Epitome trium terræ partium Asiæ, Africæ et Europæ compendiariam locorum descriptionem continens, præcipue autem quorum in Actis Lucas, passim autem Evangelistæ & Apostoli meminere. Cum addito in fronte libri elencho regionum, urbium, amnium, insularu, quorum No uo testamento fit mentio, quo expeditius pius Lector quæ velit, inuenire queat. Per Ioachimum Vadianum Medicum.
VANISHINGLY RARE FIRST EDITION OF VADIANUS'S WORLD ATLAS
WITH AN EARLY COMPLETE OUTLINE OF THE SOUTH AMERICAN CONTINENT
Zurich: Christoph Froschauer, 1534. First edition.
Folio (11 9/16” x 7 15/16”, 293mm x 201mm): A6 Aa6 Bb–Cc4 B–X6 &6(–&6) [$4 signed]. 157 leaves, pp. [40] (title, verses, 8pp. foreward, 29pp. index, blank) 1–273 [1] (errata). With a double-page woodcut map after Sebastian Münster.
Bound by BookEnds in paneled calf, cornered with blind stamped poppy seedheads. On the spine, 5 raised bands. Title gilt to second panel. All edges of the text-block stained red.
Boards lightly scuffed with some spotting. Dampstain to the bottom edge throughout, not affecting the text. Pale peripheral foxing throughout. Loss to the fore-edge of &4 and &5, not affecting the text. With an ownership inscription to the title page [“Pruneaux”?] and extensive manuscript gloss in the margins throughout. Bookbinder’s stamp (“BookEnds”) to the top fore-corner of the rear flyleaf’s recto.
Joachim Vadianus (Vadian, 1484–1551) was born to a wealthy linen merchant in the Swiss Old Confederacy and, at the age of 17, left his small town of Saint Gallen for the University of Vienna. Vadianus excelled in classical literature, law, medicine, philosophy, geography, and the arts. After a decade of teaching, Vadianus was crowned poet laureate by the Hapsburg emperor Maximilian, served as rector at the University of Vienna, and supervised the publication of the works of various ancient writers, most notably Ovid and Pliny the Elder. The work he garnered the most praise for whilst living was his Scholia (an expansion of an original work with further commentary) on the geography of Pomponius Mela, which he took from a 76-page manuscript to an exhaustive tome of over 700 pages.
In a similar vein, Vadianus’s next ambitious work was the Epitome, which reconstructed biblical history through the lens of geography. A Reformer and Humanist, Vadianus was of the camp that interpreted the Bible’s paradise not as Fortunate Isles or hidden in the far East, but rather as the world in its entirety — an idea posited by Philo and Clement of Alexandria. The world as paradise provided a rational answer to theologists and scholars’ qualms regarding how all descendants of Adam could inhabit paradise and justified explorers’ inability to precisely locate the garden and rivers of Genesis. The volume was meant to be a reading companion to the gospels and Acts, but Vadianus’s extensive research made the work a more than suitable reference for scholars of all religious persuasions.
The present example is complete with the rare double-page woodcut world map, which Sabin says “is lacking in most of the copies located.” It is one of the first maps to show the full outline of the South American continent. The principal source for this map is the Waldseemüller map of 1507, which was adapted by Sebastian Münster in Grynaeus’ Novis orbis regionum (Basel: 1532). The present map is a simplified and reduced size copy of Münster’s map, of which there were no later editions.
BookEnds Bindery is a traditional bookbinding workshop based in London, England. It remains in operation to the present-day.
Richart 1542. Adams V-10; JCB I, p. 460; Sabin 98279 (erroneously dated 1533); Shirley 70; USTC 653060; VD16 V-20.
Cataloged by G.R. Murdock
Item #GRM0096
Price: $37,000