A Description of the Northern Peoples (Historia Olai Magni Gothi archiepiscopi Upsalensis De gentium septentrionalium [...])

The book ‘A Description of the Northern Peoples’ by Olaus Magnus (1490–1557) was very popular, reprinted many times in large and small formats, and was translated into French (1561), Italian (1565), German (1567), and English (1658). Small-format editions were published in Antwerp (1558, 1562), Paris (1561), Basel (1567), Amsterdam (1586), Frankfurt (1618), and Leiden (1652). The TARTLE collection includes three different editions of this book.

Chapter 1 of Part III, ‘On the Superstitious Worship of Pagan Lithuanians’, describes Lithuanian households, pagan customs, and features of the old religion and mythology: the worship of grass snakes, forests and fire. The illustrations of Lithuania are different in the 1555 and 1567 editions of Magnus’ books, but they were all printed from matrices made for Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia.

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album ARS LIBRI (2022). Compiler Algimantas Muzikevičius, text authors Algimantas Muzikevičius, Rolandas Gustaitis

The book ‘A Description of the Northern Peoples’ by Olaus Magnus (1490–1557) was very popular, reprinted many times in large and small formats, and was translated into French (1561), Italian (1565), German (1567), and English (1658). Small-format editions were published in Antwerp (1558, 1562), Paris (1561), Basel (1567), Amsterdam (1586), Frankfurt (1618), and Leiden (1652). The TARTLE collection includes three different editions of this book.

Chapter 1 of Part III, ‘On the Superstitious Worship of Pagan Lithuanians’, describes Lithuanian households, pagan customs, and features of the old religion and mythology: the worship of grass snakes, forests and fire. The illustrations of Lithuania are different in the 1555 and 1567 editions of Magnus’ books, but they were all printed from matrices made for Sebastian Münster’s Cosmographia.

Source: Law firm Valiunas Ellex art album ARS LIBRI (2022). Compiler Algimantas Muzikevičius, text authors Algimantas Muzikevičius, Rolandas Gustaitis