Hoc QodContinent Omnia Habetvocis

An unrecorded earlier edition of a world map otherwise found in a 1639 edition of Camoens’ ‘Lusiadas’ also published in Madrid. This example is from the first volume of an edition of Pliny the elder’s ‘Historia Natvral de Cayo Plinio Segvndo. Tradvcida por el Licienciado Geronomo de Hverta, Medico y Familiar del Santo Oficio de la Inqvisicion. Y ampliada por el Mismo, con Escolios y Anotaciones, en que aclara lo escuro y dudoso, y añade lo no sabido hasta estos tiempos. Dedicada Al catolico Rey de las Españas y Indias Don Felipe IIII. nuestro Señor’. Published in two volumes in 1624 and 1629. The book also included a vignette woodcut title-page, which is present here, six woodcut plates of natural history, and a full-page woodcut of Adam and Eve, present here. Pliny’s work was influential in the Renaissance, and this text was prepared by Francisco Hernandez in Mexico in the 1570s. Hernandez was Philip II of Spain’s chief medical officer and he went to Mexico in 1570 to study the local natural resources. His own work: Animalia Mexicana descriptionibus scholijsq. Exposita, has a difficult publishing history, and was published posthumously in 1628.

The Latin title of the map is the second half of a quotation from the book of Wisdom, chapter one, verse 7, and translates as: “and that which containeth all things, hath knowledge of the voice”. The first half of the quotation reads: “For the Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world”. In the later Camoens edition of this map (Shirley 347), the title-banner and decorative spandrels are absent.

The geography of the map is rather crude, and unusual in that the Californian peninsula is very fat, Tierra del Fuego is a very large island, separated from Magellanica by a strait, but not based on the Drake model. In the north Pacific, eastern Asia ends in an unusual peninsula marked ‘Rabana’ that approximates to a mis-aligned Korea.