Andræ Mugnotii - Toscana - Figurato - EREMI CAMALDULENSIS DESCRIPTIO - 1723

MUGNOTIUS, Andreas (Andrés Muñoz / Andrea Mugnozio) – Conchensis, Hispanus (Originating from Cuenca, Spain). Title of the work: "Andrææ Mugnotii, Conchensis, Hispani, Eremi Camaldulensis Descriptio, duobus libris absoluta" (Description of the Sacred Hermitage of Camaldoli, divided into two books). This edition is a "Editio de novo in lucem edita, summa cum diligentia emendata atque Indice aucta", that is, a new, revised edition corrected and enriched with an analytic index, printed at Lugduni Batavorum (the Latin name for Leiden, in the Netherlands) at the expense of Petrus Vander Aa, Bibliopolae, & Typographi Academiae atque Civitatis, and datable between the late seventeenth century and the first three decades of the eighteenth century, during the period of greatest activity of the renowned publisher Pieter van der Aa. The volume is presented in quarto format (in-4°) or in small folio, distinguished by wide margins and handmade watermarked high-weight paper.

The illustrative apparatus includes on the title page, printed in elegant red and black duotone with Roman and italic fonts, a refined copper-engraved editorial mark in an oval depicting an academic and civic allegory with a female figure at a lectern (Athena/Wisdom), a heraldic crest, a rooster in the foreground, and a monumental architectural complex in the background, symbolizing the University and the city of Leiden; in addition there is a splendid and famous half-title plate or intercalated plate, engraved in copper and titled "EREMUS MALDULENSIS", which describes with extraordinary accuracy the topography of the fortified Sacred Hermitage on the Tuscan Apennines, showing the surrounding wall, the "Templum" (central church), the procession of monks in Camaldolese white habit, the constellation of solitary cells with an enclosed garden, the wild and wooded surrounding landscape, the access road and devotional stations on the mountain marked by the inscription "Lignea Crux". Content-wise, the work represents one of the most important manifestos of European description and dissemination of the Camaldolese Order’s spirituality, founded by Saint Romuald at the beginning of the 11th century, combining descriptive-geographic rigor with ascetic treatment through key passages such as the "Praefatio ad Benevolum Lectorem" on page 5 edited by the Vander Aa publisher, which exalts the text’s relevance as a mirror of sincere inner conversion, the reproduction of the author’s original dedication to Pope Pius V (Michele Ghislieri, pope from 1566 to 1572) which offers the work as a tribute and testimony to the sanctity of the monk-prior Fathers.

The historical-editorial context places this exemplar within the phenomenon of the great flourishing of Dutch learned publishing, where Van der Aa specialized in including Italian historical and geographical monographs within his monumental atlases or collections of antiquities, such as the famous "Thesaurus Antiquitatum et Historiarum Italiae", responding to the keen interest of North European cultural circles in ecclesiastical history, medieval cloistered organization, and the very high-level Flemish visual apparatus. The condition of preservation of the artifact is overall excellent in structural stability, with wide margins and contemporaneous heavy, handmade paper well preserved, on which there are light and natural foxings and marginal reddenings or damp stains evaporated that do not impair the legibility of the characters nor the sharpness of the copperplate engraving of the plates, which show a clear, contrasted, and richly detailed impression of the engravings, perfectly legible."