Veromadui (Vermendois, the Vermandois)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Veromadui', title in a cartouche on the left, with a 'Scala Leucarum' upper right; east at the top

Position: p. 141, misprinted 143 (signature I7), headed 'Vermendois'

Text: verso p. 142, the end of the Beschryvinghe van Vermandois, followed by the beginning of the Beschryvinghe van Lotharingia, Lorraine

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. 141 (I7), the page number misprinted as 143, headed 'Vermendois', and on the verso, p. 142, the conclusion of the Dutch description of the Vermandois, followed under its own heading by the opening of the description of Lorraine. The map shows the region with its principal towns and terrain, the cartouche 'Veromadui' on the left and a scale of leagues upper right.

Condition

Good. Slight damage to the margin; 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 Vermandois from the first edition of Barent Langenes's Caert-Thresoor, the first Dutch pocket atlas, Middelburg 1598, with the end of the Dutch description on the verso.

The map is drawn with east at the top and is densely filled with towns and castles along the Somme and the Oise, from Saint-Quentin, Ham and Péronne to Guise, La Fère and Noyon.

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

On the frontier of France and the Spanish Netherlands, the Vermandois was a battleground: Saint-Quentin fell to the Spanish in 1557, and the region was fought over again in the 1590s until the Peace of Vervins of 1598.

Provenance

Available on request.

From our Journal

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