Limania (Limousin)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Limania', title in a cartouche upper right, with a scale lower right; west at the top

Position: p. 107 (signature G6), headed 'Limousin'

Text: verso p. 108, 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. 107 (G6), headed 'Limousin', and on the verso, p. 108, the Dutch description of the Limousin. The map shows the region with its principal towns and terrain, the cartouche 'Limania' upper right and a scale lower right.

Condition

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

The plate is titled 'Limania' and shows the Limagne, the plain of Auvergne around Clermont, with the Allier ('Elaver fluvius'), Aigueperse, Maringues and Billom, rather than the Limousin around Limoges: the similar names Limania and Lemovices were confused. The text on p. 108 itself discusses the derivation of the name from the Latin limus, mud, and describes Limoges, its chestnut trees and its rivers, the chief being the Allier, Caesar's Elaver.

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

The confusion of the Limagne with the Limousin, carried into the text itself, is a characteristic slip of the period and a nice point of interest for collectors of the French provincial maps.

Provenance

Available on request.

From our Journal

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