Sebastian Münster (1489–1552) - Cosmographia Universalis...

This original sheet is a precious Renaissance page taken from the inner sections of the third book in the Latin edition of 1550 of Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia universalis, printed in Basel by the publisher Heinrich Petri. The front of the page hosts the solemn chorographical section titled LIBER III, expressly dedicated by Münster to the description of the tragic invasion of Italy by the Huns and the famous siege of Aquileia. The Latin text opens by celebrating the city’s resistance in the face of the imposing war engines and the wooden towers erected by Attila’s armies, then moves to the detailed chronicle of the omen of the storks that abandoned their nests on the city roofs, pushing the Hun leader to strike the final blow, and ends with the dramatic total destruction of the fortress, the flight of the survivors into the lagoons that gave rise to Venice, and the subsequent devastation of Padua, Vicenza, Verona, and Milan. The visual composition of the front is enriched by a fine color woodcut from the period that vividly depicts the storks abandoning the city’s towers and fortified walls in flight. Of extraordinary collectible interest is the presence of ancient marginal notes printed contemporaneously (Aquileia obsidetur, Augurium, Pudicitia matronarum, Venetiarum primordia, Theatrum Veronense) which testify to the critical apparatus of the work aimed at highlighting the salient moments of the military chronicle. Turning the page, the back continues the historical chronicle with the heading DE VNGARIA containing the biographical chapter Attilae Hunorum regis mors (The death of Attila, king of the Huns, Chap. VII). The Latin text develops as a dense and erudite philosophical and historiographical treatise on the plunder of Milan and Pavia, on the famous diplomatic encounter between Attila and the Christian pope Leo I the Great that convinced the sovereign to withdraw from Italy, and on his subsequent, sudden death in Pannonia during the night of the initiation of his new marriage due to a fatal hemorrhage. Münster places in parallel the customs, the military toils and the military and diplomatic feats that saw the fragmentation of the great Hun empire and the subsequent rebellions of the Ostrogoths led by the lineages of the future rulers of Italy, analyzing how political changes and the end of the barbarian scourge redefined the European arrangement. The page is solemnly enriched by typographic marginal notes (Mediolanum ab Attila diripitur, Papia diripitur, Attila perit profluuio sanguinis, Ostrogothi). The preface introduces the methodological motivations that guided the author in writing the Cosmographia, understood as a monumental work intended to offer rulers and scholars of the XVI century a universal guide to understand the morality, geography, and the changes of the peoples of the Earth through the ages. Dimensions 30 x 20 cm Will be shipped via courier

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