"Loccupletissimi Rerum Thesauri Accurata Descriptio“ or the rarest natural objects ever seen, 18th Century

What we have today is another excellent representative case of science revolution in all Europe during 17th-18th Century. When I investigated to write this post, I couldn't avoid feel same admiration I felt when I got deep in detail writing Robert Hooke's post ("The Micrographia"). 

Albertus Seba -A pioneer of the empirical science- simply started as apprentice of Pharmacy, preparing drugs with his own secret formulas, most of the times based on exotic plants and animals. His studio was located in Amsterdam, close to the harbour, so he was in contact with captains and ship surgeons -or simply sailors- to bring him exotic specimens, he later used to prepare his “formulae”. He also prepared drugs, some of his customers were Kings, like Peter the Great. Mr Seba’s house was full of well preserved snakes, insects, shells, lizards… His collection included all sorts of exquisite pieces from the East and West Indies, among these no less than 700 jars containing the rarest exotic animals and many particularly rare snakes. Even the finest and most complete butterflies collection from the 4 corners of the Earth.

Seba did not stop there, he continued the search for new methods, collecting natural specimens from distant lands, studying them, and testing their potential uses. His passion for collecting and researching often extended beyond immediate pharmaceutical applications. In many instances apothecaries started major natural history collections and contributed personally to the growing knowledge of nature. Seba's collection of natural specimens also went far beyond what was required for the normal exercise of his profession.

Seba commissioned artists to make meticulous drawings of these diverse objects from his collection. He went on to publish these drawings, supplemented by commentary, in a four-volumed set entitled Loccupletissimi Rerum Thesauri Accurata Descriptio (abbreviated in the following as Thesaurus, or the rarest natural objects ever seen -that's my particular translation-). All the plates I'm posting on this blog entry are part of this Book.

 

This large and magnificent work, incorporating an impressive total of 446 copperplates, was published between 1734 and 1765, hence also posthumously. Seba made a lot of money selling his collections. Once he sold a collection, he immediately set about establishing a second one that eventually became even larger!!

Some of the images I post below are from Taschen color facsimil edition of the "Loccupletissimi Rerum Thesauri Accurata Descriptio“.

External links related

Albertus Seba's collection of natural specimens and its pictorial inventory, by TASCHEN Books Group, link here.

One of my Blog Sponsors, Amazon, has also a facsimil ed. for this amazing Book. Good flexibility: 2 new brand, price is 2495 USD or 8 used, better price: 625 USD (at least until November 1st, 2012)... I  can't afford any option :) -so far-. Anyway link to Amazon for this is here.

theguardian made a brief article about this Book, text is poor but they host some color versions of the B/W images I posted here today. Link to access is here.

And finally, the surprise (I was really impressed about this) : The Biodiversity Heritage Library has a complete "OCRed" digital facsimil. That means that you can even do text searchs on the original... Goood JOB! I think I'll spend more time on the biodiversity heritage web page ;

For a high resolution, pdf version of this manuscript, contact me (facsimilium AT gmail DOT com).

The “Leabhar Cheanannais” or “Book of Kells”, 9th Century

The Book of Kells is probably the reason why I started this biblio-adventure blog. Was trying to obtain the complete digital facsimile of this medieval jewel, visiting virtual libraries and digitalization Projets around the world when I decided to start writing my personal book of books -somehow, an "archivistic projetc"-. A blog about ancient manuscripts and rare books was a good option...

This codex is considered one of Ireland's greatest treasures. The name "Book of Kells" is derived from the Abbey of Kells, County Meath, which was its home for much of the medieval period. The manuscript's date and place of production have been the subject of considerable debate and don’t want to continue here. For consideration only: there are at least five competing theories about the manuscript's place of origin and time of completion.

For me the most incredible mystery is how the book survived in that incredibly good condition to our present days, taking specially into account that Kells Abbey was plundered and pillaged by Vikings many times in the 10th century (the book remained in Kells until 1654). Another mistery is regarding its lavish and complex decorations. Some of them can only be fully seen with magnifying glasses, although lenses of the required power are not known to have been available until hundreds of years after the book's completion.

About its contents, The Book of Kells contains the text of the four Gospels, that’s all. It’s based on the Vulgata (a late 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible), but evidences suggests that when the scribes were writing the text they often depended on memory rather than on other copy. Probably because no other copy was available in the Abbey and they were just trying to save their own way of life (Vikings were continuously pillaging the coasts and inner lands of Hibernia, moors invading Hispania from north Africa, absolutely hard times for Christianity from 8^th to 10^th in Europe).

There're at least the following facsimile editions for the codex. I could obtain a high quality digital copy 3 years ago, but I think is not available anymore. If interested contact me (facsimilium AT gmail, dot com). Swiss publisher Urs Graf Verlag Bern produced the first facsimile in 1951, but black and white only. In 1974 and under license from the Board of Trinity College Dublin, Thames and Hudson produced a second facsimile in color. After that, Trinity College officials denied more reproductions, to avoid damage the Book due to the pass of pages process. But later in 1986, Faksimile-Verlag developed a process that used suction to straighten a page so that it could be photographed without touching it and so won permission to publish a new facsimile. There're other later partial reproductions but the base for the total facsimile, in which each page was photographed, was the 86 copy. With new digital techniques developed during this last decade, corrections have been applied to obtain the best facsimile, published in 2006 and also digitized in high quality pdf and jpg formats.

Google made an awesome doodle this year to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, clearly inspired in the Book of Kells. I recommend the link to the doodle creator, here... see doodle super close-ups

Technical description of the Book:

• Written primarily in “insular majuscule” with some occurrences of minuscule letters (usually e or s).
• Identified at least three scribes in this manuscript, as usual they were named as hand A, B and C. Hand A, for the most part, writes eighteen or nineteen lines per page in brown color. Hand B has a somewhat greater tendency to use minuscule and uses red, purple and black ink and a variable number of lines per page. Hand B is not constant as A, changes the number of lines per page, which is not normal in medieval manuscripts. And finally, hand C is found throughout the majority of the text, with a great tendence to use minuscule, at least in comparison with hand A.
  
• Illuminations: There are ten surviving full-page illuminations including two evangelist portraits, three pages with the four evangelist symbols, a carpet page, a miniature of the Virgin and Child, a miniature of Christ enthroned, and miniatures of the Arrest of Jesus and the Temptation of Christ. 

And finally, my favorite anecdote of the amazing Book of Kells. There’s an error located at Matthew 10:34b. It should read "I came not to send peace, but a sword," but the manuscript reads gaudium ("joy") instead of gladium ("sword") and so translates as "I came not [only] to send peace, but joy”

An image of the Virgin and Child. This is the oldest existent image of the Virgin Mary in a European Western manuscript. The iconography of the miniature may derive from an Eastern or Coptic icon.