The biography of a book The Turku copy of the 1613 Mercator-Hondius Atlas

In this article we look at the printing and publishing history of the 1613 edition of the Mercator-Hondius Atlas. Our main focus is on the editions published by the Hondius family in the early seventeenth century. We take a closer look at the 1613 Latin edition, focusing on one specific, previously unrecorded copy currently held by the Donner Institute in Turku. We relate our findings to the more general issues concerning the production, context and history of the atlas.

STEVEN VAN IMPE and MARI-LIISA VARILA

The biography of a book
The Turku copy of the 1613 Mercator-Hondius Atlas I n this article we look at the printing and publishing history of the 1613 edition of the Mercator-Hondius Atlas.Our main focus is on the editions published by the Hondius family in the early seventeenth century.We take a closer look at the 1613 Latin edition, focusing on one specific, previously unrecorded copy currently held by the Donner Institute in Turku.We relate our findings to the more general issues concerning the production, context and history of the atlas.
The Mercator-Hondius Atlas is a well-known example of early modern cartography, and it has previously been studied from a bibliographical viewpoint by, for example, Cornelis Koeman (1961) and Peter van der Krogt (1996Krogt ( , 1997)).The number of editions (in different languages) and surviving individual copies is relatively high, and the special features of cartographic print production pose an additional challenge to the book historian.In this article, we will follow the 'biography' of the atlas from its inception, through the production process, up until the point where one particular copy of the 1613 edition arrives in Turku.
The study of copy-specific features of early printed books has recently become a popular focus in book-historical research.While printed editions can be described in a uniform way to a degree, every copy of an edition differs from other copies in some way.Some of the differences may result from the printing process; for example 'stop press' corrections that are found in some copies of the edition, or differences between copies in the quality of impression on a certain page of the edition.One early example of the results that may be achieved by collating such features is Charlton Hinman's famous study of the composition and printing process of Shakespeare's First Folio (Hinman 1963).The differences between copies accumulate after the copies leave the hands of the printers.These copy-specific features related to later owners and users include, for example, binding, evidence of ownership and use (ownership inscriptions, bookplates, handwritten corrections), embellishments (decoration, illustration), and excisions and insertions of material (such as missing leaves).
Looking at the various copy-specific features of early books helps shed light on numerous questions regarding the readership and use of these books.For example, we may study copies of a certain edition and their provenance in order to learn more about the intended and actual readers of the work -the geographical, social and economic dimensions of book ownership in earlier periods.Annotations and corrections may reveal ways in which the readers engaged with the book and the text(s) within it and disclose the readers' attitudes toward the text.The excision of a certain leaf from a printed edition, or the cancellation of a part of the text (e.g., by crossing it out), may be indicative of changing attitudes and ideologies.For example, the turbulent religious atmosphere of sixteenth-century England could prompt readers to cross out text in their books that was no longer found acceptable.The description of a copy of a printed book of hours in an auction catalogue (Myers & Co. 1926: lot 248) comments on a 'woodcut and first portion of the Office for St Thomas à Becket lightly crossed out, his name in the calendar and litany, and the word pape in the former, also crossed out' . 1 Print variants (for example a read-ing that is only present in some of the copies) may shed light on the process of printing and the order in which the extant copies were printed.
Many rare book repositories have recently initiated copy-specific cataloguing projects or included copy-specific information in their catalogues.Examples include the Glasgow Incunabula Project at the University of Glasgow; the Cambridge University Library Incunabula Cataloguing Project (during which copy-specific descriptions of incunabula were added to the online database of the library); and the ProBok provenance and binding database, a collaborative project of the university libraries of Uppsala and Lund.The currently ongoing Caxton and Beyond project, run by Takako Kato and Satoko Tokunaga, aims to map the copy-specific features of the extant copies of the incunable editions produced by William Caxton, the first printer active in England.Such resources facilitate research on early printed books as material objects, which in turn furthers our understanding of the ownership and use of early books.
The description in this article of the Turku copy of the 1613 Mercator-Hondius Atlas has a twofold purpose: firstly, it is intended to complement the description of the edition by introducing a previously unrecorded copy that includes some press variants; and secondly, it illustrates the variety of copy-specific evidence present in early printed books, showing how a certain copy was modified and utilised by its readers.Before describing the Turku copy in detail, we briefly introduce the Mercator-Hondius Atlas, focusing on the production context of the 1613 edition.

Gerardus Mercator, an innovative cartographer
Gerardus Mercator was born in 1512 as Geeraert de Cremer in the Flemish town of Rupelmonde (Crane 2002, De Smet 1983, Keuning 1937).He attended the university in Leuven, where he also worked in Gemma Frisius' workshop manufacturing scientific instruments.Mercator ran into trouble with the authorities for alleged Lutheran sympathies but was cleared of suspicion, probably thanks to the intervention of the university.Eight years later, with religious turmoil brewing in the Netherlands, he emigrated to Duisburg in the (Lutheran) Duchy of Cleve.Here, he taught mathematics at the college and set up a workshop where he produced the first wall map to feature the eponymous Mercator projection.He also published the first editions of his Atlas, coining the name that is still current for what was then a new genre.Due to his attention to detail, the full plan -to publish a complete overview of the cosmos in five parts -was never realised.
After Mercator's death in 1594, his son Rumold and nephews Gerardus Junior and Michael continued the work and published the first, posthumous, edition of what became known as the 'Mercator Atlas' .Ten years later, the Mercator's heirs sold their inheritance at a public auction in Leiden.The original copperplates containing Mercator's maps were bought by Jodocus Hondius at the instigation of Petrus Bertius.Hondius became a great admirer of Mercator.He published new and improved editions of the atlas, adding new maps and updating Mercator's originals; this work became known as the 'Mercator-Hondius Atlas' .These were the editions that helped to establish Mercator's posthumous fame as the most important geographer of the Renaissance.

Jodocus Hondius, engraver and publisher of maps
Jodocus Hondius was born as Joost de Hondt on 14 October 1563 in Wakken, a small village in the county of Flanders, currently part of Belgium (Hoogeveen 1938).In his youth Hondius moved to the city of Ghent, where he worked in the workshop of Hendrik II van den Keere (1540-80) -the foremost type designer of the Low Countries -and trained there as an engraver, calligrapher and punch cutter2 (Vervliet 1968;Rouzet 1975: 109-10).Hondius also acquired a humanist training, including Latin and some Greek.Hondius and his sister Jacomina, also a skilled calligrapher, emigrated from Ghent and moved to London together with three children of Hondius' former master Hendrik van den Keere; Coletta (1568-1629), Margaretha (d. 1589) and Pieter (1571-after 1646).Coletta married Hondius in London in 1587.Margaretha van den Keere married the Antwerp diamond cutter Pieter Goos, whose descendants would later also enter the atlas market.Their brother Pieter van den Keere, finally, later married Anna Bert, the sister of Pieter Bert, or Petrus Bertius (1565-1629), who would become a professor at the University of Leiden.Hondius' sister Jacomina de Hondt married another Ghent expatriate in London, the Latin schoolteacher Petrus Montanus (Pieter van den Bergh, c.1560-1625).(Van Eeghen 1985;van den Hoonaard 2013: 36-9;Schilder 2007: 13-42) It appears that Hondius became the pater familias of an extensive family.He would often draw on the expertise and resources of his brothers-in-law and nephews for his publications, which shows the importance of family networks in early modern society.Hondius would train his brother-in-law Pieter van den Keere and later his nephew Abraham Goos (1589-1643) to become cartographers and engravers.Another nephew, Jacob Montanus (1595-after 1623), would also become a printer in Amsterdam, perhaps after training with Hondius.Hondius' brother-inlaw Petrus Montanus provided several new texts and translations for Hondius' publications and wrote a short biography of Hondius after the cartographer's death.(Briels 1974: 289-90, 336-42, 372) Hondius managed to build an impressive professional network in London, consisting of engravers, cartographers, and navigators.However, in 1593 he decided to return to the Low Countries.In 1585 the Protestant city of Antwerp, at that time the main commercial centre of Europe, had capitulated to the Spanish army representing the Catholic Habsburg sovereign of the Low Countries.Amsterdam, firmly in the hands of the Protestant rebels, became the new home of thousands of Protestant immigrants, mostly wealthy merchants, artists, scientists and engineers (Lesger 2006).The population of Amsterdam doubled in just a few years.The port of Amsterdam became the most important trading hub on the Atlantic coast, and dozens of cartographers settled there to trade with navigators, selling maps to them and buying from them information on newly discovered coasts.Jodocus Hondius was one of them.
Soon after settling in Amsterdam in 1593, Hondius started publishing maps, books and globes.As early as 1595 he cooperated with the major publisher of cartographical works at the time, Cornelis Claesz.(1551-1609).Hondius' rise to fame in Amsterdam cartography began soon after the turn of the century.Around 1604, together with Cornelis Claesz., he managed to acquire the original copperplates of Mercator's atlas (Meurer 1998: 61-6).This proved to be a turning point in his career.Claesz.and Hondius published a new edition of Ptolemy's Geographia in 1605 (Koeman 1967: Me 3), illustrating the work with Mercator's maps.It was the first book printed in Amsterdam using Greek charac-ters, a reflection of Hondius' humanist ideals.In the same year, Hondius bought a house on Kalverstraat, naming it 'De Wackeren Hond' or 'The Waking Dog' -a play on his name ('Hond' meaning 'dog' in Dutch) and his birthplace, Wakken.
In cooperation with Cornelis Claesz., Hondius continued to produce books based on Mercator's plates.In 1606, they published a new edition of the atlas.For this edition, Hondius added 36 new maps.A year later, in collaboration with the Arnhem printer Jan Jansz., Claesz.and Hondius published the Atlas Minor (Koeman 1967: Me 186), a pocket edition based on recut reductions of Mercator's maps.When Claesz.died in 1609, Hondius continued in the business as a publisher.Compared to the beginning of his career, when he had been hired to cut maps for other publishers, Hondius had thus advanced in the printing business.However, he suddenly died only three years later, on 17 February 1612.
The sudden death of Hondius left the family in disarray.Hondius' widow Coletta van den Keere was now responsible for bringing up at least eight young children alone (she actually bore 13 children but five died in childhood).She had no other option than to continue in the publishing business.There are many known instances of widows maintaining their deceased husband's print shops, and identifying themselves as widows in the imprint.However, the role of most women in printing business undoubtedly -and unfortunately -remains invisible (Bell 1996).It was customary among printers' widows in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to marry their deceased husband's master apprentice.They were, after all, best placed to continue running the business -that is, if the printer did not have adult sons.This arrangement was beneficial to all parties: the widow and her family could maintain their standard of living, while the ambitious master apprentice was able to establish his own business.For some reason, Coletta van den Keere chose not to remarry.Perhaps she felt that she was already too old, or perhaps she wanted to ensure that her children would later be able to continue the printing shop for themselves.In the end, it was Johannes Janssonius (Jan Jansz., 1588-1664), the son of Coletta's business associate Jan Jansz. of Arnhem, who stepped in to save the Hondius business.

Johannes Janssonius, Jodocus II and Henricus Hondius
Johannes Janssonius' father, Jan Jansz.Senior, had been a printer of atlases in Arnhem, where he collaborated with Jodocus Hondius and Cornelis Claesz.on the publication of the Atlas Minor.When the younger Johannes Janssonius settled in Amsterdam, he turned to his father's business associate Hondius, in whose shop he may have worked as an apprentice.Only six months after the death of Jodocus Hondius in 1612, Janssonius married Hondius' daughter Elisabeth (c.1589Elisabeth (c. -1627)).This marriage prevented the business from failing and kept it in the family.
The sons of Jodocus I Hondius, Jodocus II (1593-1629) and Henricus (c.1596/7-1651), were too young and too inexperienced to take over the business.Jodocus II was only 19 years old, and his brother was approximately three years younger.Even though they had probably been working in the business for several years, the legal age of majority at that time was 25 (Roberts 2012: 38-9).For Coletta van den Keere, it was vital to provide the children with an income and to continue their professional training.It seems logical that both brothers continued to work in the printing house, being trained by their older brotherin-law.Jodocus II Hondius (1593-1629) only settled himself as an independent printer in 1621, when he married Anna Staffmaeckers (Keuning 1948).His younger brother Henricus Hondius (c.1596/7-1651) gained independence after marrying Jannetje Verspreet in 1625 (van Eeghen 1985: 275). 3Upon his marriage he also left the paternal business to establish himself in a new house and shop.
Janssonius soon set up his own publishing house.Perhaps he wanted to be prepared for the time when his brothers-in-law were old enough to take over the business -apparently, it was Jodocus and Henricus who had inherited the valuable copperplates of the atlas maps.Janssonius would nevertheless continue to collaborate with his brothers-in-law.Van der Krogt (1997: 35) points out that Jodocus II left his father's atlas business mainly to his younger brother Henricus.But after his marriage, Henricus also left the printing house -only to return in 1629, the year both his older brother and his mother died (Coletta died on 31.12.1629).
The fact that all three heirs of Jodocus Hondius left the printing shop as soon as they married to establish independent businesses points to the fact that it was Coletta van den Keere who kept the original printing house 'De Wackeren Hond' running as a seller of maps and books.The three printing houses of Joannes Janssonius, Jodocus II and Henricus Hondius frequently collaborated to create new atlases and globes.But they also competed: when Henricus published a fifth edition of the atlas in 1623, Jodocus II started preparing his own version.He died in 1629, however, before it could be finished.Apparently, Jodocus II either had no (male) children who could continue the business, or his children were too young.In 1630, a year after his death, the property of his publishing house was sold at auction, and Willem Jansz.Blaeu managed to buy his copperplates (Keunig 1948).The Hondius legacy thus passed into the hands of a major competitor.Henricus continued to publish and sell maps.From 1633 onwards, he started collaborating intensely with his brother-in-law Janssonius to publish the atlas.It seems that he retired from the business in the 1640s, leaving it entirely to his brother-inlaw Janssonius, whose heirs would in turn establish an important dynasty of publishers of atlases and other books (van der Krogt 1997).

The atlas of 1613
The cartobibliographer Peter van der Krogt, an expert on the Mercator-Hondius Atlas, states that '[v]ery little is known about the cooperation between the Hondius brothers and their brother-in-law in publishing.Aside from the partnership in the continuation of Jodocus I's workshop, it seems all three successively started their own businesses' (van der Krogt 1997: 35).The Hondius family history raises the question of who published the 1613 edition of the Mercator-Hondius Atlas, published shortly after the death of Jodocus Senior (Koeman 1967: Me 22; see also Me 23 for the French edition).This atlas carries the imprint 'Sumptibus & typis aeneis Iudoci Hondij, Amsterodami An.D. 1613' , which literally translates as 'at the expense and with the copper types of Jodocus Hondius, in Amsterdam, 1613' .Many bibliographers have assumed that this imprint refers to Jodocus II Hondius, since his father had already died when the atlas was published (van der Krogt 1997: 80; STCN 118721313 and 112043402).However, as noted above, Jodocus Junior was legally underage and thus too young to be responsible for the edition himself.
In the case of the atlas edition, we can probably take the information in the imprint at face value.Although the actual printing of the atlas may only have been finished in 1613, the financial decisions concerning such a massive publishing project must necessarily have been taken earlier by Jodocus Hondius Senior himself.The copperplates used in the atlas belonged to him.The preface, signed in 1607, is also by Jodocus Hondius and has simply been reused from a previous edition.Although the 1613 atlas bears the indication 'Editio quarta' or fourth edition, this edition statement had already been used on the editions of 1611 and 1612 and would also be used in 1616 and 1619.The atlas of 1608 was labelled the third edition, and when Hondius added three new maps for the edition of 1611 he updated the edition statement.No new maps were added between 1611 and 1619; therefore, all the atlases published during this period were considered part of the 'editio quarta' (Keuning 1947).We can find evidence of this edition history in the Turku copy.As seen in Figure 1, the date in the imprint on the engraved title page is 1613, but the final number of the date has been changed from '2' into '3' by modifying the original copper plate.
The rationale behind publishing the 1613 atlas edition was undoubtedly based on both economic and emotional grounds.The addition of a double portrait of Mercator and Hondius, found in this edition for the first time, can be seen as an epitaph both to the great cartographer Mercator and to Hondius, the husband, father and teacher of his successors.The addition of an epitaph to Hondius himself by Petrus Montanus, placed after the older epitaph to Mercator, is a further indication of this sentiment.During his lifetime, Hondius had been a great admirer of Mercator.After his death, his family could find no better way to honour him than by placing both cartog raphers side by side, both in image and in text.
Another side of the story considers the practicalities involved.A huge financial undertaking such as this could not simply be halted.Many of Hondius' assets would have been taken up by the atlas production, and stopping the project at this stage would have meant a great financial loss.Subsequently, it would also have caused major difficulties in the process of dividing Hondius' legacy.Like all major atlas publications, this was a collaborative project.However, the death of the driving force behind it did not prevent the publication of the edition, as there were many others involved in the project who could take over Hondius' role.This publication was not that different from previous atlases except for having been initiated in the lifetime of Hondius Senior and seen through to completion by his family after his death.
An indication of this spirit of cooperation may be found in another product of Jodocus I Hondius -his large wall-mounted world map of 1611 (Stevenson and Fischer 1907).In the lower right quadrant of the map, covering the hypothetical southern continent Terra australis incognita, Hondius placed a cartouche with instructions on how to use the map. 4 The cartouche is framed by a table (covered with globes and instruments) at which five people are seated: to the left, a man and a woman are reading from a book and using a pair of compasses; to the right, two men are applying compasses to a globe; and behind an illustration of a measuring instrument, an old man with a beard is standing upright, also holding a pair of compasses (see Figure 2).
Edward Luther Stevenson and Joseph Fischer (1907: 18-19) argue that these people represent the Hondius family -Jodocus and his wife Coletta, with their sons Jodocus and Henricus.The older man in the back would then be Gerardus Mercator, which would make this scene a precursor to the famous posthumous double portrait of Mercator and Hondius.The latter identification is doubtful: except for the long grey beard, the portrait does not resemble Mercator and may equally be identified as Ptolemy, the legendary father of geography.Likewise, the woman in antique dress clearly represents Urania, the Greek muse of geography.It is possible that the man on the left is indeed Hondius, given the similarity of hairstyle and beard; and it is tempting to think that he portrayed his wife as his muse and his sons as his students.The left side of this scene is copied from an earlier drawing by the artist Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617), depicting Geometry in his series of the Muses (Welu 1987: 161;Schilder 2007: 315-9).Goltzius and Hondius knew each other, and it was Goltzius who would later draw the famous double portrait of Hondius and Mercator.Goltzius honoured Hondius and his wife by depicting them as exemplary cartographers.However, the two figures on the right, 4 A cartouche is a framed and decorated compartment containing text, often surrounded with emblematic illustrations.
supposedly depicting Jodocus Junior and Henricus Hondius, also derive from an earlier source: another design by Goltzius for his series The Seven Planets (Schilder 2007: 317-8;Welu 1987: 235 n.33). 5It is thus not very probable that these two figures are intended to portray the Hondius children.
Having introduced the Hondius family and their business in order to shed some light on the genesis of the 1613 edition of the Mercator-Hondius Atlas, we now move on to look at the atlas itself.We will not go into the actual process of physical production, entailing the printing of the text and the engraved plates on different presses and probably in different workshops; the colouring by hand of some of the printed maps; and the binding of those sheets into volumes that could be sold in Hondius' shop to individual customers or in bulk to other booksellers.We will instead engage in copy-specific bibliographical research, directing our attention towards one individual, previously undocumented copy of the 1613 atlas edition.

The Turku copy of the Latin Mercator-Hondius Atlas, editio quarta
The Turku, Donner Institute Mercator-Hondius Atlas is a copy of the editio quarta (folio; Jodocus Hondius, 1613-19; for a bibliographical description of the edition, see van der Krogt 1997: 80-5).The copy is bound in vellum, with blind tooling on the front and back covers.This is typical for Dutch atlases of this period, which indicates that the atlas is still in its original binding. 6The title is written on the spine by 5 Welu identified the origin as a world map of Hendrik van Langren after Petrus Plancius.6 See further De la Fontaine Verwey 1976.hand.The binding has been repaired later by stitching.The maps in this copy have not been coloured.There are three flyleaves before the first signature (A) and three flyleaves after the last signature (8L).
The Turku copy mostly corresponds to van der Krogt's description of the edition (1997: 80-5, 1:104A); we will only record the departures from the description here.F6, which is either blank or cancelled, is blank in this copy.The order of the maps on S and V is inverted.According to van der Krogt's description, S1v-S2r should contain the map of Irlandiae Regnvm; in the Turku copy, this map is on V1v-V2r.The map that should be on V1v-V2r is titled 'Vdrone.Irlandiae in Catherlagh Baronia' .This map, in turn, is on S1v-S2r of the Turku copy.Such a variant is not recorded in the description of the edition, which suggests that it is not found in the copies consulted for the description (although it is noted that the Amsterdam copy lacks S altogether).
In addition to the inverted order of the two maps, there are some minor differences between the Turku copy and the description of the edition in van der Krogt 1997; some of these differences may simply be too minute to appear in the description. 7However, there is one such variant that may be significant in terms of the chronology of printing the edition.In the Turku copy, leaf 4M1 is erroneously signed <Mmmn> -that is, the last letter is <n> instead of <m>.In the copy of the 1613 atlas digitized on Digitale Sammlungen Darmstadt, for instance, this leaf is correctly signed <Mmmm>.

From Holland to Turku via the Habsburg Empire
We will now look at the Turku copy in a different light.In the previous section, we listed copy-specific details resulting from the production process of the atlas in the print shop.Next, we endeavour to follow this copy after it left the printing house by examining the various marks of provenance found on the pages of the book.The evidence on the leaves of the atlas is scarce, and our interpretations remain necessarily tentative, paving the way for further bibliographical investigations.
7 For example, two words in the title on 4Q1r differ morphologically from the description in van der Krogt 1997.Where the transcription of the title in the description reads 'Geldria' and 'Zvtphaniam' , the Turku copy has 'Geldriae' and 'Zvtphanicvm' respectively.
The second flyleaf of the atlas has two ownership inscriptions.The first one, on the recto side, is shown in Figure 3.We tentatively read this as 'D.Klous' .This Dutch surname, albeit rare, still exists.The Database of Surnames in the Netherlands records 213 people with this surname in 2007; interestingly, most of them live in the area of northern Holland that is heavily annotated by the owner of the atlas (see below).On paleographical grounds, we assume this owner to be the earliest one of those whose names appear in the copy.We have not been able to find more information on this owner, which is unfortunate, as Klous may be responsible for many of the notes and corrections discussed below.
In addition to the ownership inscriptions on the flyleaves, there is an inscription within the back cover of the Turku copy: Pleniorem tabularum descriptionem in hoc libro haberi, quàm in Atlante Minori, vel hoc argumento esse pb.q. in ult [im]  Below the double portrait of Mercator and Hondius, the description of Mercator has been supplemented: the place of Mercator's death ('Duisburgi') has been added in an italic hand.The map of Holland on 4O1v-2r also contains some markings by hand: Goude (Gouda) has been circled, while other towns have been boxed in black ink.These include Leyden (Leiden), Oudewater, Catwyck op zee (Katwijk), Streefkerk, Vreeswyck, Maersen (Maarssen), Saenredam (Zaandam), Aertswoude, and Seuen houen (Zevenhoven).In the printed map, 'Seuen houen' is spelled as two words, but the <n> and <h> have been connected in the Turku copy by hand in black ink to change the spelling into 'Seuenhouen' .Auenhorn (Avenhorn) and Grosthuys (Grosthuizen) are close together and thus within the same box.Avenhorn is underlined, either to separate the two names or to indicate that this was the more important place of the two.'Grosthuys' (as printed) has been corrected into 'Grosthuysen' by hand.Finally, the annotator has added a name on the map between Hekelingen and Putte (the former island of Putten, on which the village of Hekelingen is situated). 9The circled or boxed places may have been especially important for the user of this copy.The neatly executed handwritten corrections -noticeable only when carefully examined and compared to another copy of the edition -suggest that the annotator was attentive to detail and had clear preferences for the Dutch spelling of place names.
There are also some additions elsewhere in the atlas.Within the section of the map for Fessae et Marocchi Regna titled 'Peñon de Velez' (7F1v), a handwritten note 'Bedis vel Velez' has been added on the map. 10 The indices have been annotated by hand, mostly with page number references.The page reference to Russia in the index on B2 has been corrected by hand from the printed '100' into '97' .Furthermore, the Turku copy is equipped with two-sided bookmark tabs that are glued on the edges of the leaves to mark Africa (K1r), America (both M1v-2r and 7X1v-2r), Anglia (P2r-v), Hispania (2Y1r), Gallia (3K1r), and Belgium (the tab is now loose, inserted between 4I2v and 4K1r).Such bookmark tabs were used in a simi-lar way to modern-day post-it note bookmarks; to help the reader quickly find the correct location in a book.11They were probably very useful in this atlas which comprises approximately four hundred leaves.
The hand in the Latin note and that in the index annotations are paleographically similar, and may be written by the same person, but there is too little evidence for a reliable paleographical identification of these hands.If, indeed, all (or most of) these corrections, additions, bookmark tabs and comments were included by the same -probably early -owner, it seems that they were actively using their copy and even improving it.For them, the atlas was not only valuable property, or a coffee-table book simply to be looked at and enjoyed, but also a practical tool for structuring geographical information.Although the identity of this owner remains uncertain, the markings made by them may yet lead to a positive identification.
Later owners seem to have refrained from correcting or adding to their copy, apart from marking it with their name, stamp or ex libris (bookplate).A second owner who added his mark identified himself as J. Esgers (Figure 4).We suggest that this owner could be Johannes Esgers (1696-1755), a Dutch theologian.He graduated from the University of Leiden in 1714 and became a pastor in Naarden, Middelburg and Amsterdam before being called back to the university at Leiden to become a professor in theology and, later, in Hebrew.12His library was sold in 1756, a year after his death, in Leiden (STCN 304381004; Book Sales Catalogues 2063).Item 522 in this catalogue (on p. 20) is mentioned as: 'G.Mercatoris Atlas, a J. Hondio suppl.& divulgatus, Amst.1613' .This entry may well refer to the copy which is currently in Turku. 13e do not know who bought the atlas at the auction of Esgers' library, but the copy seems to have migrated from the Netherlands to Central Europe.The first flyleaf (recto) has a library stamp with information supplied by hand: 'Saal GB; Kasten II; Fach <7>; Nr 3' (Figure 5).
A similar stamp is found in the Czech provenance database Provenio which records provenance marks found in books at the Czech National Library Museum (Knihovna Národního muzea) in Prague.The stamp shows in the image of the title page of Ein schoene cronica oder hystori buch von den für naemlichsten weybern, a German translation of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris ('On Famous Women') published in Augsburg in 1543 (VD16 B 5817).The copy in question was once in the library of the princes of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Raitz located in Rájec and Svitavou. 14 Between 1734 and 1811, Salm-Reifferscheidt-Raitz was an independent miniature principality within the Holy Roman Empire, located in the south of what is now the Czech Republic.The castle of Rajec still holds a sizeable library, based on the original Salm-Reifferscheidt-Raitz collection (Cendari 166).We do not know whether the Turku copy was also part of the library of the princes of Salm-Reifferscheidt-Raitz. The inclusion of a similar stamp in the two books suggests, however, that both the 1543 Boccaccio and the 1613 Mercator-Hondius Atlas were at one point part of the same collection -which may or may not have been in Salm-Reifferscheidt-Raitz.
What is certain is that the Turku copy did indeed end up in what is now the Czech Republic: the bookplate of a Moravian nobleman, Egbert von Belcredi (1816-1894), is glued within the front cover.The latter part of his name has been scraped out by a National Library of the Netherlands, for checking the microfiche copy of the auction catalogue.14 The library is described on the Provenio database at <http://opac.nm.cz/authorities/48457>.The authors are grateful to Dr Marta Vaculínová of the National Museum Library in Prague for her help with the identi fication of this stamp.We do not know how the Turku copy travelled from what is currently the Czech Republic to Finland.It had become part of a private collection in Finland by the start of the twentieth century.The Donner Institute acquired the copy in the late 1990s, buying it from Cecil Hagelstam's antiquarian bookshop in Helsinki. 16There is no copy with Finnish provenance listed in van der Krogt 1997; it appears that the Turku atlas is a previously unrecorded copy of the 1613 edition.
15 For the Belcredi family see ÖBL: s.v.; Melville 1988;Pech 1958. 16 The authors are grateful to Dr Tore Ahlbäck of the Donner Institute for the provenance information regarding the Donner Institute.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The altered imprint on the title page of the Turku copy of the 1613 atlas.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3.The ownership inscription on the second flyleaf of the Turku copy.
later owner.The Belcredi family owned land in Moravia (nowadays part of the Czech Republic).Egbert's younger brother, Count Richard Belcredi, was an important figure in Austrian politics in the 1860s, becoming prime minister in 1865.Egbert Belcredi himself was an Austrian officer, a member of the Austrian Reichsrat, and a long-time member of the Moravian parliament.He was a leader of the Moravian party of passive resistance inside the Habsburg Empire which was at that time developing into a dual monarchy with Austrian and Hungarian spheres of influence (to the dismay of the many smaller ethnicities in the empire who strove for a federal model of many nations).15

Figure 4 .Figure 5 .
Figure 4.The ownership mark of Esgers on the first flyleaf verso of the Turku copy.
â pag[in]â 365.{tâ} lineae 22. hîc habeantur, indè à sextâ lineâ usq; ad 27mam, quae in Atlante Minori desunt.V. et porrò eâdem pag[in]â sic et p. 349.media ferè pagina, inde à verbis: Continet et tabula nostra Philippinas, etc. deest in Atlante Min. 8 8 'In this book you will find a fuller description of the tables [maps] than in the Atlas Minor, as this example shows that on the last page (365) there are 22 lines, of which from the 6th up to the 27th are absent in the Atlas Minor.See also further the same page and page 349, around the middle of the page, from the words "Continet et tabula nostra Philippinas" and so on, is absent in the Atlas Minor.'