FIRST EDITION OF THE NUREMBERG CHRONICLE

WONDERFUL AND TALL COPY
ANNOTATED BY A FRENCH HUMANIST

SCHEDEL, HARTMANN. Liber Chronicarum. [Nuremberg, Anton Koberger per Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister, 12 July 1493].

In-folio (460x315mm), 18th century full roan calf binding, gilt title on red leather label on a six raised bands spine, floral gilt decoration at compartments, marbled edges, ff. [20, index], CCXCIX, [1], [1, blank], [5 – Sarmatia insert].
This copy, differently from almost all the copies on the market, has the three blank leaves numbered CCLVIIII, CCLX, and CCLXI. The five leaves with the description of the Poland (called Sarmatia) and the praise of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, are bound at the end of the volume, while the last blank leaf is left before.
The portrait of Pope Joan, Johannes Septimus with her child, at verso of leaf CLXIX, is present and not erased (as in almost all the copies), supporting a provenance from a Protestant family as some other notes seems to support.

1809 XYLOGRAPHIES (31 DOUBLE-PAGE) PRINTED FROM 645 SINGLE WOODBLOCKS, ENGRAVED BY MICHAEL WOHLGEMUT AND WILHELM PLEYDENWURFF WITH THE COLLABORATION OF THE YOUNG ALBRECHT DÜRER. INCLUDING A PTOLEMAIC WORLD MAP AND A CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE MAP, BOTH PRINTED ON TWO PAGES.

FIRST EDITION OF SCHEDEL’S LIBER CHRONICARUM, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE WORLD: A COPY PRINTED ON STRONG PAPER AND EXTENSIVELY ANNOTATED BY A CONTEMPORARY FRENCH HUMANIST.

The work represent a historical and mythological encyclopedia of the world, collecting the historical and geographic knowledge of the time. It follows the stream of the Christian “world chronicle”, first formulated by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the biographer of Emperor Constantine. The works tha inspired Schedel the most, indeed, were the Supplementum Chronicarum written by Filippo Foresti of Bergamo, the Fasciculum Temporum antiquorum Chronica complectens by Werner Rolewinck and, for the contemporary part of the Liber, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini with Historia Bohemica and the manuscript Europa.

Schedel adopts the position commonly shared since St. Augustine in the 5th century, that five ages had passed before the birth of Christ and then the sixth age began. Therefore, he divides his Chronicle as follows:

1) From Creation to the Great Flood
2) From Great Flood to the birth of Adam
3) From the Birth of Adam to the Reign of David
4) From the Reign of David to the Captivity in Babylon
5) From the Captivity in Babylon to the Birth of Christ
6) From the Birth of Christ to 15th century
At the end, a last short 7th age may be found describing the Antichrist’s coming, the End of the World and the Last Judgment.

Following the medieval chroniclers, Schedel leaves wide space in his history to curiosities, accounts of epidemics, monsters and comets. The beginning and the end of the work, as it was typical, include theological considerations about the Creation and the Final Judgment.

Schedel mentiones in his work the recent invention of printing by Gutenberg [f. CCLIIv], even not mentioning Gutenberg himself and, at leaf CCXCv, adds a short summary [not present in the later German edition] of the Portoguese expedition lead by Martin Behaim and Jacobus Canus in 1483 indicated as a reference to an alleged discovery of America nine years before Columbus’.

More than for its historical content, anyway, the Liber Chronicarum become one of the most, if not the most, famous and wanted book of the 15th century for its illustrations, its great graphic design, its printing and for its woodcuts and illustrations of the cities. “In fact this is a Marvelous book, a landmark in the history of illustration. It cannot fail to impress by the sheer size and by the quality of its cuts” (Bland, David. A history of Book illustration, pp. 106-108, Berkeley, 1969).

The wonderful illustrations, prepared in more than three years of work, represent historical, biblical and mythological events: the Creation of the World, the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark, Tower of Babel, portraits of prophets and historical characters, representations of natural or divine cataclysms, monsters and strange creatures, comets and eclipses, the Antichrist and The Dance of Death, and presents an amazing representation of the known world, sometimes mirroring reality, sometimes with imaginary representations.

The cities that had a realistic design were, among the others:

Augusta, Bamberg, Basel, Warsaw, Budapest, Cologne, Costance, Constantinople, Krakov, Eichstätt, Ensisheim, Erfurt, Florence, Genoa, Crete, Jerusalem, Lübeck, Magdeburg, Munich, Nysa, Nuremberg, Passau, Prague, Regensburg, Rodhes, Rome, Salisbury, Strasburg, Ulm, Venice, Vienna and Würzburg.

Some of these representations were used as a basis to describe other cities. For example part of the image of Magdeburg was later used as iconography of Treviso. In other cases, imaginary representations were more than once: the same block, for example, is used to illustrate Treveri, Padua, Marseille, Metz, Nice and Lithuania.

It is worthy to note that there are almost no illustrations of Spain, England, Holland and Flanders along the book.

In order to make the illustrations of this book even more fascinating, it is important to remember that young Albrecth Dürer took part to their creation, since at that time he was apprentice in Wohlgemut and Pleydenwurff shop. His hand has been identified at least in the Four Gods of Winds, at corners of Seventh day of Creation (Leaf Vv), in the Sun and Moon at leaf LXXXVI and in the rich title-page originally designed by Wohlgemut, but then enhanced and completed by Dürer.

PROVENANCE: I. Handwritten owner’s signature at the upper margin of title-page Hugo Perrette Cabilois 1584. The same signature is repeated more than once in different leaves with differnt dates (1573, 1591).
II. Just below the previous inscription, handwritten quotation after Ovid: Si fortuna sumar, multos numerabis amicos, tempora si fuerint, solus eris [«So long you are lucky, you will count many friends, if your life become clouded, you will be alone»].
III. At the right of the printed word of title-page, another note by Renaissance hand stating that the author of this work is Hartmann Schedel, as written at f. 260.
IV. At the lower margin of title-page, handwritten verses in Latin. These lines consist of retrograde verses, a type of verse frivolity in which the text is both metrically viable and syntactically sound when read either from beginning to end or from end to beginning, word by word.

Pauperibus sua dat gratis nec munera curat
Curia Papalis: sic modo percipimus
Laus tua, non tua fraus. Virtus non copia rerum
Scandere te facit hoc decus eximium
conditio tua sit stabilis nec tempore pauco
Vivere te faciat hic Deus omnipotens.

And, on the contrary:

Omnipotens Deus hic faciat te vivere
Pauco tempore, nec stabilis sit tua conditio
Eximium decus hoc facit te scandere
Rerum copia non virtus. Fraus tua, non tua laus
Percipimus modo sic Papalis Curia
Curat munera nec gratis dat sua pauperibus.

In this case, Jean Nicolas Barbier-Vemars (Hermes Romanus or Mercure Latin, Paris, 1817, p. 399, n. 144) attributes the text to the Italian humanist Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481), which meant to write an official praise for pope Pius II and, at the same time, complain for his actual attitude by the retrograde version.

V. At f. CCXXVr, handwritten note about the passage of a comet in 1618, written by a member of the Perrette family born in 1584. This star is one of the three famous comets that appeared in November 1618 and that were studied by Galileo and his contemporaries, thus producing the scientific debate that opposed Galileo and his pupil Guiducci with the Jesuit Orazio Grassi.

VI. Many signatures all along the book: Ante pascha M. Desarre (?).Lugduni; Iacques de Perrette (anagram of Espere tacquiter, his motto); erased ex-libris at the last leaf; Guillaume de Montherot (Chalon?, 17th century), signature that can be seen just on the folding of f. CCLXI, blank; Monsieur Reneau. Honneste Homme (end of the 17th century); a printed W. (18th century); W. Battell (ex-libris dated 1797); Colonel Henry Fanshawe Davies (1837-1914), last owner of Elmley castle (Worcestershire, UK).

NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE:
The study of the notes, even if does not enable to identify the author, conveys his being a scholar at the border of two centuries, with a pre-humanist education, whose purpose is to enrich Schedel’s text with more correct notions. He essentially annotates the chapters on Italy and Southern France and adds his own sources on the passages relating the struggles between the Roman Empire and the Barbarians. His education is of universitary kind, presumably Parisian. The quotations he makes come from Latin, French, European Mediaval text, but never from Greek sources.

NOTE ABOUT THE CHRISTIAN WORLD CHRONICLES
The beginner of the genre was Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the biographer of Emperor Constantine. Early in the 4th century, in his Chronicorum Canones, Eusebius supplied a list of dates drawn from Assyrian, Hebrew, Egyptian, Greek and Roman times up to the year 325, starting an out-and-out literary tradition. Many renowned historians drew inspiration from his work: in 417 AD, the priest Paulus Orosius wrote his Historia adversus paganos, the historical handbook par excellence of the middle ages. In the following century, Isidore of Seville schematized this Hellenic-Christian view of history in his Chronicon and the Venerable Bede, a Benedictine scholar of the 8th century, was the first to divide historical chronology at the birth of Christ in his ecclesiastic history of the English people. Coming closer to Schedel’s time, in 1444 Leonardo Bruni with his Historia Florentini populi initiated a new approach to history, with a deeper and more scientific focus on historical sources.

REFERENCES: HC, 14508; IGI, 8828; GW, M40784; Goff, S307; BMC, II, 437; BSB-Ink, S-195; GfT, 1158; Klebs, 889.1; Schreiber, 5203; Schramm, XVII, p. 9; Campbell (Maps), 219-220; Pellechet, Ms 10351 = 10352; CIBN, S-161; Hillard ,1814; Aquilon, 606; Arnoult, 1307; Buffévent, 466; Fernillot, 526; Frasson-Cochet, 247; Girard, 395; Jammes, S-6; Lefèvre, 436; Neveu, 542; Nice, 270; Parguez, 904; Péligry, 709; Richard, 449; Torchet, 839; Zehnacker, 2068; Delisle, 1773; Polain(B), 3469; IBP, 4941; Sajó-Soltész, 3039; IBPort, 1606; IDL, 4060; Gspan-Badalić, 603; IBE, 5179; IJL2, 334; CCIR, S-34; Feigelmanas, 387, 388; Mendes, 1147; Collijn (Uppsala), 1335; Collijn (Stockholm) 964; Lőkkös (Cat BPU), 392; Madsen, 3632, 3633, 3634, T66, T67, T68, T69; Voulliéme (Trier), 1093; Voulliéme (B), 1743; Schmitt, I, 1743; Schäfer, 309; Ernst (Hildesheim), I,I 360, 361, 362, II,II 240, 241, II,III 110, II,V 28, II,VII 9; Ernst (Hannover), 300; Hubay (Augsburg), 1859; Ohly-Sack, 2528, 2529; Sack(Freiburg), 3181, 3182; Borm, 2412; Finger, 869; Wilhelmi, 548, 549; Walsh, 726, 727, 728, 729, 730, 731, 732; Oates, 1026, 1027, 1028, 1029; Rhodes (Oxford Colleges), 1595; Bod-inc, S-108; Sheppard ,1520-1521; Proctor, 2084. C. Reske, Die Produktion der Schedelschen Weltchronik in Nürnberg, Wiesbaden, 2000.

Some traces of use, but overall a very good copy with wide margins.