon (a series of maps illustrating ancient his tory, sacred and secular), and his Itinerarium per nonnullas Gal liae Belgicae partes, a record of a journey in Belgium and the Rhineland made in 1575; an edition of Caesar (C. I. Caesaris omnia quae extant, Leyden, Raphelingen, 1593), and the Aurei saeculi imago, sive Germanorum veterum vita (Philippe Galle, Antwerp, 1596). He also aided Welser in his edition of the Peutinger Table in 1598. His death and burial (in St. Michael's Abbey church) in 1598 were marked by public mourning.
See Emmanuel van Meteren, Historia Belgica (Amsterdam, 1670) ; General Wauwermans, Histoire de l'ecole cartographique beige et anversoise (Antwerp, 1895), and article "Ortelius" in Biographie nationale (Belgian), vol. xvi. (Brussels, 19o1) ; J. H. Hessels, Abrahami Ortelii epistulae (Cambridge, England, 1887) ; Max Rooses, Ortelius et Plantin (188o) ; Genard, "Genealogie d'Ortelius," in the Bulletin de la Soc. roy. de Geog. d'Anvers (188o and 1880.