Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

MICHALORUS, Jacobus and Ericius PUTEANUS. CRISIS JACOBI MICHALORI canonici urbinatis. De Eryci Puteani Circulo Urbaniano. In qua disputatur, an sit constituendum Dierum in Orbe principium ab ipso Puteano excogitatum.... Urbini: Apud Mazzaninum, & Aloysium Ghisonum., MDCXXXII [1632]. £1,350

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FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. 20; woodcut arms of Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Guidi on title-page, woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials; clean and crisp throughout; in contemporary limp vellum, covers bordered and decorated in gilt, with one of two silk ties remaining, and slight loss to edge of lower cover where tie would have been; some light dustsoiling but still an attractive copy.

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A good copy of this rare refutation of the Louvain humanist Erycius Puteanus’ Circulus Urbanianus, in which Puteanus had attempted to determine the division of the year into calendar days, and the creation of an international date line, with its prime meridian running through Rome to be named after the current Pope, Urban VIII. The opposite meridian (and date line) would be called the ‘linea Archimerina’. Puteanus appears to have been unaware of the recent proposal made by Nicolas Bergier (1567-1623) for a date line opposite to the prime meridian passing through the Azores, suggested by Mercator, in contrast to the ancient idea that it should be placed west of the Canary Islands. Johannes Boyvinus, a Royal Councillor in the Spanish Low Countries, advocated the adoption of Puteanus’ system and the cartographer Michael Florent van Langren added the ‘linea Archimerina’ to his globe in 1645, but Giacomo Micalori (or Jacobus Michalorus, 1570-1645), acting under the auspices of Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Guidi di Bagno, was vigorous in his criticism, leading Puteanus to respond in 1633 with the Erycii Puteanii Circuli Urbaniani vindiciae, to which Michalorus responded in turn with the Antapocrisi (1635). Michalorus, a canon and professor of theology and philosophy at Urbino known for his Della sfera mondiale (1626), objects to the idea that crossing Puteanus’ date line in an easterly direction would decrease the number of hours in a day, and visa versa, as well as the way in which he has carved up time zones.

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Erycius Puteanus (or Eerryk de Putte, 1574-1646) is perhaps best known for his long career at the Collegium Trilingue in Leuven, where he succeeded Justus Lipsius in the chair of Latin. Born in Venlo, he studied at Dordrecht, Cologne, and Leuven before travelling to Milan where he befriended Cardinal Federigo Borromeo and became historiographer of the city, returning to the Habsburg Low Countries upon the death of Lipsius in 1606. His vast oeuvre spanned an equally vast range of disciplines, from philology and rhetoric, to history, law and politics, music and astronomy. 

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See van Gent, R. H. ‘A History of the International Date Line’, Utrecht University (2017). Accessed at: https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/idl/idl.htm; van der Krogt, Peter, Globi Neerlandici: The Production of Globes in the Low Countries (Utrecht: 1993, HES), pp.266-67. OCLC records copies at the John Carter Brown Library and the BnF, with UniCat adding another at KU Leuven.

 

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