Ioan. Petri Maffeii, Bergomatis e Societate Iesu, Historiarum Indicarum Libri XVI. Selectarum, item, ex India epistolarum ...

£7,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

This is the second Cologne edition of this important collection of accounts of the Portuguese discoveries and missionary work in China and Japan, the East Indies and Brazil and the Americas. The text was first published in Florence in 1588, without a map. The subsequent Cologne edition of 1589 was first to contain a map, which is reprinted in this edition. “Maffei writes extensively about Brazil, describing it very accurately” (Borba de Moraes). The second part reprints the correspondence of Francis Xavier, Louis de Almeyda and many other Jesuit travellers to the Far East, followed by a biography of Saint Ignatius Loyola. The world map, ‘Indiarum Orientalium Occidentaliumque descriptio Pet. Maffei Historiae harum verissimae dedicata.’, is copied from Ortelius’ early world map, with the prominent bulge in the coast of South America, and the extensive southern continent along the foot of the map, but with the loose cloud border replaced by a more formalized strapwork design. Prize presentation signed by Joannes Leurenius (1606-1656) who entered the Jesuit order in 1627 and taught at a College in Aix-la-Chapelle. Alden Landis 593/38; Alt-Japan Katalog 915; Borba de Moraes, pp. 508-509; Cordier, Japonica , cols. 63-64; Cordier, Sinica , col. 782; De Backer/Sommervogel V, 298, no.3; Palau 146981; Sabin 43772; VD16 M106.

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