Abstract
In the 1570s and 1580s, Jean Bodin ranked with Europe’s greatest authorities on the study of history. His Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem, first published in 1566, was reprinted in 1572, and it figured as the first and most prominent piece in Johannes Wolf’s anthology, the Artis historicae penus, published at Basel in 1576 and 1579. Prominent readers from Philip Sidney and Michel de Montaigne to Girolamo Cardano took the time to wade through his prolix book and profit from his wide reading and critical judgments.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See in general Anthony Grafton, What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp. Chapter 3.
For a general map of the field see Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983–1993), II, pt. 1,
and Benjamin Steiner, Die Ordnung der Geschichte: Historische Tabellenwerke in der Frühen Neuzeit (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008). On eclipse dating in this period, and its fortunes from Bacon through the sixteenth century, see C. Philipp E. Nothaft, Dating the Passion: The Life of Jesus and the Emergence of Scientific Chronology (200–1600) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 160–171, 238–240, 261–282.
Mark Pattison, “Joseph Scaliger,” in Henry Nettleship, ed., Essays, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1889), I, 162–163.
For an excellent review of Mercator’s life, work, and posthumous reception see Mark Monmonier, Rhumb Lines and Map Wars: A Social History of the Mercator Projection (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
See William Stenhouse, Reading Inscriptions and Writing Ancient History: Historical Scholarship in the Late Renaissance (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2005) for an introduction to both men and their world.
Also essential are Jean-Louis Ferrary, ed., Correspondance de Lelio Torelli avec Antonio Agustín et Jean Matal (1542–1553) (Como: New Press, 1992);
Ferrary, Onofrio Panvinio et les antiquités romaines (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1996);
and Ingo Herklotz, Cassiano Dal Pozzo und die Archäologie des 17. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Hirmer, 1999).
See Roberto Bizzocchi, Genealogie incredibili: scritti di storia nell’Europa moderna, 2nd ed. (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009).
See Gerald Verbrugghe and John Wickersham, ed. and tr., Berossos and Manetho: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).
For a brief account see Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).
Eusebius/Jerome, Chronici canones, ed. J. K. Fotheringham (London: Humphrey Milford, 1923), 17: “Porro apud Aegyptios XVI potestas erat, quam vocant dynastiam, quo tempore regnabant Thebaei an. cxc.”
See most recently Walter Stephens, “When Pope Noah Ruled the Etruscans: Annius of Viterbo and His Forged Antiquities,” MLN 119, no. 1, supp. (January 2004), S201–S223.
Anthony Grafton, “Tradition and Technique in Historical Chronology,” in Michael Crawford and C. R. Ligota, ed., Ancient History and the Antiquarian: Essays in Memory of Arnaldo Momigliano (London: Warburg Institute, 1995), 15–31.
Anthony Grafton, “Kircher’s Chronology,” in Paula Findlen, ed., Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything (New York and London: Routledge, 2004).
Grafton and Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book; Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, Cartographies of Time (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010).
Dietrich Wünsch, Evangelienharmonien im Reformationszeitaltar: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Darstellungen (Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter, 1983).
For a more detailed examination see H. J. de Jonge. “Sixteenth-Century Gospel Harmonies: Chemnitz and Mercator,” in Théorie et pratique de I’exégèse (Geneva: Droz, 1990), 155–166.
See e.g. Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 13,3/4 (1950), 285–315;
Lionel Gossman, Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment: The World and Work of LaCurne de Sainte-Palaye (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968);
Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, 2d ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988);
Riccardo Fubini, Storiografia dell’umanesimo in Italia da Leonardo Bruni ad Annio da Viterbo (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2003);
Ingrid Rowland, The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004);
Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarianism in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007);
Peter Miller, ed., Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2007);
Peter Miller and François Louis, ed., Antiquarianism and Intellectural Life in Europe and China, 1500–1800 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012)
Mercator, Chronologia, 96: “Inventa autem eclypsis haec ea in parte anni optime quadrat cum Aeliani testimonio, mense Thargelionis factam dicentis. Thargelion enim primo post inte rcalare m anno, in quem haec eclipsis incidit, Tauri signo respondet.” The eclipse was observed with great care in Babylon, though there are some discrepancies between the account in a Babylonian astronomical diary, to which, of course, Mercator and his contemporaries had no access, and those in the Greek sources. See V. F. Polcaro, G. B. Valsecchi, and L. Verderame, “The Gaugamela Battle Eclipse: An Archaeoastronomical Analysis,” Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, 8 (2008): 55–64.
Florian Diacu, The Lost Millennium: History’s Timetables under Siege (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2005).
For the ancient precedents, well known to early modern scholars, see Anthony Grafton and Noel Swerdlow, “Greek Chronography in Roman Epic: The Calendrical Date of the Fall of Troy in the Aeneid,” Classical Quarterly, n.s., 36 (1986); 212–218
and Grafton and Swerdlow, “Technical Chronology and Astrological History in Varro, Censorinus and Others,” Classical Quarterly, n.s., 35 (1985): 454–465.
For Bianchini see John Heilbron, “Bianchini as an Astronomer,” in Valentin Kockel and Brigitte Sölch, ed., Francesco Bianchini (1662–1729) und die europäische gelehrte Welt um 1700 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005)
and Tamara Griggs, “Universal History from Counter-Reformation to Enlightenment,” Modern Intellectual History 4 (2007): 221–228.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2012 Mario Biagioli and Jessica Riskin
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grafton, A. (2012). Mercator Maps Time. In: Biagioli, M., Riskin, J. (eds) Nature Engaged. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230338029_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230338029_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-28717-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-33802-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)