MAFFEI, Raffaello.

by Raffaello Maffei

£2,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

.An excellent, attractively bound copy of this handsomely produced edition of one of the earliest Renaissance encyclopaedias, with a mention of Columbus s discoveries. Raffaello Maffei (1451-1522), from Volterra, was a theologian and humanist; he was acquainted with Pico della Mirandola, Poliziano and Lorenzo de Medici, and studied Greek under George of Trebizond. First published in 1506, Commentaria is his magnum opus - an encyclopaedia encompassing the entire knowledge of his time, from theology to biology. Part I, on geography, begins with a few sections on the heavenly spheres, the use of the gnomon to calculate latitude, with data on specific places worldwide, and the inhabited world at different latitudes. The remainder is a historical and geographical survey, based on ancient, medieval and contemporary sources, of the main regions and states in the world, from Spain, France, Poland and Britannia (with an account of the ancient kings of Britain from Brutus to Uther Pendragon, and mention of Merlin, the Saxon kings, the Conquest, the Angevins, Thomas à Beckett and the War of the Roses, down to Henry VII), the Middle East, India, northern Africa, and places recently discovered ( loca nuper inventa ) under the patronage of the King of Spain. This last section includes a mention of Columbus s discovery in 1496 [sic]. Part II, on anthropology, is a gallery of vires illustri , in alphabetical order, from the rulers, poets and philosophers of the ancient world, to the Fat

• Binding: Hardcover

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