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One of the Most Important Books in Human History

The 1493 Latin Edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle

First Edition in Latin, which predated the German translation, of the Nuremberg Chronicle - one of the most famous books ever produced. The Latin version was completed on July 12, 1493, and the German version on December 23, 1493. The present Latin edition includes an account of an intriguing but highly unlikely voyage to the New World - the African voyage of Cam & Behaim. This passage is not found in the German edition.

The Nuremberg Chronicle, a magnificent profusely illustrated history of the world, published the year that Columbus returned to Europe after discovering America. The text is a year-by-year account of notable events in world history from the creation down to the year of publication. It is a mixture of fact and fantasy, recording events like the invention of printing, but also repeating stories from Herodotus. Even the world map is decorated with strange beings from the far reaches, including a cyclops and a four-eyed man.

645 woodcuts were used to illustrate the Chronicle, and many were used more than once, so there are a total of 1,809 illustrations, making it the most extensively illustrated book of the fifteenth century. The wood-cutters were Michael Wolgemut, his stepson, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and their workshop. As Albrecht Dürer was the godson of Koberger and was apprenticed to Wolgemut from 1486 to 1489, it is likely that he was involved in the work.

Adrian Wilson has mapped out the proximity of the craftsmen and other notables who contributed to the making of the Chronicle:

Dr. Hartmann Schedel himself, the compiler, lived at number 19 on the corner of the "Kramergasslein (Haberdasher's Lane)....Number 3, belonged to Anton Koberger, the printer and Albrecht Dürer's godfather... Two houses from Schedel lived Michael Wolgemutt who was Albrecht Dürer's master, who, with his stepson, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, maintained a famous workshop for altar-pieces and other works of art... Number 25 had belonged to the patrician family of Behaim since 1433. Martin Behaim, the seafarer and the maker of the first terrestrial globe, sold the house in 1491 to the patrician Ortolf Stromer of the paper-making family. Beyond the Behaim house was that of Albrecht Dürer's father, a goldsmith. Young Albrecht lived in this house from his fourth year on - The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle, page 17.

The immense importance of the Nuremberg Chronicle, with respect to history, geography, and topography, cannot be overemphasized. It is often styled as being the most important book ever printed. Certainly it stands as the most extensively illustrated of incunabula. Ernest Bjerke, a library curator in Oslo who has recently published a study concerning the post-production "finishing" of the Nuremberg Chronicle (i.e. the binding and coloring of some examples), Imago Mundi: Anton Koberger and the Finishing of the Nuremberg Chronicle (2022), has eloquently summarized the book as follows:

The Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493 is one of the most magnificent books ever published. It displayed for all to see the achievements of Nuremberg's humanists, craftsmen, and artists, as a monument to the grandeur of the free imperial city. It was written by the learned physician Dr. Harmann Schedel and published by a consortium of Nuremberg citizens. The work was financed by the wealthy and well-educated humanist patron Sebald Schreyer and his brother-in-law Sebastian Kammermeister, who invited the artists Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff to creat the illustrations. These four men in turn engaged the renowned Nuremberg printer Anton Koberger to undertake the book's production. The Latin first edition was followed by a German translation, and the total print run of the two editions must have approached an unprecedented 2500 copies.... some even with illuminated initials and colored woodcuts - Ernest Bjerke, FABS article.

Two of the illustrations are maps that typify the range of old traditions and new information of the text itself. The world map is of Ptolemaic configurations, although without Ptolemy's scientific apparatus of latitudes, longitudes, scales, rich nomenclature, etc. The border contains twelve dour wind heads while the map is supported in three of its corners by the solemn figures of Ham, Shem, and Japhet taken from the Old Testament.

What gives the map its present-day interest and attraction are the panels representing the outlandish creatures and beings that were thought to inhabit the further most parts of the earth. There are seven such scenes to the left of the map and a further fourteen on its reverse. Pliny, Pomponius Mela, Solinus and Herodotus' Fables have been the sources for many of these mythological creatures, others were doubtless born of medieval travelers' tales. Among the scenes are a six-armed man, possibly based on glimpses of a file of Hindu dancers so aligned that the front figure appears to have multiple arms, a six-fingered man, a centaur, a four-eyed man from a coastal tribe in Ethiopia, a dog-headed man from the Simien Mountains, a cyclops, one of the men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders, one of the crook-legged men who live in the desert and slide along instead of walking, a strange hermaphrodite, a man with one giant foot only (stated by Solinus to be used as a parasol but more likely an unfortunate sufferer from elephantiasis), a man with a huge underlip (doubtless seen in Africa), a man with waist-length hanging ears, and other frightening and fanciful creatures of a world beyond.

Twelve winds are named as well as major place names. The source of this map is apparently the frontispiece of Pomponius Mela's Cosmographia printed by Ratdolt at Venice in 1488.

The map of Northern Europe (15.5 x 22.75 inches) was the first modern map of the area. Second printed map of the North, after the woodcut map published in the 'Ulm' Ptolemy edition of 1482/1486. The map is also deemed to be the first printed map of Germany, even if it shows a larger area, including all of Poland, Lithuania etc. The map ranges from the British Isles to Constantinople. The designer has been identified as Hieronymus Münzer (1437-1508), who trained as a physician. The Münzer map is one of the earliest to depict the Scandinavia peninsula.

Nordenskold credits the map of the north in the Zamoyski Code as the prototype for this map. The source for the Central European portion is a manuscript map of 1460 of Germany by Cardinal Nicolas Cusanus (also Nicholas of Cusa), printed posthumously at Eichstätt in 1491.

A Mysterious Apocryphal Voyage to America

This Latin edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle contains a brief account of a Portuguese-led voyage to Africa which was misinterpreted as having reached American shores:

On the recto of folio CCXC is a passage which has been used as an authority for the claim that Martin Behaim of Nuremberg, in a voyage made by him with James Camus, or Jacob Cam [i.e. Diego Cão], under orders from the King of Portugal, went to the Southern Sea near the coast of Africa, and, after crossing the equator, reached the New World and discovered new islands. This passage is not in the German edition, and an examination of the original manuscript of the work, which is still preserved in Nuremberg, has shown it to be an interpolation, written in a different hand. The globe made by Behaim in 1492 shows, also, that he made no claim as an American discoverer, there being nothing upon it to indicate that he had any knowledge of this alleged voyage. On the other hand, it is claimed that there is no reason why the discoveries depicted on his later globes, as for instance the Straits of Magellan, may not have been acquired by personal knowledge - Church.

Boies Penrose dismissed the notion that Behaim accompanied Diego Cão on his 1484-85 voyage, stating:

Early in 1485 Cão was sent on a second voyage, in company with Pedro de Escolar, one of Gomes' old pilots, who lived to accompany da Gama to India. In spite of the statement in the Nürnberg Chronicle it is unlikely that Martin Behaim, the constructor of the famous globe, was along... - Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance.

One of the curiosities of the work is the inclusion of a woodcut of Pope Joan and her child, which appears on the verso of folio CLXIX. This illustration and the accompanying text about her, is often obliterated in extant copies, but not in the present example.

"Nuremberg artists Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff were responsible for the production of the book...The wood blocks were designed by the two masters and their assistants, including the young Albrecht Durer, who was apprenticed to Wolgemut at the time. The printing was carried out under the supervision of the great scholar-printer Anton Koberger, whose illustrated books were famous throughout Europe" - Legacies of Genius 5.

A cornerstone rarity for any collection of great books.