OF Pomponius Mela we know little beyond the fact that he was born in Spain, not far from Gibraltar, and that he wrote, as seems probable, his popular geographical treatise in the year 43 A.D.[618] The editio princeps of this treatise was printed in 1471 at Milan, it is supposed, by Antonius Zarotus, under the title Cosmographia. It was a small quarto of fifty-nine leaves. Two copies have been sold lately. The Sunderland copy (no. 10,117) brought £11 5s., and has since been held by Quaritch at £15 15s. Another copy was no. 897 in part iii. of the Beckford Catalogue. In 1478 there was an edition, De situ orbis, at Venice (Sunderland, no. 10,118); and in 1482 another edition, Cosmographia geographica, was also published at Venice (Leclerc, no. 456; Murphy, no. 2,003; D’Avezac, Géographes Grecs et Latins, p. 13). It was called Cosmographia in the edition of 1498 (Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions, no. 8; Huth, iv. 1166); De orbis situ in that of Venice, 1502; De totius orbis descriptione in the Paris edition of 1507, edited by Geofroy Tory (A. J. Bernard’s Geofroy Tory, premier imprimeur royal, Paris, 1865, p. 81; Carter-Brown, i. 32; Muller, 1872, no. 2,318; 1877, no. 2,062).
VADIANUS.
Fac-simile of a cut in Reusner’s Icones (Strasburg, 1590), p. 162.
In 1512 the text of Mela came under new influences. Henry Stevens (Bibliotheca geographica, p. 210) and others have pointed out how a circle of geographical students at this time were making Vienna a centre of interest by their interpretation of the views of Mela and of Solinus, a writer of the third century, whose Polyhistor is a description of the world known to the ancients. Within this knot of cosmographers, John Camers undertook the editing of Mela; and his edition, De situ orbis, was printed by Jean Singrein at Vienna in 1512, though it bears neither place nor date (Stevens, Bibliotheca geographica, no. 1,825; D’Avezac, Géographes Grecs et Latins, p. 14; Leclerc, no. 457; Sunderland, no. 10,119). Another Mela of the same year (1512) is known to have been printed by Weissenburger, presumably at Nuremberg, and edited by Johannes Cocleius as Cosmographia Pomponii Mele: authoris nitidissimi tribus libris digesta: ... compendio Johannis Coclei Norici adaucta quo geographie principia generaliter comprehēduntur (Weigel, 1877, no. 227; there is a copy in Charles Deane’s library). In 1517 Mela made a part of the collection of Antonie Francino at Florence, which was reissued in 1519 and 1526 (D’Avezac, p. 16; Sunderland, nos. 10,121, 10,122).
Meanwhile another student, Joachim Watt, a native of St. Gall, in Switzerland, now about thirty years old, who had been a student of Camers, and who is better known by the latinized form of his name, Vadianus, had, in November, 1514, addressed a letter to Rudolfus Agricola, in which he adopted the suggestion first made by Waldseemüller that the forename of Vespucius should be applied to that part of the New World which we now call Brazil. This letter was printed at Vienna (1515) in a little tract,—Habes, Lector, hoc libello, Rudolphi Agricolæ Junioris Rheti ad Jochimum Vadianum epistolam,—now become very rare. It contains also the letter of Agricola, Sept. 1, 1514, which drew out the response of Vadianus dated October 16,—Agricola on his part referring to the work on Mela which was then occupying Vadianus (a copy owned by Stevens, Bibliotheca geographica, no. 2,799, passed into the Huth Library, Catalogue, v. 1506. Harrassowitz has since priced a copy, Catalogue, List 61, no. 57, at 280 marks).
The De situ orbis of Mela, as edited by Vadianus, came out finally in 1518, and contained one of the two letters,—that of Vadianus himself; and it is in this reproduction that writers have usually referred to its text (Harrisse, Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 92; Murphy, no. 2,004; Leclerc, no. 458; Sunderland, no. 10,120; Graesse, v. 401; Carter-Brown, i. 55). Camers also issued at the same time an edition uniform with the Aldine imprint of Solinus; and this and the Mela are often found bound together. Two years later (1520) copies of the two usually have bound up between them the famous cordiform map of Apian (Petrus Apianus, in the Latin form; Dienewitz, in his vernacular). This for a long time was considered the earliest engraved map to show the name of America, which appeared, as the annexed fac-simile shows, on the representation of South America. There may be some question if the map equally belongs to the Mela and to the Solinus, for the two in this edition are usually bound together; yet in a few copies of this double book, as in the Cranmer copy in the British Museum, and in the Huth copy (Catalogue, iv. 1372), there is a map for each book. There are copies of the Solinus in the Carter-Brown, Lenox, Harvard College, Boston Public, and American Antiquarian Society libraries (cf. Harrisse, Notes on Columbus, p. 175; Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 108; Murphy, no. 2,338; Trübner, 1876, £15 15s.; Weigel, 1877, 240 marks; Calvary, 1883, 250 marks; Leclerc, 1881, no. 2,686, 500 francs; Ellis & White, 1877, £25). The inscription on the map reads: “Tipus orbis universalis juxta Ptolomei cosmographi traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliosque lustrationes a Petro Apiano Leysnico elucbrat. An. Do. M.D.XX.” Harrisse (Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions, no. 68) cites from Varnhagen’s Postface aux trois livraisons sur Vespucci, a little tract of eight leaves, which is said to be an exposition of the map to accompany it, called Declaratio et usus typi cosmographici, Ratisbon, 1522. The map was again used in the first complete edition of Peter Martyr’s Decades, when the date was changed to “M.D.XXX” (Carter-Brown, i. 94; Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 154; Kunstmann, Entdeckung Amerikas, p. 134; Kohl, Die beiden ältesten General-Karten von Amerika, p. 33; Uricoechea, Mapoteca Colombiana, no. 4). Vadianus meanwhile had quarrelled with Camers, and had returned to St. Gall, and now re-edited his Mela, and published it at Basle in 1522 (Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 112; Murphy, no. 2,004**; Carter-Brown, i. 590; Leclerc, no. 459).
In 1524 Apianus published the first edition of his cosmographical studies,—a book that for near a century, under various revisions, maintained a high reputation. The Cosmographicus liber was published at Landshut in 1524,—a thin quarto with two diagrams showing the New World, in one of which the designation is “Ameri” for an island; in the other, “America.” Bibliographers differ as to collation, some giving fifty-two, and others sixty leaves; and there are evidently different editions of the same year. The book is usually priced at £5 or £6. Cf. Harrisse, Notes on Columbus, p. 174; Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 127, and Additions, p. 87; Carter-Brown, i. 78; Huth, i. 39; Murphy, no. 93; Sabin, no. 1,738. There is an account of Apianus (born 1495; died 1551 or 1552) in Clement’s Bibliographie curieuse (Göttingen, 1750-1760). It is in chapter iv. of part ii. of the Cosmographicus liber that America is mentioned; but there is no intimation of Columbus having discovered it. Where “Isabella aut Cuba” is spoken of, is an early instance of conferring the latter name on that island, after La Cosa’s use of it.
PART OF APIANUS’S MAP, 1520.