List 4-2013 - Libreria Antiquaria Alberto Govi

clude the best available maps and other high-quality illustrations) over six years to the definitive edition of 1550 (in Latin). The present Italian
edition retained the same dedication to Emperor Charles V, just the date of it was changed into March 1558. It is also the last in which South
America has the caption ‘Insula Atlantica quam vocant Brasilij et Americam’, later changed to ‘Nova Insula Atlantica’ (cf. H.J.W. Horch, Bibliographische
Notizen zu den Ausgaben der ‘Kosmographie’ Sebastian Münsters in italienischer Sprache, in: “Gutenberg Jahrbuch”, 1976, pp.
237-247). In the 1572 German edition was for the first time added material that Münster had collected before his death. In 1575 appeared the
French translation by François de Belleforest, and a Czech version was printed at Prague in 1554.
The Cosmographia is made up of six books, which treat the world in most unequal fashion: the more familiar and local places get most
of the space which is available in dwindling proportions as the author moves further and further into lesser known continents and countries,
since Münster had travelled at short range only and then mainly to collect literary, archival and cartographical material. Thus, following Book I
(on astronomical, mathematical and physical geography), Books II and III deal at relatively great length with France, Italy, Switzerland, the Low
Countries and Germany, but much less is written about northern, eastern and south-eastern Europe which is covered in Book IV. By the same
token the descriptions of Africa, Asia and the Americas are brief and sketchy. However, spiced with fancy, the Cosmographia stands among the
first of the omnium gatherum type of geographies that had a long vogue in the days before triangulation, the natural and social sciences, and
history as a discipline, had established in more recent
times. But it did something to satisfy the curiosity of
the educated public and its influence on geographical
work during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
was considerable (cf. R. Oehme, ed., Sebastian Münster
Cosmographei, Basel 1550, Amsterdam, 1968, passim).
“Münster constructed America as part of a larger
geographical space – an archipelago from the Canaries
to the Moluccas. In so doing, he connected it to one of
the pressing issues in international politics and commerce:
the search for sea-routes to the Spice-Islands
that enabled one to bypass and undercut the overland
spice trade… Münster’s interpretation of the geography
of half the globe along commercial lines indicates
awareness of the interests of the many German
merchants and financiers in the spice trade» (S. Davies,
America and Amerindians in Sebastian Münster’s ‘Cos-
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