In the framework of our book adoption programme, our restorer and rare book librarian gave our adopter a detailed presentation of the supported volumes.
Brigitta Schvéd, research assistant at the Eötvös József Research Center's Institute for Political and State Theory, adopted the volumes by Athanasius Kircher and Martino Martini.
A Jesuit monk, Athanasius Kircher was born in Geisa in 1602, but from 1634 he taught and worked at the Collegium Romanum in Rome, where he died in 1680. He was a true polymath of his time, publishing an almost innumerable number of works on a wide variety of subjects (e.g. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, volcanoes, fossils, cryptography, plague, musicology, etc.). His work on sinology, known as China illustrata, was first published in Amsterdam in 1667. Divided into six parts, it summarises in encyclopaedic form the most accurate knowledge of China at the time. Kircher never visited China, and based his vast work on the Jesuit missionary accounts available to him. The text is accompanied by a wealth of copperplate illustrations, which make the encyclopaedia extremely popular and sought-after by collectors to this day. It quickly became a great success, and within a few years was translated into Dutch (1668), English (1669) and French (1670). By 1735 it must have been in the library of the Jesuit College of Trnava, where it was entered in the catalogue.
Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571–1638) and his son Joan Blaeu (1596–1673) are among the most important members of the golden age of Dutch cartography in the 16th and 17th centuries. The former began the series of atlases known as Atlas maior or Atlas novus in 1635, and the latter completed it. The original title (Theatrum orbis terrarum, sive Atlas novus) refers to the work by Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), first published in 1570, which is the first modern atlas in the modern sense. Most of the sixth volume of Atlas novus is the work of the Jesuit missionary Martino Martini (卫匡国, 1611–1661). The first geographically detailed account of China, the provinces of China and Japan, the 17 maps accompanying the text are based on the most accurate information available at the time. The engravings and title page were hand-coloured after printing. Two additional texts were inserted at the end of the atlas: a treatise on China by Jacobus Golius (1596–1667) and a treatise on the Mongol conquests in East Asia by Martino Martini. The only omission in this extremely valuable atlas, which survives in a publisher's binding, is that the second map (Pecheli, sive Peking. Imperii Sinarum provincia prima) has been torn out. The volume must have been in the library of the Jesuit College of Trnava in 1700.
The book is part of the book adoption program of the Foundation for the University Library. Save a book, adopt a book! For more information visit our website: https://konyvtar.elte.hu/en/support-us/adopt-a-book.
Adopted books:
Athanasius Kircher: Athanasii Kircheri e Soc. Jesu China monumentis qua sacris qua profanis, nec non variis naturae et artis spectaculis, aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustrata : auspiciis Leopoldi primi ... . Amstelodami [Amsterdam] : apud Joannem Janssonium a Waesberge et Elizeum Weyerstraet, anno MDCLXVII [1667].
Martino Martini: Joannis Blaeu Theatrum orbis terrarum, sive Novus atlas, pars sexta : Novus Atlas Sinensis, a Martino Martinio Soc. Iesu descriptus er serenissimo archiduci Leopoldo Guilielmo Austriaco dedicatus ... . [Amsterdam] : [Joan Blaeu], [1655].