{"id":1400,"date":"2025-03-05T15:02:42","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T15:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/?p=1400"},"modified":"2025-03-05T15:06:50","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T15:06:50","slug":"maiers-atalanta-fugiens-in-special-collections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/2025\/03\/05\/maiers-atalanta-fugiens-in-special-collections\/","title":{"rendered":"Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1617) in Special Collections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1617) is one of the most intriguing early modern books held in the Templeman Special Collections and Archives. This blog post by MEMS PhD student and Knowledge Orders before Modernity Scholar, Anisia Iacob, delves into its secrets.<\/p>\n

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Page 17 from Michael Maier\u2019s Atalanta fugiens. Engraved by Matthaeus Merini. Oppenheim: Johann-Theodor de Bry, 1617.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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While the name Atalanta Fugiens might ring a bell for some, the original format is elusive to most of us who have heard of Michael Maier (1568-1622).\u00a0Atalanta fugiens\u00a0<\/em>is an alchemical emblem book published first in 1617 by German alchemist and physician Michael Maier. The book follows the story of the Greek myth of Atalanta and Hippomenes. In Ovid\u2019s account of the myth, Atalanta claims she\u2019ll marry the man who could beat her in a running race. Atalanta is a great runner and, confident in her abilities, accepts Hippomenes\u2019 challenge. Although Hippomenes isn\u2019t a better runner than Atalanta, he uses a ruse to win the race. He drops three golden apples which he received from Venus. Distracted by the apples, Atalanta stops for a second to pick them up, and this is how Hippomenes manages to beat her and win her hand in marriage.<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0Atalanta fugiens<\/em>\u00a0edition from the 1617 is a peculiar book for many reasons. It starts with a preface on ancient music and explains the Greek myth of Atalanta. The book is adorned with 50 emblems, each coming with an epigram in verse, complete with a music sheet for a fugue in three voices. Atalanta is the\u00a0vox fugiens<\/em>, Hippomenes is the\u00a0vox sequens<\/em>, and the third voice or\u00a0vox morans\u00a0<\/em>is the\u00a0Pomum objectum\u00a0<\/em>(the apple used as a ruse).\u00a0<\/em>Most likely, 40 out of the 50 fugues are based on the work of John Farmer (c. 1570-1601). Farmer was an English composer who was part of the English Madrigal School. During the Elizabethan period, he made a name for himself through his settings in four voices meant for old church songs. In 1599, he published his collection of four-part madrigals, dedicated to Edward de Vere (1550-1604). Farmer\u2019s piece titled\u00a0Divers and Sundry Waies<\/em>\u00a0is believed to be the inspiration for Maier\u2019s musical pieces due to their similarities in arrangement. Besides the music and verse, each epigram is also connected to two pages of discourse where the theme of the image and song are discussed.<\/p>\n

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Page 16 from Michael Maier\u2019s Atalanta fugiens, featuring the fugue in three voices. Engraved by Matthaeus Merini. Oppenheim: Johann-Theodor de Bry, 1617.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"Pages<\/a>
Pages 66-7 with one of the discourses from Michael Maier\u2019s Atalanta fugiens. Engraved by Matthaeus Merini. Oppenheim: Johann-Theodor de Bry, 1617.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The book is written in Latin, with a height of 20 cm \u2013 making it quite easily a portable format. The engraver of the emblems is identified to be Matthaeus Merian the Elder (1593-1650), an engraver and book dealer, part of the Basel patrician family of Merian, and one of the most prominent German illustrators of the century. This present edition was published in Oppenheim, Germany, which coincides with the date of Matthaeus Merian moving to the city. He moved there in 1616 and started working immediately for the publisher Johann Theodor de Bry (1561-1623), son of popular artist and traveler Theodor de Bry (1528-1598). This means that most likely\u00a0Atalanta fugiens,\u00a0<\/em>Maier\u2019s commission, was one of the first projects that Merian undertook in his new role in De Bry\u2019s workshop. Merian\u2019s work on Maier\u2019s book must have contributed to his reputation as a skilled illustrator for alchemical works, as he works on another similar project in 1678 for\u00a0Musaeum Hermeticum<\/em>. The latter publication shares page formatting similar to Atalanta Fugiens in terms of the text-image ratio and functions.<\/p>\n

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Page ten from Lambsprinck\u2018s De Lapide Philosophico [On the Philosopher\u2019s Stone] as published in the Musaeum hermeticum, reformatum et amplificatum. Engraved by Matthaeus Merian. Francofurti : Apud Hermannum \u00e0 Sande, 1678.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While this format was not common for most alchemical works, it\u2019s not extremely unusual when considered in context. Maier\u2019s career as a physician and alchemy enthusiast can be described as a constant balancing act. On one hand, it was the balance between the still-strong Galenic influence in medicine and the Greek-Roman heritage it encapsulated. On the other hand, the emerging Paracelsian framework, which was starting to impose itself as a new way of thinking about medicine from a chemical perspective. Besides this, he needed to perform a balancing act regarding theological matters. He needed to find a way between his Lutheran faith and tenets that pragmatically dealt with the world, with minimal affordances to the occult, and the alchemical possibilities of supernatural forces and realms that couldn\u2019t be grasped through the established framework of the Reformation. Besides\u00a0Atalanta fugiens\u00a0<\/em>being a recipe for the philosopher\u2019s stone, it\u2019s also a race against Maier\u2019s times and context, a search for the right answers in a period of great changes.<\/p>\n

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If you would like to listen to the music of ‘Emblem I: The Wind Carried Him in Its Belly’, visit this YouTube video<\/a> by the American Museum of Paramusicology.<\/p>\n

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By Anisia Iacob<\/p>\n

MEMS PhD Student |\u00a0KOM Scholarship<\/a> Awardee<\/p>\n

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Many thanks to the Special Collection from Templeman Library at the University of Kent for housing and making accessible such an early edition. Special thanks to Suzanna Ivanic\u2019s Religious Materiality<\/em>\u00a0seminars which facilitated this finding and, consequently, this blog post.<\/p>\n

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See original post on Anisia’s website here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens (1617) is one of the most intriguing early modern books held in the Templeman Special Collections and Archives. This blog post … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82691,"featured_media":1401,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82691"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1400"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1408,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions\/1408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}