In 1577, the Flemish cartographer Gerhard Mercator wrote a letter to his friend, the English scientist, occultist and royal advisor John Dee. In that letter, Mercator described the geography of the North Pole as first reported in the 14th century by a Franciscan friar from Oxford, who travelled the North Atlantic region on behalf of the King of England. An account of his travels were published in a travelogue titled Inventio Fortunata (or “Fortunate Discoveries”), a book that has been lost for more than 500 years. However, a summary of this book was published in another travelogue called the Itinerarium by a Brabantian traveller from the city of 's-Hertogenbosch named Jacobus Cnoyen. It was in Itinerarium where Mercator read about the astonishing claims made by the unknown author of the Inventio Fortunata.
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