Vosgean Gymnasium

The Vosgean Gymnase was a religious and scientific organization created towards 1500 with the Saint-Dié-of-Vosges.

The ecclesiastical school

Located on the roads connecting Paris to the towns of Strasbourg, Sélestat, Heidelberg and Freiburg, the small town Lorraine had created a school of the Frères of the common life under the protection of the Duché of Lorraine and the the Vatican. This ecclesiastical school concerned directly Rome. It was founded in 1490 by the canon Vautrin Lud.

In addition to its “Latin school” being located in the tradition of the “modern devotion”, the Vosgean Gymnasium comprised an important printing works for the propagation of the scientific work in all the fields, energy of the geography to the music while passing by the geometry.

Its first publication, in 1505, was a treaty of perspective, De Artificiali Perspectiva by Jean Pilgrim says Viator, in French and Latin. This treaty, the first with being printed in Europe on this subject - preceding work was handwritten -, applied the new principles of the prospect to construction for cities. The German artist Albrecht Dürer took again the construction of Viator in his engraving of Saint Jerome in 1514.

The coterie of the geographers

Within this hearth the humanistic ones was distinguished also a group consisted the canon Vautrin Lud itself, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, the hellenist and corrector of printing works Mathias Ringmann, the Latinist Jean Basin and Nicolas Lud, nephew of the canon and secretary of the duke Rene II.

In 1507, the duke of Lorraine entrusts to them the account of forwardings of the navigator Florentin Amerigo Vespucci. These texts, which speak about grounds new discoveries beyond the Atlantic, impassion the scientists déodatiens. They decide to draw up a chart based on work of the Greek Claude Ptolémée by supplementing them by the discoveries which have just reached them. The “new World”, described by Amerigo Vespucci, seems a Continent bordered of oceans, quite distinct from the Asia. An explanatory booklet containing a treaty of Geography and the translation Latin E of the four accounts of Amerigo Vespucci accompanies the Carte. It is the Cosmographiae Introductio , in which the Vosgean Gymnasium explains why it wishes to baptize the new continent “America”. And although elaborate at the expense of the true discoverer Christophe Colomb, this work made authority and was essential in the whole world. Thus the Saint-Dié-of-Vosges honors today with the title of “godmother of America” .

The group also printed in 1507, in the workshop created by Vautrin Lud, a board of twelve time zones to be cut out making it possible to constitute a Globe.

Random links: