Aniou (Anjou)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Aniou', title in a strapwork cartouche upper right, with a scale of French miles (Mil. Gallica) lower left

Position: p. 123 (signature H6), headed 'Anjou'

Text: verso p. 124, the end of the description of Burgundy and the beginning of the Beschryvinghe van Anjou

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. 123 (H6), headed 'Anjou', and on the verso, p. 124, the end of the description of Burgundy and the beginning of the Beschryvinghe van Anjou. North is at the top (Septentrio). The map shows the Loire crossing the province from Touraine in the east to the west, with Angiers (Angers), Saumur, Beaufort, La Fleche, Bauge, Chalonne, Brissac, Doue, Montrenai, Chemillé and Moncontour, the rivers Loir, Sarthe and Dive, and woods and hills drawn in profile.

The Dutch text on p. 124 closes the description of Burgundy, deriving the name from a castle in the Val d'Ogne ('Bourg en ogne') and dating the division into duchy and county to about the year 1034 after the chronicles of Aemilius. Under its own heading it then begins the description of Anjou: the Andes or Andegavenses named by Caesar in his seventh book, the city of Angers named after them, the duchy that includes the county of Maine, the bishop's see, and the university founded by Louis II, Duke of Anjou, at the time when Rupert of the Palatinate founded that of Heidelberg.

Condition

Good. Some damage to the margin; slight discolouration at the upper right and lower left.

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 Anjou from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the Dutch text on the verso ending the description of Burgundy and beginning that of Anjou.

The province is shown along the Loire, the river of the châteaux, from Saumur with its castle to Angers, the capital of the old Plantagenet counts, with the towns, forests and hills of the region in the lively engraving of the miniature maps.

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

Anjou was the cradle of the Plantagenet dynasty and in 1598 still a title of the French royal house: François, Duke of Anjou, had been called to be sovereign of the Netherlands by the States General less than twenty years before. The same year, 1598, saw the Edict of Nantes, signed on the Loire a little downstream from the area shown here.

Provenance

Available on request.