Das Dritte Buch / Was die Ketzermeister zu Wormbs gehandlet.

Title

Das Dritte Buch / Was die Ketzermeister zu Wormbs gehandlet.

Description

Upper illustration shows the city of Woms and the lower one a monk (heretic master) at Worms.

ca. 1550

Artist

Münster (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münsters (1489-1552) is one of the famous cosmographers of the Renaissance. Its real importance in the field of cartography is based on its famous cosmography, which he published in 1544 with 24 double-sided maps (including Moscow and Transylvania). The material for this came largely from research and the collection of information from around 1528, which he initially only wanted to use for a description of Germany, but was now sufficient for a map of the entire world and ultimately led to a cosmography. He constantly tried to improve this work, i.e. to replace or add to maps. In the edition of 1550, only 14 maps were taken over from the earlier editions. The 52 maps printed in the text were also only partially based on the old maps. The great success of this cosmography was also based on the precise work of the woodcuts mostly by Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Deutsch and David Kandel. It was the first scientific and at the same time generally understandable description of the knowledge of the world in German, in which the basics of history and geography, astronomy and natural sciences, regional and folklore were summarized according to the state of knowledge at that time. Cosmography is the science of describing the earth and the universe. Until the late Middle Ages, geography, geology and astronomy were also part of it. The first edition of the Cosmographia took place in 1544 in German, printed in Heinrich Petri's office in Basel. Heinrich Petri was a son from the first marriage of Münster's wife to the Basel printer Adam Petri. Over half of all editions up to 1628 were also published in German. However, the work has also been published in Latin, French, Czech and Italian. The English editions all comprised only a part of the complete work. Viktor Hantzsch identified a total of 46 editions in 1898 (German 27; Latin 8; French 3; Italian 3; Czech 1) that appeared from 1544 to 1650, while Karl Heinz Burmeister only had 36 (German 21; Latin 5; French 6; Italian 3; Czech 1) that appeared between 1544 and 1628. The first edition from 1544 was followed by the second edition in 1545, the third in 1546, the fourth edition in 1548 and the fifth edition in 1550, each supplemented by new reports and details, text images, city views and maps and revised altogether. Little has been known about who - apart from the book printers Heinrich Petri and Sebastian Henricpetri - were responsible for the new editions after Münster's death. The 1628 edition was edited and expanded by the Basel theologian Wolfgang Meyer. With Cosmographia, Sebastian Münster has published for the first time a joint work by learned historians and artists, by publishers, wood cutters and engravers. The numerous vedute are usually made as woodcuts. Sebastian Münster obtained his knowledge from the travel reports and stories of various scholars, geographers, cartographers and sea travelers. Long after his death, "Kosmographie" was still a popular work with large editions: 27 German, 8 Latin, 3 French, 4 English and even 1 Czech editions appeared. The last edition appeared in Basel in 1650.

Historical Description

Worms, Civitas Vangionum, is an independent city in the southeastern Rhineland-Palatinate and is located directly on the left bank of the Rhine. Founded by the Celts, the city vies with Augsburg, Trier and Kempten for the title of the oldest city in Germany. The oldest surviving form of the town's name (Borbetomagus or Bormetomagus) is of Celtic origin and is traced back to a term for water or spring. The urban area of Worms was first settled by arable farmers and cattle breeders in the Neolithic period around 5000 BC. The urban area of Worms was first settled in the Neolithic period (Neolithic) around 5000 BC by arable farmers and cattle breeders. At the Court Day in Worms in May 961, Otto the Great had his seven-year-old son Otto II elevated to co-king. The Salians marked the beginning of the city's rise to its greatest splendor. In 1074 it was granted freedom from customs duties. In 1076, another Court Day was held here, at which King Henry IV declared Pope Gregory VII deposed and was immediately banned from the church for this - one of the consequences of these events was then the journey to Canossa. In 1495, another Imperial Diet was held under King Maximilian, at which the Imperial Tax, the Imperial Chamber Court and the prohibition of feuding under the Eternal Peace were introduced. By this time, the city had already passed the peak of its economic prosperity. As in many other cities, the new ideas of the Reformation spread early and quickly in Worms, especially in the spiritually free city climate. Important in this context was the Diet of Worms held in 1521, where Martin Luther defended his writings and Reformation knowledge against Emperor Charles V. Worms became a center and experimental field of the Reformation: in 1524, a German Protestant mass was printed here for the first time, and in 1526 William Tyndale published the first English version of the New Testament in Worms. In 1689, the city was destroyed by troops of King Louis XIV in the War of the Palatinate Succession. From 1792 to 1814 Worms belonged to the First French Republic and the First Empire, and since 1815 to the Grand Duchy of Hesse as part of the Province of Rhine-Hesse. The surveyor Konrad Schredelseker worked out the first cadastral plan of Worms from 1809 to 1810 "Atlas géometrique de la ville de Worms.