Franconiae Nova Descriptio.

Title

Franconiae Nova Descriptio.

Description

Map shows Franconia in Germany with 3 decorative cartouches, ! Title cartouche, 1 heraldic cartouche and a miles index.

ca. 1690

Artist

Janssonius/ Pitt Moses (1588-1664)

"Johannes Janssonius (Jansson),( 1588- 1664) Amsterdam was born in Arnhem, the son of Jan Janszoon the Elder,a publisher and bookseller. In 1612 he married Elisabeth de Hondt, the daughter of Jodocus Hondius. He produced his first maps in 1616 of France and Italy. In 1623 Janssonius owned a bookstore in Frankfurt am Main, later also in Danzig, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Königsberg, Geneva and Lyon. In the 1630s he formed a partnership with his brother in law Henricus Hondius, and together they published atlases as Mercator/Hondius/Janssonius. Under the leadership of Janssonius the Hondius Atlas was steadily enlarged. Renamed Atlas Novus, it had three volumes in 1638, one fully dedicated to Italy. 1646 a fourth volume came out with ""English County Maps"", a year after a similar issue by Willem Blaeu. Janssonius' maps are similar to those of Blaeu, and he is often accused of copying from his rival, but many of his maps predate those of Blaeu and/or covered different regions. By 1660, at which point the atlas bore the appropriate name ""Atlas Major"", there were 11 volumes, containing the work of about a hundred credited authors and engravers. It included a description of ""most of the cities of the world"" (Townatlas), of the waterworld (Atlas Maritimus in 33 maps), and of the Ancient World (60 maps). The eleventh volume was the Atlas of the Heavens by Andreas Cellarius. Editions were printed in Dutch, Latin, French, and a few times in German.

Historical Description

The Franconia fell to today's Franconia region with their victories over the Alemanni and Thuringians in their core areas in the 6th century. After the Franconian divisions, the Francia orientialis from the areas of the dioceses of Mainz, Worms, Würzburg and Speyer was added, and later the diocese of Bamberg was added. In the 7th century, the Slavs began to populate the northeastern parts of the region from the east, since the areas of today's Upper Franconia were sparsely populated (Bavaria Slavica). Charlemagne developed the areas around the Main into a royal province. From the middle of the 9th century, the Duchy of the Tribes, one of the five Duchies of the Eastern Franconian Empire, was established. From the 12th century, the Nuremberg Castle was the seat of the castle county of Nuremberg. From around 1190, the burgrave was ruled by the Zollern, the Frankish line of the later Hohenzollern, who represented the German emperor in the 19th and 20th centuries. Franconia already played an important role for the kingship in the time of Rudolf von Habsburg, the Itineraries of the following kings attested to the favoritism of the Rhine-Main region. In 1376 the Swabian Association of Cities was founded, which later also included several Franconian imperial cities. In July 1500, during the reign of Emperor Maximilian I, the empire was divided into imperial circles in the course of the imperial reform movement, which led to the creation of the Franconian imperial circle in 1512. From today's perspective, the Franconian Imperial Circle is sometimes considered to be an important basis for the development of a Franconian sense of community that still exists today. Franconia played an important role in the expansion of Martin Luther's Reformation. From 1552, the margrave Albrecht Alcibiades tried to break the supremacy of the mighty imperial city of Nuremberg and to secularize the possessions of the princes in order to create a duchy that he ruled. Large areas of Franconia were finally devastated in the fighting until King Ferdinand I, with several dukes and princes, decided to subjugate Albrecht. In 1608, Protestant sovereigns united in the Reich to form the so-called Union. The Catholic side reacted in 1609 with a counter-alliance, the league. The contrasts between the two camps eventually led to the Thirty Years' War, which became the greatest burden of cohesion within the Franconian Empire. From 1803 the later Kingdom of Bavaria received large parts of Franconia with the main deputation of the Imperial Deputation under the pressure of Napoleon Bonaparte through secularization and mediatization. Through the Rhine Confederation, Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and other areas became more closely linked to France, which disintegrated the Holy Roman Empire and the Franconian Empire in 1806.