Augsburg: Grimm & Wirsung. 1518. Binding: 19th century quarter vellum with marbled boards. Title in gilt in black label on spine. All edges speckled red and black. , Notes: Maciej Miechowita (1457 – 1523) was a Polish Renaissance scholar, historian, and professor of Jagiellonian University, Poland’s oldest university and the 13th oldest university in operation in the world. His Tractatus de duabus Sarmatiis Asiana et Europiana et de contentis in eis was first published by Jan Haller in Krakow in 1517 and quickly gained popularity among European historians and travelers, who came to recognize the Tractus as signaling a milestone shift in the conceptualization of European topography, cultures, and languages of the time. Miechowita’s Tractatus refuted Ptolemy’s misconceptions about the geographies and ethnographies of Eastern Europe, and is considered to be the first accurate geographical and ethnographical description of Eastern Europe, as well as the source of the earliest authoritative information about the Rus’ people and Cossacks. It provided the first systematic description of the lands between the Vistula, the Don, and the Caspian Sea. This work also repeated after Jan Dlugosz and popularised abroad the myth of Sarmatism: that Polish nobility (szlachta) are descendants from the ancient Sarmatians. Sarmatians were a large Iranian confederation of classical antiquity, originating in central parts of the Eurasian Steppe that stretched across Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Transnistria, Ukraine, Western Russia, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Manchuria. Sarmatians were part of “Scythian cultures” that flourished across the Steppe during the Iron Age.


The Tractatus, which is dedicated to Stanislav I Thurzo (1470 – 1540), bishop of Olomouc of the present-day Czech Republic, is divided into two books; the first and longer book focuses on “Asian Sarmatia” and Tartary, with descriptions about different groups of people including the Goths, Alans, Vandals, Swabians, Hungarians, and the Tartars. The second book focuses on “European Sarmatia” and describes the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Muscovy.
Tractatus was quickly translated into many languages, and Johann Mair Von Eck, a prominent German Scholastic theologian recognized as one of the most important interlocutors and theological opponents to Martin Luther, completed this German translation in 1518.
, Size: Small 8vo. (186x138 mm)., Illustration: A very good example of this book on Sarmatia, a large Iranian confederation from the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD. Title in figural border. This example is bound without last 9 pages on Das Leben Sitten Und Wefen Der Scithi Gennant Die Chiarchassi (the life customs and ways of the Scithi called the Chiarchassi).
Translated into German by Johann Mair Von Eck. Text in German, Pages: 32 leaves., Category: Book Asia Middle East Iran; Book Europe Poland & Lithuania; Book Early Printed 1500; Book Social Sciences;. Interior is clean and crisp. Item #B6723

Price: $35,000.00