Philippe Briet

Philippe Briet (1601–1668) was a French Jesuit priest, historian, and cartographer based in Abbeville, France. Known for his meticulous historical and Biblical cartography work, Briet created numerous maps that integrated contemporary and classical geographic knowledge. His most notable publication, Parallela Geographica, released in 1649, featured a collection of maps comparing ancient and modern European geography, focusing on regions such as Sarmatia and encompassing parts of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania. This ambitious atlas intended to juxtapose old and new geographies, reflecting Briet’s insistence that history could and should traced cartographically.

Briet continued to expand his work with other cartographic projects, including the Theatrum Geographiae Veteris, an atlas of Europe’s ancient regions, and Theatre Geographique de l’Europe in 1653, a detailed volume that mapped European countries and their provinces. Although he initially aimed to cover all continents, only his work on Europe was published, as his manuscript on Asia never reached publication. He collaborated with notable Parisian publishers like Pierre Mariette, contributing to the era’s development of high-quality geographic atlases and engravings.