After the publication of Brandis’s 1475 ‘Rudimentum Novitiorum’, the woodblock for this map was recut twice in France, in Paris in 1488–1489 and in Lyon in 1491, both appearing in the ‘Mer des Hystoires’. The French translation contains additional material on the kings of France and is accompanied by a martyrology by Usardus. Neither author of the Latin work nor the translator of the French edition is known.

The printer of the Lyon edition, Jean Dupré, was clearly familiar with Brandis’s Latin edition, which it follows broadly in arrangement and illustration. Additional woodcuts are added however from French sources, including from Antoine Vérard’s ‘Grandes Heures’, and Pierre Levet’s ‘La Farce de Maître Pathelin’. Several of the smaller woodcuts from the ‘Mer des Hystoires’ were also recycled in Dupré’s ‘Book of Hours’, printed 14 February 1489. New also to Dupré’s ‘Mer des Hystoires’ is the extensive use of delicate borders and woodcut initials. 

Based on a T-O design, this map presents locations in a receding landscape that terminates in the far East at the walled garden of Paradise. This naturalistic effect presents plausible geographical knowledge without yielding up the system of the T-O scheme. Each continent is shown as an island and each country as a separate hill, surmounted either with a sovereign’s bust or with the conventional symbol for a town separated by imaginary waterways. These are real places and they are set in (reasonably) accurate relation to one another. Collectively, the map is not dissimilar to contemporary paintings depicting the earth like the exterior panels of Hieronymus Bosch’s ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ which presents the earth as a flat, circular landscape lying under a spherical dome of heaven. 

The presentation of the world on this mappa mundi is fascinating from many respects, but especially so in the way the limits of the known world are portrayed, revealing much about the medieval worldview. The pillars of Hercules bar the way westwards at the bottom of the map. At the northern limit of this world is the Sea of Amazons; at the east is Taprobana (Sri Lanka), and Africa does not extend south of Egypt. The most obvious way that the medieval worldview contrasted with the Ptolemaic conception is in the proportion of land mass to water, which in the T-O map tradition has six-sevenths of the earth's surface comprised of land.

The mythological aspects of the map include illustrations of the phoenix, the Trees of the Sun and the Moon, and the figures of the Devil and the armless man. Traditionally, medieval maps were bounded at the west and east by the Pillars of Hercules and Paradise respectively. The map places the pillars astride the entrance to the Mediterranean and shows, at the other extremity, an enclosed mound from which flow the four rivers of Paradise. The influence of the Crusades is found in the placement of the Holy Land at the centre of the map, and in the figure of a king, holding a book. This represented Prester John, whose mythical Christian stronghold was believed to be somewhere in Central Asia or Central Africa. It is also worth noting that next to Sweden (Gothia), “Vinland” is named on the world map. This is, however, likely to be Finland, as opposed to a representation of the Viking colony in the Americas.

This medieval map of the world was created for the Lyon edition of ‘La Mer des Hystoires’ (‘The Sea of Stories’) the French adaptation of the ‘Rudimentum Novitiorum’, the first chronicle of the world, published at Lübeck in 1475, which retained great popularity through the first half of the sixteenth century. The map corrects a number of errors of its predecessor, such as the duplication of Hircanie, which had been an error for Brandis’s edition. 

Predating Schedel’s famous ‘Nuremberg 

’ by nearly twenty years (see: SC-B-1493-Schedel-Nuremburg

), the ‘Rudimentum Novitiorum’ was the first world chronicle in print and contains some of the earliest known printed maps in Europe. While repeating the basic T-O format found in earlier works like Günther Zainer’s 1472 edition of 

’s ‘Etymologies’ (see: SC-B-1472-Isidore-Etymologies-1Ed-TOMap), the chronicle packs the map with rich details and shows countries in topographical relationship to each other. 

Bursting with biblical references, fabled beasts, and legendary civilizations, the map harkens back to the elaborate tradition of Medieval wall maps like the Hereford Map and the Ebstorf Map. While, increasingly, atlases like 

’s ‘Cosmographia’ (see SC-TM-1482-Anon-PWorldMap) were introducing maps based on Ptolemaic or portolan projections, the ‘Rudimentum Novitiorum’ is a hybrid of sorts, preserving medieval traditions and simultaneously providing updated geographic information.

This delightfully detailed world map derives from the ‘Mer des Hystoires’ (‘Sea of Stories’) a French version of the world chronicle ‘Rudimentum Novatorum’ published in 1475. This woodblock map combines myths and religious tales alongside actual geographical information.

The structure of the map is similar to a mappa mundi or T-O map. Asia is represented in the top half of the map, Europe on the left and Africa on the right. Like the world map from the ‘Rudimentum’, the map is divided into four quadrants by a vertical and horizontal axis. Curious creatures such as salamanders and a phoenix (on the far right) are featured alongside historical characters and contemporary leaders such as the Pope.

This is a fascinating example of the progression of one edition to another. While many features are the same as the ‘Rudimentum’, the anonymous creator of this map has added place names and decorative details, such as the whimsical ducks swimming in the upper right quadrant.


‘La Mer des Hystoires’ (‘The Sea of Stories’) derives its name from a Latin work by Giovanni Colonna entitled ‘Mare Historiarum’, but it is in fact a translation of the world chronicle ‘Rudimentum Novitiorum’, completed between 1470–1474 by an anonymous cleric from Lübeck. The French author of ‘La Mer des Hystoires’, also anonymous, informs us that he was canon of Mello in Beauvais and created the work under the patronage of André de La Haye, Lord of Chaumont. 

The ‘Mer des Hystoires’ begins at the creation of the world and ends in 1473. It takes up the traditional division of time into six ages. Its sources are the Bible, the Church Fathers, and numerous authors from classical antiquity and the Middle Ages. The work also includes some thirty Aesopic fables as well as a description of the Holy Land and a geographical dictionary. There is also a history of the kings of France, added by the translator and compiled from extracts from the ‘Chroniques de France’ up to the coronation of Charles VII (1484). 

A rare, true incunable edition of this medieval mappa mundi. 

 map of the world on two sheets, joined, French text on verso.

The 'Sea of Stories' World Map