Biturigum (t'Landt van Bourges oft Berry, the Province of Berry)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Biturigum', title in a cartouche upper left, with a scale upper right

Position: p. 105 (signature G5), headed 't'Landt van Bourges oft Berry'

Text: verso p. 106, the end of the Beschryvinghe van 't Landt van Bourges oft Berry, followed by the beginning of the Beschryvinghe van Limousin

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. 105 (G5), headed 't'Landt van Bourges oft Berry', and on the verso, p. 106, the conclusion of the Dutch description of Berry, followed under its own heading by the opening of the description of the Limousin. The map shows Berry with its principal towns and terrain, the cartouche 'Biturigum' upper left and a scale upper right.

Condition

Excellent. Only slight damage to the margin and minor 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 province of Berry, centred on Bourges, from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the end of the Dutch description of Berry on the verso.

The cartouche gives the region its Latin name, after the Bituriges, the Gallic people whose capital Avaricum became Bourges. In the heart of France, Berry was a royal duchy, and Bourges, with its cathedral and its university, was one of the old capitals of the French crown.

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 of 1598 the French provinces were close at hand: France had just come out of the Wars of Religion, and in that same year Henry IV signed both the Edict of Nantes and the Peace of Vervins. The Caert-Thresoor gave Dutch readers a province-by-province picture of the country.

Provenance

Available on request.

From our Journal

Langenes's France, 1598: Fourteen Provinces from the First Dutch Pocket Atlas