Catalogue 32
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Americas & Caribbean
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MEDINA’S MANUAL OF COMPASS-NAVIGATION, IN FRENCH
MEDINA, Pedro (de) / NICOLAI, Nicolas (de). L'art de nauiguer de Maistre Pierre de Medine, Espaignol : contenant toutes les reigles, secrets, & enseignemens necessaire, à la bonne nauigation, traduict de castillan en Françoys…. Lyon, Guillaume Rouille, 1554.
Fol. [31 x 21 cm], (8) ff. including woodcut title, 115 ff., (1) double-page engraved world map by Nicolai. With 90 in-text woodcuts. Bound in early 18th C vellum, title in ink on spine. Title-page and some leaves lightly toned, marginal repair to t-p; some faint damp-staining towards rear of book; but overall, a very nice genuine copy.
$150,000 Very rare first edition of the first significant practical treatise on trans-Atlantic navigation in French. Dedicated by the translator Nicholas Nicolay to Henri II, who took a special interest in establishing a French presence in the Americas, the work’s publication coincided with the earliest French explorations in the New World: Villegagnon sailing for Brazil, Ribault for Florida and Laudonnière for South Carolina. The present volume was the most up-to-date navigational treatise of its kind in the French language, and further translations laid the groundwork for later treatises by Coignet (first French edition 1581)—who published the first Dutch edition of Medina in 1580—as well as Blaeu, Wright, and Blundeville.
L'Art de Naviguer is the first translation, into any European language, of Pedro de Medina's Spanish treatise Arte de Navigar (Valladolid 1545). Medina, who “may be said to have been the founder of the literature of seamanship” (Church), traveled with Cortes; as royal examiner of Spanish pilots and sailing-masters to the West Indies, he was also the chief authority on navigation in the Atlantic. Copies of his book traveled with Drake and Frobisher. According to Waters, French pilots learned their art from the Portuguese and Spanish, and it was probably through this connection that the hydrographer and pilot Nicolas de Nicolay acquired the rare Spanish edition of Medina's work and translated it for the use of the French. In 1580 the first Dutch edition of Medina was printed by Coignet, who also included the first edition of his Instruction Nouvelle, in Dutch, as an appendix. His first separate edition of the Instruction Nouvelle (1581) also corrected Medina’s (and thus Nicolay’s) depiction of rhumb lines on the world map, which are here, as in the Arte de Navigar, drawn straight instead of spiral.
The present work contains a double-page engraved map of the world, signed by Nicolay, that covers the same area as Medina’s but with considerably more detail (Mortimer). Mortimer also remarks that the volume’s 90 in-text woodcuts, possibly also drawn by Nicolay, are based on those that appeared in the first Spanish edition of 1545. Sabin does not call for a map in the first French edition, though most bibliographies do. It appears that this copper-plate version last appeared in 1576, after which it was supplanted by a woodcut copy when the work was issued by a different publisher.
Navigational manuals in French of this early date are extremely rare, especially when illustrated with a large map. According to Mortimer, there are 2 issues of the first edition, both appearing in 1554 although one (her first issue) bears the date 1553 on the title-page. “Baudrier (vol. 9, p. 280) transcribes from the verso of the title-page of Rouille’s 1561 edition a note reading, La premiere impression achevee d’imprimer le ii de Mars M.D.LIIII (1554) avant pasques. Copies issued with the 1553 title-page are extremely rare: Baudrier (p.209) was able to cite that date only from Brunet (III.1573)” (Mortimer).
OCLC: Indiana Lilly (sans map), JCB, Harvard (2 copies, one of each issue), LC (second issue). [The Bloomsbury auction catalog states that JCB owns two copies and Harvard owns one; their catalogs suggest the reverse].
* Sabin 47345; Borba II.550; Medina 123 (note); Palau 159669; Alden 554/44; Mortimer French 369; Harrisse 266; Lach II.3.420.
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