Sebastian Münster (1489–1552) - Cosmographia Universalis...

This original sheet is a precious Renaissance page drawn from the inner sections of the third book of Sebastian Münster’s 1550 Latin edition of Cosmographia universalis, printed in Basel by the publisher Heinrich Petri. The front of the page hosts the solemn chorographic section entitled LIBER III (page 869), expressly dedicated by Münster to the description of the territories of Germany and the peoples who marked its early medieval history. The Latin text unfolds as a dense and detailed historical and military chronicle focused on the long and bloody wars waged by Charlemagne to subdue and convert the tribes of the Saxons, described as a proud people initially reluctant to abandon their ancestral idolatries. Münster retraces the alternating fortunes of the campaigns, the tense negotiations and the strenuous resistance posed by the warlord Widukind, until the definitive feudal submission and the baptism of the Saxon nobility in 785. The visual composition of the front is magnificently enriched, in the lower section, by a fine half-figure woodcut depicting the sovereign Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus) in Renaissance regal attire with crown on his head and imperial shield, accompanied by contemporaneous marginal glosses printed in the era (Saxones pugnat, Martellus contra Saxones, Carolus Magnus domat Saxones, Vueftphali unde) intended to guide the scholar through the convulsive events of this fundamental Germanic unification. Turning the page, the back (page 870) continues the territorial chronicle under the heading DE GERMANIA, opening the anthropological chapter entitled De moribus et ritibus Saxonum, atque de fertilitate eorum (Cap. CCCCXXXIII). The Latin text develops as a dense and erudite geographical and historiographical treatise on the customs, the rigid social laws and the religious beliefs of the Saxons before Christianization, divided into four classes: nobles, free men, freedmen and slaves. Münster describes with deep solemnity the region’s agricultural fertility, rich in pastures, cereals and metal mines, then dwells on local dietary habits, the consumption of beer and mead at traditional banquets, and the frugal diet based on milk and lard that fortified boys from a very young age. The page is solemnly enriched by marginal typographic notes (Episcopatus Saxonie, Auspicia observantur, Fertilitas Saxonie, Saxonum inebriatio, Cibus Saxonum) and closes with the philosophical notes and moral canons of the rulers, whose important historical deliberations on the changes of the peoples of the Earth have shaped European culture and the study of geography through the centuries. Dimensions 30 x 20 cm Will be shipped by courier

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