| Caius Julius Solinus — Two Closely Related Editions from the Same Viennese Press, Both Highly Important Americana, Preserved in their Original Sixteenth-Century Binding |
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Two Closely Related Editions from the Same Viennese Press, Both Highly Important Americana, Preserved in their Original Sixteenth-Century Binding |
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Published: Vienna: Johannes Singrenius for Lucas Alantse, 1520 A MARVELOUS COPY OF TWO CLOSELY RELATED EDITIONS FROM THE SAME VIENNESE PRESS, BOTH HIGHLY IMPORTANT AMERICANA, PRESERVED IN THEIR ORIGINAL SIXTEENTH-CENTURY BINDING. The Solinus contains the earliest obtainable map to name America; the editor of the Pomponius Mela accepts that choice of name for the new continent: Folio (306 x 210 mm). 194 leaves including final blank, paginated [16], 336, [4 (errata leaf and colophon)], [30 (index, errata page, and leaf with notes to the reader from the editor, printer and compositor, printer's mark on verso)]. Roman type, occasional Greek type, text with commentary surround. Title within fine woodcut border printed from four blocks, the lower block with the publisher Alantse's monogram within shield, woodcut historiated and ornamental initials (one white-on-black), Alantse's woodcut mark below colophon, Singrenier's large woodcut device on verso of final page, full-sheet woodcut map of the world by Laurent Fries after Petrus Apianus (Shirley 45) bound between preliminary leaves and text. (Occasional minor fingersoiling in lower blank margins, infrequent minor marginal staining, the map with very slight spotting and with right edge shaved, cropping the caption "Oriens".) [Bound with:] MELA, Pomponius -- Joachim Vadianus [or von Watt (1484-1551)], editor and commentator. Libri de situ orbis tres, adiectis Ioachimi Vadiani Heluetii in eosdem scholiis: addita quoque in geographia catechesi: et epistola Vadiani ad Agricola digna lectu. [colophon:] Vienna: Johannes Singrenius for Lucas Alantse, May 1518. Folio. 158 leaves including final blank, foliated [23], 132 [recte 133], [2, the last blank]. Roman type, text with commentary surround, shoulder headings. Title within double woodcut border of allegorical figures of the arts, narrow white-on-black inner border with putti, woodcut white-on-black floriated initials. (Some light marginal dampstaining, leaves c3 and e3 with blank corners torn away, tear to inner margin of k1.) The two works bound together in contemporary vellum, sewn on three pairs of pink tawed deerskin thongs, early manuscript liners, early ink title and traces of early manuscript paper label on spine, evidence of two fore-edge ties (some minor restoration to covers); cloth folding box. I. Solinus' compilation of the wonders of the natural world was largely borrowed from the geography of Pomponius Mela and from Pliny the elder's Natural History. Arranged geographically, the work was cited by early medieval authorities such as Isidorus and Bede, and its popularity throughout the Middle Ages is attested by the survival of over 150 manuscripts from the ninth century on. Of the numerous editions that followed its first appearance in print in 1473, the present edition, edited and with extensive commentary by the Viennese humanist Johannes Camers, is prized above all others by collectors, for the map of the world that illustrates it. Commissioned by the publisher Lucas Alantse from the cartographer and cosmographer Peter Apian (born Bienewitz), professor of mathematics at Vienna and Ingolstadt, Apian's woodcut map is based (without acknowledgement) on the great 1507 woodcut wall-map of Martin Waldseemüller, the first in which the new southern continent was named "America". Prior to the re-discovery in Germany of the sole surviving copy of the Waldseemüller map in 1901, Apianus' map was thought to have been the first printed source of the name, and was so described by earlier bibliographers. Apianus' map is modeled on Waldseemüller's wall-map not only in its shape (a modified cordiform shape most accurately described as "bulb-shaped") but also in all geographical details (errors included, of which some derived from Ptolemy, although these had been corrected in Waldseemüller's 1516 Carta Marina). It is signed with the monogram of Lucas Alantse, the publisher, and the initials of Camers (or Kamers) and of Laurent Fries, the woodcutter. The map in this copy is in fine, fresh condition. II. First edition with Vadianus' commentary. Alantse's 1518 folio edition, prepared by the noted Swiss poet, humanist and book-collector Joachim Vadianus, is one of the most desirable of the early editions of Pomponius Mela, first-century Roman geographer at the courts of Caligula and Claudius, whose geographic treatise contains the earliest mentions of the Baltic Sea (Sinus Codanus) and the Orkney Islands (Orcades) off the Scottish coast. Vadianus' commentary contains several references to Vespucci and the discoveries of the Spanish and Portuguese explorers, and is the first of several editions to append his famous letter to the Swiss humanist Rudolf Agricola (first published in pamphlet form in 1515), in which he elucidates the geographical problems raised by the recent discovery of the continent of America, supporting Waldseemüller's suggestion to name the new continent 'America' after Vespucci (fol. 124v), and discussing the relation of America to the cosmosgraphic concept of the antipodes, as found in Classical writers such as Macrobius and Cicero (f. 128r). (Waldseemüller had not connected Vespucci's mundus novus with the "Asian" islands found by Columbus, and there is no mention of Columbus in Vadianus' present letter to Agricola. ) More widely distributed than the 1515 pamphlet, "this edition... undoubtedly contributed to spread the name 'America'" (Borba de Moraes). Vadianus' commentary, which is based on his lectures on Mela at the University in Vienna, is quite extensive, and his consultation of newly discovered codices and independent conjectures made some improvements on earlier texts of Pomponius. |
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