Epitome cronicorum seculi moderni / Kurtzer Begriff der gedenckwurdigen Sachen (1500-1604)

Key Properties

Author: Johann Mayr of Freising

Title: Epitome cronicorum seculi moderni / Kurtzer Begriff der gedenckwurdigen Sachen

Place and printer: Munich, Nicolaus Henricus

Date: 1604 (second, enlarged edition; first 1598)

Format: 4to

Binding: Contemporary limp vellum

Language: German

Collation & Technical Description

4to. 4 unnumbered leaves; 340 leaves (the last blank). Engraved title page in black and red, with a small double hemisphere world map (7.5 x 14.5 cm), copper engraved.

Condition

Contemporary limp vellum.

References & Bibliography

Sabin 47110; European Americana 604/53; Shirley 245 (the map, recorded unseen); VD17 23:238362B.

Description

Second, greatly enlarged edition of the world chronicle of Johann Mayr of Freising, first published in 1598, here carried down to 1604 and printed at Munich by Nicolaus Henricus. Written in German, the Epitome treats the memorable events of the whole world year by year from 1500 to 1604, each year receiving a few pages. Europe is present but does not dominate: the emphasis falls on Asia and the Americas, drawn from Peter Martyr, Maffei and other Jesuit letters, Lopez de Gomara, and authors as recent as Jan Huygen van Linschoten.

The engraved title carries a small double hemisphere world map (7.5 x 14.5 cm) that repays close study. So rare is it that Shirley records the map as no. 245 without ever having seen a copy, and his standard reference work has no image of it. The prime meridian runs through Tenerife, and each hemisphere is quartered by a broad band along meridian and equator. Most remarkably, both poles are shown as open water surrounded by land and ice, a deliberate choice quite unlike the solid Terra Australis of Mercator, De Jode, Ortelius or Plancius; one wonders whether the source is Magellan himself, who heard the sea roaring on the far side of the land as he passed through his strait in 1520. The southern landmass, named Terra Incogni(ta), reaches north of the Tropic of Capricorn below New Guinea and Java, and carries the Polo-derived names Beach, Lecath and Maletur; Fuego lies below the Americas and the Psitacorum regio below Africa. Japan is robustly joined to China, and South America has the potato shape Mercator gave it in 1569. The major rivers of the world are shown, the unnamed Atrato in the Darien seeming to part North from South America, the old Spanish dream. The stippled oceans and fine italic lettering suggest an Italian hand, though Italy itself is nowhere shown on the map.

Historical Significance

A year-by-year chronicle of the age of exploration written as it happened, with the discoveries in Asia and the Americas at its heart, and illustrated with one of the rarest world maps of its day: a double hemisphere map whose open polar seas set it apart from every well-known world map of the period. Shirley knew of the map but never saw one.

Provenance

A contemporary manuscript ownership inscription on the title-page, read as "Sum M. Joannis Khauffman Aulendorffensis", and a further contemporary Latin inscription of a devotional character on the inside of the old binding.

The inscription points to Johann Kaufmann, Magister of Philosophy and parish priest of Aulendorf in Upper Swabia from 1599 to 1635. Name, academic title, the form Aulendorffensis and the date all agree: the book was printed in 1604, in the fifth year of an incumbency that lasted more than three decades. If the second inscription is also in his hand, the volume records not merely ownership but use, a working book kept and written in by the man who served that parish for thirty-two years.

The Stadtarchiv Aulendorf has confirmed that a Johann Kaufmann is named as parish priest of Aulendorf around 1599 in the published history of the parish church, Pfarrkirche St. Martin in Aulendorf (Lindenberg, Kunstverlag Josef Fink, 2003). The identification of the owner of this book with him is nevertheless offered as a strong probability rather than a proven fact: no securely attested example of Kaufmann's handwriting has yet been traced for comparison. The inscriptions themselves are contemporary with the book and are described here exactly as they read.