1493 – H. Schedel – CCXVI

Titles:           “CCXVI”

Description:

Very decorative woodcut from Hartmann Schedel’s the Latin edition of the “Liber chronicarum” published in 1493. This page comes from “Sexta etas mundi” (“The Sixth Age of the World”), the Chronicle’s long final section covering the birth of Christ up to the book’s own present day, told mostly through the reigns of popes and emperors.

Recto:

Dated 1273, under a “Linea imperatorum”:

Rudolph I of Habsburg — elected King of the Romans in 1273 after the long imperial vacancy that followed the Hohenstaufen collapse (the “Great Interregnum”), confirmed by Pope Gregory X. This is the founding figure of Habsburg imperial fortunes. The text covers his war with Ottokar II of Bohemia, Ottokar’s death in battle (the 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld), and Rudolph’s own death in 1291 at Speyer, where he was buried among the Roman emperors.
Conradin — the teenage grandson of Frederick II and last legitimate Hohenstaufen male heir. The text recounts his ill-fated invasion of Italy to reclaim Sicily, his defeat by Charles of Anjou, and his execution as a young man alongside the Duke of Austria.
Woven into the same passage, without its own portrait: the murder of Henry of Almain (son of Richard of Cornwall) by Guy de Montfort, stabbed during Mass in a church at Viterbo in 1271 — revenge for the killing of Guy’s father Simon de Montfort in England. Dante immortalized this one, dropping Guy into the river of boiling blood in Inferno XII.
Saint Hedwig of Silesia (Hedwig of Andechs) — Duchess of Poland/Silesia, wife of Henry I “the Bearded,” founder of the Cistercian convent at Trebnitz, who lived out her widowhood in austerity and was canonized by Clement IV.

Verso:

Dated “Anno mundi 6476, Anno Christi 1277,” with its own “Linea summorum pontificum”:

Pope John XXI — born Petrus Hispanus (Peter of Spain/Portugal), a genuine physician-scholar before his election, credited with the medical text Thesaurus Pauperum and logical/philosophical works. Famously died eight months into his pontificate at Viterbo when the ceiling of a study he’d had built collapsed on him.
Pope Nicholas III — Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, elected after a six-month conclave partly stage-managed by Charles of Anjou. The entry credits him with actively working to curb Charles’s power, restoring St. Peter’s and the Lateran, fortifying the Vatican, and dying of a stroke in 1280.
William of Saliceto (“Guilhelmus Placentinus,” i.e., “of Piacenza”) — a leading 13th-century physician and surgeon who taught at Verona and wrote an influential surgical treatise.
William Durand (“Speculator”) — the celebrated canon lawyer, student of Hostiensis, nicknamed for his legal treatise the Speculum, and credited here with the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, one of the most-copied liturgical reference works of the Middle Ages.
A closing line notes a Saracen incursion from North Africa into Spain being driven back by Christian forces — almost certainly a Marinid-era Reconquista skirmish.

Page number CCXVI

Worth knowing about the book itself: almost none of the portraits are individual likenesses — the same “generic ruler” and “generic pope” woodblocks get recycled again and again throughout the Chronicle for whichever figure is being discussed. And the red-ink initials and headings are rubrication, added by hand after printing, which is typical for surviving copies.

The Nuremberg Chronicles was the first printed history of the known world with about 2000 woodcuts the most picturesque work of the early time of printing. It became one of the most popular books of the 15th. century. The woodblock cutters were Michael Wolgemut, teacher of Albrecht Dürer and his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff. The printing was carried out under the supervision of the great scholar-printer Anton Koberger.

Author:                    Hartmann Schedel (1440 – 1514)
Sheet size:              43,3 x 31,3 cm
Year:                         1493
Technique:            wood block

Condition:
In good condition, strong press on watermarked paper.

 

This is an original antique map published in 1493 and NOT a modern copy or reprint

 

On your request I will provide a Certificate of Authenticity