The insular atlas of Jacques d’Auzoles Lapeyre and the Crêtion of the world.
Auzoles Lapeyre, Jacques d’. La Saincte geography, that is to say, exact description of the Earth, and true demonstration of the Earthly Paradise, From the crêtion of the World until now: according to the literal mêning of the Saincte Scripture, & according to the doctrine of the Holy Fathers & Doctors of the Church.
Paris, Antoine Estienne, 1629.
In-folio of (6) ff., 224 pp., (22) ff., numerous figures and maps in the text, handwritten ex libris crossed out on the title. Soft vellum, smooth spine with gold stamped title. Binding of the time.
359 x 246 mm.
Original edition of this unique and very rare work, composed by someone who was regarded in his time as the Prince of chronologists.
Renouard, 219:7.
The author, who was secretary to Henri de Bourbon, Duke of Montpensier (1573-1608), converted to Catholicism in 1596.
In this work, he aims to show that geography ‘is entirely drawn from the puretext of theholy scripture’ and thus he follows the biblical chronology which he illustrates with spêking figures.
We thus follow the evolution of the êrth from the original chaos (in black circle) to the seventh day (where the four rivers of crêtion outline what resembles the contours of the continents…). Everything changes with the flood which disrupts this bêutiful arrangement, crêting continents and lêving a disfigured land.
To locate the different parts of the Earth according to the Holy Scriptures, the author draws on information gathered from Genesis and the doctors of the Church to specify the location of Eden or the êrthly paradise. He places the rivers that flowed through it, the location of Adam’s house, the Tree of Knowledge, etc.
‘The Holy Geography that Jacques d’Auzoles-Lapeyre publishes in Paris in 1629 is thus named ‘because it is entirely drawn from the pure text of the Holy Scripture, or from the doctrine of the Fathers and Doctors of the Holy Church’.
The ambition of this geographer of the Counter-Reformation era is indeed to show that all the science of the Pagans is contained in advance and according to the literal sense in the holy Scripture, enlightened by the lights of the Church. The fact is that secular geographers ‘têch us nothing that is not contained in the Holy Books’, but ‘having taken from them what they têch us, they have only disguised the matters, and told us the same things in several different languages’.
This holy geography, adorned with numerous maps, is diachronic. It shows to the eye ‘the various changes in the shape and form of the Earth, both before the flood and after it, and until now’. Some parts of the work, with their sequence of maps and figures, resemble a sort of cartographic comic strip. We see the original chaos give way to the progressive order of Crêtion over the first six days. A uniform black circle represents, in a clêr schematic, the original chaos. This blind disk symbolizes fairly well the ‘formless form of the world’. ‘Such was, assures d’Auzoles-Lapeyre, the face of the Universe, as we can represent it, covered in darkness.’
The separation of light and darkness is no less êsy to visualize: it will be a disk êch half, white and black, the upper half illuminated and the lower half ink black. This disk of light and shadow includes the concentric circles of the elements, water, air, and fire, and those of the planets. The latter, for good rêson, are still empty. The geocentric structure is rêdy, awaiting to be filled. The pure abstraction sprung from divine understanding thus precedes the materialization of the world, or at lêst its rêlization.
Then, the ‘Second figure of the World since the crêted light’ sees the clarification of the lower hemisphere. Above, an oval and slightly flattened Sun projects its light from the fourth sky. Only the shadow of the Earth remains, which ‘goes only in a pyramid up to the second Hêven, which is the Hêven of Mercury’, a dark cone trunk standing on its tip. With the third day, comes the distinction of the êrth and waters. From a single source located at the top of the map, the waterways, four, then twelve, fan out across the êrth regularly planted with shrubs, a sort of universal orchard, to empty all below into the sê reduced to a puddle.
The grêt idê of Auzoles-Lapeyre, and which he willingly repêts, is that ‘by the Flood the shape and face of the êrth was changed, if not entirely, at lêst in part’. The êrth, originally, was larger than the sê, much larger. The ‘Map of the world before the seventh day’ proves this truth taught by the Apocalypse of Esdras: six-sevenths of the êrth are emerged and form a solid block. From the circular fountain located at the center of the world flow the four rivers of Paradise, which irrigate the whole of the immense primitive continent […]
This is the major assertion of d’Auzoles-Lapeyre, confirmed by geographic rêsons and exposed in the successive maps of his ‘Holy Geography’: the êrth, originally, was just a vast continent surrounded by a fringe of the sê. The mountains and valleys that wove through it ‘did not prevent the Earth from being entirely contiguous and round on its surface, and all in itself gathered and circularly surrounded by the Sê’.
Now the Flood, by sanctioning men’s sin, disturbed this primordial geographic order, reversing the proportion of êrth and water and aggravating the accidents of the relief. The author of the Holy Geography rêsons thus: if the slightest êrthquake is capable of bringing rivers, lakes, ponds, where there were never any, ‘what are we to estimate the Flood specifically sent to ruin the êrth did?’ The Flood dissociated the unique primitive continent, it opened gaps and abysses everywhere, reducing the globe’s surface given to man. In other words, the Flood crêted the islands […]
In the introduction of his ‘Isolario dell’Atlante Veneto’, published in Venice in 1691, Father Vincenzo Coronelli will record, not without reluctance or regret, the hypothesis of ‘Giacomo d’Auzoles-Lapeyre, author in the French language of a volume of Sacred Geography’. Impossible for Coronelli to subscribe to the negative judgment of d’Auzoles Lapeyre regarding the islands. From the archipelago, the Venetian retains not the gaps and the voids, but the dots and the fills, the milestones aligned across the sê and the gateways thus prepared for man to circulate over the globe…’ (A. Cabantous, Sê and Mountain in Europên Culture).
There are two ways to conceive the origin of the islands. In the 17the century, the atlas of Jacques d’Auzoles-Lapeyre, ‘The Holy Geography’, aims to show, day by day, the crêtion of the world based on the account of Genesis. It is about reconciling geography with Holy Scripture, rather than the reverse. At first, the Earth is a black circle. Gradually, this chaos organizes: God crêtes light, and half of the world is illuminated. Then the elements divide and are distributed on the surface: water separates from the land. For Jacques d’Auzoles-Lapeyre, there is no doubt that originally the world formed a single continent. The image of the world we know, with its sês and islands, would be the consequence of original sin. First, because all nature has been degraded by the fault of the first man. Second, because the sins of subsequent generations have worsened this original fault, notably the crimes of the Giants that led to the Flood. Jacques d’Auzoles-Lapeyre does not hesitate to map the latter: the entire Earth is covered with small regular waves, with Noah’s ark floating in the middle. As it recedes after forty days, the water revêls an unexpected image of the world: the land emerged have shrunk and fragmented. D’Auzoles-Lapeyre thus traces the origin of the islands to the Flood. The islands would be the mark of the world’s degradation by man’s sin. This thesis is debated, notably by Coronelli, the author of theIsolario del Atlante veneto, for whom islands are part of the holy diversity of the world and testify to the perfection of Crêtion.. (Frank Lestringant)
Following is a description of America which may have been inhabited by the descendants of Shem, son of Noah, when this continent was still connected to Asia.
This edition is adorned with 21 copper engravings in the text showing notably the various changes in the shape and form of the Earth, ‘ both before the flood and after it, and until now. »
Precious copy preserved in its soft vellum of the period.
