Normandia (Normandie, Normandy)

Key Properties

Edition: First edition, Dutch text, 1598

Map: 'Normandia', the title across the Channel at the top, with a scale of French miles lower right

Position: p. 131 (signature I2), headed 'Normandie'

Text: verso p. 132, the Beschryvinghe van Normandie

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. 131 (I2), headed 'Normandie', and on the verso, p. 132, the Dutch description of Normandy. The map shows the region with its coastline, principal towns and terrain, with a scale lower right.

Condition

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

The map runs from Jersey and the Cotentin, with Cherbourg and Mont Saint-Michel, past Caen, Bayeux and Honfleur to Rouen, Dieppe and the borders of Picardy. The text on p. 132 tells, after Camden, how the Northmen settled on the Seine, how Charles the Simple made Rollo duke of Normandy, and the story of Rollo refusing to kiss the king's foot with the words 'Ne se by Godt'.

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

Normandy faces England across the Channel, and its history of the Northmen who went on to conquer England, Sicily and Antioch, told on the verso, made it a natural subject for a Dutch reader.

Provenance

Available on request.

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