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The ''Nuremberg Chronicle'' is an illustrated
encyclopedia An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...
consisting of world historical accounts, as well as accounts told through biblical paraphrase. Subjects include human history in relation to the
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...
, illustrated mythological creatures, and the histories of important Christian and secular cities from antiquity. Finished in 1493, it was originally written in
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
by Hartmann Schedel, and a
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
version was translated by Georg Alt. It is one of the best-documented early printed books—an incunabulum—and one of the first to successfully integrate illustrations and text. Latin scholars refer to it as the Liber Chronicarum (''Book of Chronicles'') as this phrase appears in the index introduction of the Latin edition.
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
-speakers have long referred to it as the ''Nuremberg Chronicle'' after the city in which it was published. German-speakers refer to it as ''Die Schedelsche Weltchronik'' (''Schedel's World History'') in honour of its author.


Production

Two
Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
merchants, Sebald Schreyer (1446–1503) and his son-in-law, Sebastian Kammermeister (1446–1520), commissioned the Latin version of the chronicle. They also commissioned Georg Alt (1450–1510), a scribe at the Nuremberg treasury, to translate the work into German. Both Latin and German editions were printed by Anton Koberger, in Nuremberg. Contracts were recorded by scribes, bound into volumes, and deposited in the Nuremberg City Archives.Wilson, Adrian. The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Amsterdam: A. Asher & Co. 1976 The first contract, from December 1491, established the relationship between the illustrators and the patrons. The painters, Wolgemut and Pleydenwurff, were to provide the layout of the chronicle, to oversee the production of the woodcuts, and to guard the designs against piracy. The patrons agreed to advance 1,000 '' gulden'' for paper, printing costs, and the distribution and sale of the book. A second contract, between the patrons and the printer, was executed in March 1492. It stipulated conditions for acquiring the paper and managing the printing. The blocks and the archetype were to be returned to the patrons once the printing was completed. The author of the text, Hartmann Schedel, was a medical doctor, humanist and book collector. He earned a doctorate in medicine in
Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...
in 1466, then settled in
Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
to practice medicine and collect books. According to an inventory done in 1498, Schedel's personal library contained 370 manuscripts and 670 printed books. The author used passages from the classical and medieval works in this collection to compose the text of the chronicle. He borrowed most frequently from another humanist chronicle, ''Supplementum Chronicarum'', by Giacomo Filippo Foresti of
Bergamo Bergamo (; lmo, Bèrghem ; from the proto- Germanic elements *''berg +*heim'', the "mountain home") is a city in the alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from Switzerland, the alpine lakes Com ...
. It has been estimated that about 90% of the text is pieced together from works on humanities, science, philosophy and theology, while about 10% of the chronicle is Schedel's original composition.
Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
was one of the largest cities in the
Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. From the accession of Otto I in 962 unt ...
in the 1490s, with a population of between 45,000 and 50,000. Thirty-five patrician families composed the City Council. The Council controlled all aspects of printing and craft activities, including the size of each profession and the quality, quantity and type of goods produced. Although dominated by a conservative aristocracy, Nuremberg was a centre of northern humanism. Anton Koberger, printer of the ''Nuremberg Chronicle'', printed the first humanist book in Nuremberg in 1472. Sebald Shreyer, one of the patrons of the chronicle, commissioned paintings from classical mythology for the grand salon of his house. Hartmann Schedel, author of the chronicle, was an avid collector of both Italian Renaissance and German humanist works.
Hieronymus Münzer Hieronymus Münzer or Monetarius (1437/47 – 27 August 1508) was a Renaissance humanist, physician and geographer who made a famous grand tour of the Iberian peninsula in 1494–5. He was co-author of the Nuremberg Chronicle. Life Münzer was bo ...
, who assisted Schedel in writing the chronicle's chapter on geography, was among this group, as were
Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...
and Johann and
Willibald Pirckheimer Willibald Pirckheimer (5 December 1470 – 22 December 1530) was a German Renaissance lawyer, author and Renaissance humanist, a wealthy and prominent figure in Nuremberg in the 16th century, imperial counsellor and a member of the governing City ...
.


Publication

The ''Chronicle'' was first published in
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
on July 12, 1493 in the city of
Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
. This was quickly followed by a German translation on December 23, 1493. An estimated 1,400 to 1,500 Latin and 700 to 1,000 German copies were published. A document from 1509 records that 539 Latin versions and 60 German versions had not been sold. Approximately 400 Latin and 300 German copies survived into the twenty-first century. They are scattered around the world in museums and collections. The larger illustrations were also sold separately as
prints In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints": it provides both a detailed annotation resource for protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserved ...
, often hand-tinted in
watercolour Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to ...
. Many copies of the book are coloured, with varying degrees of skill; there were specialist shops for this. The colouring on some examples has been added much later, and some copies have been broken up for sale as decorative prints.The publisher and printer was Anton Koberger, the godfather of
Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...
, who in the year of Dürer's birth in 1471 ceased goldsmithing to become a printer and publisher. He quickly became the most successful publisher in Germany, eventually owning 24 printing presses and having many offices in Germany and abroad, from
Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of ...
to Buda.
Giulia Bartrum Giulia Bartrum (born 1954) is an art historian and museum professional who was Curator of German prints and drawings at the British Museum in London, England between 1991 and 2019. Career Bartrum joined the British Museum's Department of Prints ...
, ''Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy'', British Museum Press, 2002, pp. 94-96,


Contents

The chronicle is an illustrated world history, in which the contents are divided into seven ages: * First age: from
creation Creation may refer to: Religion *''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing *Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it *Creationism, the belief that ...
to the Deluge * Second age: up to the birth of
Abraham Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Je ...
* Third age: up to
King David David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...
* Fourth age: up to the
Babylonian captivity The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon, the capital city of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, following their defeat ...
* Fifth age: up to the birth of
Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and relig ...
* Sixth age: up to the present time (the largest part) * Seventh age: outlook on the end of the world and the
Last Judgment The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Reckoning, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, Doomsday, Day of Resurrection or The Day of the Lord (; ar, یوم القيامة, translit=Yawm al-Qiyāmah or ar, یوم الدین, translit=Yawm ad-Dīn, ...


Illustrations

The large workshop of
Michael Wolgemut Michael Wolgemut (formerly spelt ''Wohlgemuth''; 143430 November 1519) was a German painter and printmaker, who ran a workshop in Nuremberg. He is best known as having taught the young Albrecht Dürer. The importance of Wolgemut as an artist rests ...
, Nuremberg's leading artist in various media, provided the unprecedented 1,809
woodcut Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas tha ...
illustrations (before duplications are eliminated; see below). Sebastian Kammermeister and Sebald Schreyer financed the printing in a contract dated March 16, 1492, although preparations had been well under way for several years. Wolgemut and his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff were first commissioned to provide the illustrations in 1487–1488, and a further contract of December 29, 1491, commissioned manuscript layouts of the text and illustrations.
Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer (; ; hu, Ajtósi Adalbert; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer (without an umlaut) or Due ...
was an apprentice with Wolgemut from 1486 to 1489, so may well have participated in designing some of the illustrations for the specialist craftsmen (called "formschneiders") who cut the blocks, onto which the design had been drawn, or a drawing glued. From 1490 to 1494 Dürer was travelling. A drawing by Wolgemut for the elaborate frontispiece, dated 1490, is in the
British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
. While some art experts may claim to be able to identify which Nuremberg Chronicle woodcuts may be attributed to Dürer, there is no consensus. Dürer was not yet using his monogram, and no artists in Wolgemut's studio signed their work in the Chronicle. Illustrations depicted many never-before-illustrated major cities in Europe and the Near East. Six hundred and forty-five original woodcuts were used for the illustrations. As with other books of the period, many of the woodcuts, showing towns, battles or kings were used more than once in the book, with just the text labels changed. The book is large at 18 inches by 12 inches. Only the city of Nuremberg is given a double-page illustration with no text measuring about 342 × 500mm. The illustration for the city of Venice is adapted from a much larger woodcut of 1486 by Erhard Reuwich in the first illustrated printed travel book, the ''Sanctae Perigrinationes'' of 1486. This and other sources were used where possible; where no information was available a number of stock images were used and reused up to eleven times. The view of
Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...
was adapted from an engraving by
Francesco Rosselli Francesco Rosselli (1445 – before 1513) was an Italian miniature painter, and engraver of maps and old master prints. He was described as a cartographer, although his contribution did not include any primary research and was probably limit ...
.


Pirated editions

Due to the success and prestige of the Nuremberg Chronicle, which had one of the largest print-runs of an edition during the incunabula (also known as the incunable period of book production circa 1455–1500), one of the first large-scale pirated editions of the Chronicle appeared on the market. The culprit was Johann Schönsperger (c. 1455–1521), a printer working out of
Augsburg Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the ' ...
who produced smaller editions of the Chronicle in 1496, 1497 and 1500 in German, Latin and a second edition also in German. It was the beginning of unauthorized book editions; pirated editions which capitalized on the success of another author and printer/publisher without consent. Despite the pirating of a successful book, Schönsperger went bankrupt in 1507.


References


External links


Coloured Latin edition and First English Translation (and comparison)
at Beloit College
User:Schedel/gallery
at wikicommons
Un-coloured (B&W) German-language edition
at Google Books
Coloured German-language full edition online
from the Duchess Anna Amalia Library
Coloured Latin edition
from the
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek The Bavarian State Library (german: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, abbreviated BSB, called ''Bibliotheca Regia Monacensis'' before 1919) in Munich is the central " Landesbibliothek", i. e. the state library of the Free State of Bavaria, the big ...

The full text of the original book published in 1493
{{Authority control Biblical paraphrases 1493 books Incunabula German literature German chronicles 15th-century history books 15th-century Latin books World Digital Library exhibits