 (1425–1502) appears in the entry for 1457 in his own compendium. He was born in Westphalia in 1425 and educated in Cologne where, in 1447, he entered the Carthusian monastery of Saint Barbara where he lived all his life. He may have authored more than fifty works, but the ‘Fasciculus Temporum’ remains his most celebrated.

In 1474 printer Arnold Ther Hoernen of Cologne, Germany issued the first dated printed edition of the ‘Fasciculus Temporum’. During the fifteenth century there were thirty-three different printed editions including translations into French, German, and Dutch, making it one of the bestsellers in print of the fifteenth century and undoubtedly the best-selling printed book of the fifteenth century by a living author.



 is considered one of the most important printers of the fifteenth century. Originally from Augsburg, he was active in Venice from 1476–1486 producing around seventy publications with a focus on mathematical and scientific works (including the first edition of Euclid’s ‘Elementa’ in 1482), which are characterized by careful typography and high-quality book decoration. In Venice, he introduced multiple printing innovations including the introduction of the titlepage, the production of the first known printer’s type specimen book, and was the first to print a book using tricolour diagrams. 

’s chronicle contained diagrams, it was Ratdolt who first included a woodcut map of the world. The map belongs to the Isidorian ‘T-O’ type (see SC-B-1472-Isidore-Etymologies-1Ed-TOMap; SC-B-1476-Isidore-Etymologies-3Ed-TOMap). Ratdolt probably copied one of the many exemplars then in circulation, but his map does not name the three dividing waterways comprising the ‘T’. Focus is placed instead on the city of Jerusalem (civitas hierusalem) and Palestine, prominently set in the middle of the map. The graphic also includes precise information on the subdivision of Asia (twenty-seven parts), Europe (fifteen parts), and Africa (thirty parts). 

Above the traditional T-O map is a diagram of the heavens and the days of creation. To the left, a woodcut depicts the creation, featuring God in a mondorla of clouds surrounded by angels floating above a globe surrounded by a rippling sea, the Sun and the Moon jointly hovering on the horizon. Collectively, the woodcuts provide an encompassing expression of time and space in Christian cosmology.  

Many of the woodcuts are early views of the built environments of European cities. Especially notable is the double view of England, ‘Britainia que postea dicta est anglia’, among the earliest views of the British Isles. Another remarkable image is what is likely the first known printed view of Venice showing gondolas and gondoliers in the Gran canale and the Piazza San Marco, which bears similarities to the earliest known drawing of Venice attributed to Niccolo da Poggibonsi. Other woodcuts include: Rome, Verona, Jerusalem, Toledo, Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel, and the Temple of Solomon.

’s hometown of Cologne, his chronology ‘Fasciculus Temporum’ (A Bundle of Time) presents both ecclesiastical and secular world history, from Genesis to 1475, during the reign of Pope Sixtus IV and Charles the Bold of Burgundy. His schema, a series of linear charts better suited to printing as a scroll rather than in book form, was so complicated that the first printing attempt was a failure.

To accommodate Rolewinck’s ambitious work, the publisher 

 pioneered a page design that could succinctly ponder the importance of each historical episode within the larger narrative of Christian history. Each page was divided between biblical and ecclesiastical history in the upper half and secular history below. To delineate between these two histories, Ratdolt used a horizontal woodcut strip with inset circles containing the names and biographical details (starting with Adam) of important characters from the Old Testament, popes, and saints. Immediately above the inset is the date of the event from the creation of the world, ‘Anno Mundi’, determined to be 5199 BCE, and below the inset, printed upside down, the number of years before or after the birth of Christ.

While stunning maps on Ptolemaic projections were being steadily produced in the late fifteenth century, simple T-O maps remained a popular illustration in contemporary texts. This example from 

’s highly successful world chronicle entitled ‘Fasciculus Temporum’ (Bundles of Time) is an especially engaging example. It presents a traditional view of the earth, paired with a diagram of heaven and a woodcut of the creation, collectively expressing a comprehensive Christian cosmology. 

‘Fasciculus Temporum’, was an instant success, an incunabula blockbuster, so popular that more than thirty editions were published over the next century, and greatly influenced 

's ‘Liber Chronicarum’ (1493), the now better-known Nuremberg 

, which it preceded by two whole decades. 

T-O map

Illuminated letter

Timeline

Timeline and Noah's Ark

Timeline and Tower

Timeline and city views

Religious illustration

Timeline and city view

City view

Lineage diagram

An exceptionally rare example of the publishing pioneer 

’s edition of Rolewinck’s world chronicle with woodcuts coloured throughout in a fine contemporary hand.

Acquired in a modern calf-skin binding; replaced with contemporary, soft vellum to be more sympathetic to its original binding.

Small folio. 66 leaves, Gothic type, double-column; 55 woodcuts (including repeats), diagrams, white-vine intaglio woodcut initials all with fine contemporary hand-colour, rubricated. 

T-O map from Rolewinck’s World Chronicle