Windsheim 1576

Article description

Woodcut map, uncolored as publishedin the ,Cosmographia' by Sebastian Münster in Basel, German text edition 1578. This fine antique print was published 1578 in a German text edition of Sebastian Münster's ,Cosmographia', the first detailed scientific and popular description of the world in Sebastian Münster's native language as well as a supreme effort of geographical study and literature of the Reformation period. One of the most popular treatises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Cosmographia reached a total of forty-six editions in six languages by 1650 each incorporating additions and revisions. Sebastian Münster was a professor of Hebrew at Basel university and a most distinguished Hebraist linguist mathematician and geographer. This encyclopedic work was his major undertaking. In its completion, which occupied him for fifteen years, Münster received the assistance of more than one hundred and twenty collaborators, who provided him with the most up-to-date information relating to the towns and places described. The scientifically most valuable sections are those which deal with Germany and Central Europe.