Burgundiae Ducatus ('t Hertoghdom van Bourgongien, the Duchy of Burgundy)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Burgundiae Ducatus', title in a strapwork cartouche lower left, with a scale of German miles (Milliaria Germanica) upper right

Position: p. 121 (signature H5), headed ''t Hertoghdom van Bourgongien'

Text: verso p. 122, Beschryvinghe van 't Hertochdom van Bourgongien

Format: Copperplate engraving on a leaf of the oblong octavo atlas

Colouring: Uncoloured

Collation & Technical Description

One leaf from the Caert-Thresoor: the map on p. 121 (H5), headed ''t Hertoghdom van Bourgongien', and on the verso, p. 122, part of the Dutch description of the duchy. North is at the top (Septentrio). The map shows the duchy within a dotted boundary, with Digion (Dijon), Beaulne (Beaune), Autun, Chalons, Semur, Avalon, Vezelay, Monbard, Flavigny and Chastillon, the Saône, the Seine and their tributaries, the Nivernois to the west, the Bassigni to the north-east and the Franche-Comté (Frace Conte) with Dole and Ausonne (Auxonne) to the east.

The Dutch text on p. 122 calls Beaune the second city, known for its good wines and made almost impregnable by Louis XII with a castle; it tells of the Cistercian abbey nearby, founded in 1098 by Duke Otho, with, according to Belleforest, eighteen hundred monasteries under it; of Autun, the ancient Augustodunum, where old stones and coins were found every day; and of the great power of the dukes until Charles the Bold fell before Nancy.

Condition

Good. Some damage to the margin; slight discolouration.

References & Bibliography

Van der Krogt, Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, III, 341:01 (the atlas). Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandici, II, p. 254, Lan 1. Schilder, Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica, VII, 16.1. Burger, Het Caert-Thresoor (1930). King, Miniature Antique Maps (1996).

Description

A small map of the Duchy of Burgundy from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the Dutch description of the duchy on the verso.

The map reduces the heart of Burgundy to a few square inches: Dijon, the ducal capital, the wine town of Beaune, Roman Autun and Chalon on the Saône, with the abbeys and fortified towns of the Morvan and the Auxois. The text on the verso reads as a small guide to the duchy, from its wines and the abbey of Cîteaux to the fall of the Burgundian dukes.

The Caert-Thresoor was the first Dutch pocket atlas: small copperplate maps by Pieter van den Keere (Petrus Kaerius) and Jodocus Hondius, each with a description of the country in Dutch, in an oblong octavo meant to be cheaper and handier than the great folio atlases of Ortelius and Mercator. It appeared in 1598, a year after the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies had returned, and it brought the geography of the whole known world within reach of a wider public. The plates proved durable: Petrus Bertius reused them for the Latin Tabularum geographicarum contractarum from 1600 and a French edition followed in 1602, so that the Dutch text of 1598 is the first and earliest form in which these maps were issued.

Historical Significance

For a Dutch reader in 1598 Burgundy was not a distant province: the Burgundian dukes had united the Low Countries in the fifteenth century, and the death of Charles the Bold before Nancy in 1477, recalled on the verso, brought the Netherlands through his daughter Mary to the Habsburgs, whose heir Philip II the Dutch were still fighting when the Caert-Thresoor appeared.

Provenance

Available on request.