Capturing the Soul of the Americas

"If your highness may be pleased to have the Holy Gospel preached to the people in those provinces with the necessary zeal, God our Lord will be served and many idolatries and notable sins which the devil has implanted among the natives will be eradicated. Thus having succeeded in this holy purpose your royal crown will be served by an increase of vassals, tributes, and royal fifths." - Baltasar Obregón to the king, Mexico City, 1584¹

[click for full size versions - a couple have had some age related artifact cleaned]

'Nova Typis Transacta Navigatio. Novi Orbis Indiae Occidentalis' from 1621 is online at the Digital Library of Rare Books at the University of São Paulo in Brazil (click book image to open an easy viewing window; click on book pages to enlarge).

This extraordinary and very rare book weaves fact and fantasy as it narrates the adventures of a group of Benedictine missionaries led by Father Bernardo Buil, who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his 2nd voyage to the New World.

In an audacious editorial move, the author is billed as Honorius Philoponus and an exceedingly complimentary dedication to the Abbot of Seitenstetten in Austria, Caspar Plautius, opens the text. The thing is, Honorius Philoponus is actually a pseudonym for - you guessed it - Caspar Plautius. There's nothing like writing your own reference!

A similarly extravagant plot move involved blending the legend of the 5th century voyage to magical islands by the Irish Saint Brendan with the 1493 Columbian expedition. In the 4th image from the top, St Brendan is depicted celebrating Easter mass on the back of a whale, Jasconius, as part of the quest for the Promised Land of the Saints, during which, some say St Brendan discovered America. At the top of that image is an island named after St Brendan, a mythical cartographic oddity, often included on world maps up until the 18th century.

As with many of the engravings (all attributed to Wolfgang Kilian) the St Brendan/whale image has evocative symbolic meaning - having the Easter mass on the whale as a major pictorial element dominating the map suggests that religious devotion combined with mastery of the oceans and nature made discovery and conquering of the New World an inevitability of divine providence.

The rather theatrical depiction of Columbus (3rd last image) was in fact copied from an illustration by Theodore de Bry of the Conquistador, Francisco Pizarro - this despite Plautius asserting in his dedication that the de Bry voyage books circulated falsehoods.

Although prone to embellishment (some of the engravings obviously hint at the preoccupation with cannibalism, native barbarity and assumed satanic beliefs), the "work is nonetheless filled with authentic details of Caribbean customs, agricultural products, local flora and fauna, and arts". It includes one of the earliest illustrations of the potato plant as well as a musical score for native chanting.

• The listing at the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers gives the best overview and includes more details about the significance of the imagery.
• A sample of the engravings as they appear in the book.
• The St Brendan legend in the Utopia exhibition at NYPL [en français: BNF].
• 'St Brendan's Isle, Or: Who Really Discovered America?'
• 'Potato' by John A Mazis.
• Bernardo Buil.
• Wolfgang Kilian.
• Christopher Columbus.
• ¹That quote has no direct connection to the Plautius book, save for the sentiment.

The Gero Codex

[click for larger versions]


This exquisitely beautiful manuscript, based at least in part on the Lorsch Gospels, was created in about 969 AD for Archbishop Gero of Cologne. I suppose there may have been restorative work carried out in modern times but the quality of preservation, after the passage of more than a thousand years, seems remarkable. Written in carolingian miniscule, the Gero Codex is the earliest of the Gospel manuscripts produced in the Swabian Abbey of Reichenau.

All of the full page miniatures are featured above and as far as I can make out from some rough translations, they include Saint Peter and the 4 Evangelists, Archbishop Gero and the presentation of the completed manuscript to him.

The Gero Codex [HS. 1948: Gero-Codex, Evangelistar UuLB Darmstadt] is housed today in the State Library in Darmstadt and the web presentation of the ~360 page manuscript is hosted by Manuscripta Mediaevalia (don't worry if the first page doesn't load, just arrow across - the miniatures are at the front of the work).

"The Register [pdf] of world documentary heritage currently comprises 91 documents from 45 countries. Included since the end of 2003 are the ten illuminated manuscripts from the monastery on the island of Reichenau in Lake Constance, which itself had been added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage already in 2000. The manuscripts are outstanding specimens of Ottonian book illustration in Germany. They have been selected as examples of the development of the monastic scriptorium, and of artistic innovation in book decoration. They are distinctive for the iconographic themes in their miniatures, and for the way in which they relate to the religious, political and cultural history of their time. The manuscripts are thus representative of the entire group of surviving manuscripts with Ottonian illumination from the Reichenau.

In the 10th and 11th centuries, the Benedictine Abbey of Reichenau housed an artists' workshop, which was probably the largest and most influential in Europe. During its main period of activity, between c. 970 and 1010-20, a series of mainly liturgical manuscripts with precious decoration was produced there, commissioned by the most prominent members of contemporary society - Bishops of the Empire, Kings and Emperors. With vivid artistic imagination and remarkable innovation, the monks created great works of art whose beauty and perfection continue to fascinate us. Their design was inspired by Carolingian book illumination from the workshop at the court of Charlemagne, as well as by early Christian and Byzantine models."

• Gero Codex at Wikipedia.
• Reichenau School of illumination: i, ii.
• Lorsch Gospels: i, ii.
• Medieval Germany - this University of Florida course outline gives a brief general historical overview with numerous useful links.

On the Origins of Sports Science

Lavacrum oceanum vel labrum

Luctatores

Pancratium volutatorium

Caestus

Caestus

Pugiles [book scan version]

Pyrrhichia saltatio

Halteris

Pilae ludum

Pilae ludum

De spiritus cohibitione

Oscellae vel petaurum

Accubitus

Marmoreum triclinium vetustissimum

Italian doctor Girolamo Mercuriali (Hieronymus Mercurialis) (1530-1606) was received favourably by the Papal court of Paul IV when he was sent to Rome on a political mission. He remained in the city for 7 years during which time he was privileged with unfettered access to the great libraries where he studied classical greek and roman health-related literature.

His best remembered work (among a number of important medical treatises) is 'De Arte Gymnastica' which was first published in 1569. It is considered a prime creative example of the humanist renaissance use of surviving accounts of the ancient world. Mercuriali drew upon the writings of Galen, Hippocrates, Plato and others in compiling the first complete work on the health benefits of gymnastics and various forms of physical exercise.

The woodcut illustrations by Cristofero Coriolano from designs by Pirro Ligorio were not introduced into the 6-volume series until the 2nd edition in 1573. They are perhaps more reliant upon imagination than archaeological evidence but nevertheless helped to popularise the work in Europe.

Mercuriali discusses the restorative value to a person's health of diet, hygeine and exercise, with forays into the effects of different forms of transport, examples of genteel female exercises, descriptions of the ancient bath houses and gymnasia and concludes with a section on recommended therapeutic exercises - aimed at the elite males of course. There is some basis to regard this book as a founding publication in sports medicine, circus techniques and physicial therapy.

• The microfilm scans above from 'De Arte Gymnastica' come from the University of Seville (just the illustrations) - they also have the complete book available. {LINKS UPDATED May 2014} [There are occasional poor quality book scans of some of the illustrations at other sites but I didn't find anything better than the photocopy-esque images here]
• The engraving below (spliced and doctored) comes from another edition of the book, published a century after the original - from a small exhibition site at Ebling Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their Browsing Corner site is well worth checking out - short illustrated reviews of their rare book holdings - it was what prompted this post. I think I signed up a while ago for their occasional email notifications, but I don't recall having received anything so far.
• I'm not sure I know what the book 'Paradigm 21' is, but the chapter called 'Roots' seems to be a reasonable account of the history of physical culture.
• Bookshop description of 'De Arte Gymnastica'.
• Any other information above was gleaned from very short mentions in a number of sites not particularly worth linking. There is not much around.

Naval battle in the Verona Coliseum.