The Notitia Dignitatum: One Empire, Two Emperors, and More than 100 Magnificently Coloured Woodcuts
Notitia utraque dignitatum cum Orientis tum Occidentis vltra Arcadii Honoriique caesarum tempora, illustre uetustatis monumentum, imò thesaurus prorsum incomparabilis. Basel, Hieronymus Froben and Nikolaus Episcopius, 1552.
One of the great visual monuments of late antiquity and Renaissance humanism: the first complete illustrated edition of the Notitia dignitatum, the extraordinary late Roman handbook of imperial offices, military units, provincial administration, and court ceremonial, magnificently printed in Basel in 1552 and preserved here in two masterfully contemporary coloured copies.
With more than 100 often full-page woodcuts depicting imperial insignia, military shields, codicils of office, provinces, fortresses, cities, and court officials, the work stands among the most visually striking political books of the Renaissance. The first copy is especially remarkable for its sumptuous colouring heightened with shimmering transparent glaze, probably egg white, producing an almost enamel-like brilliance.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
*8 a-o6 p4 q-r6 = 108 leaves. Illustrated with printer’s device on first and final pages, 106 often full-page woodcuts, and numerous criblée initials, all in woodcut and masterfully contemporary coloured. Folio (321 × ca. 208 mm). Modern vellum binding over smooth spine with gilt black morocco spine label, yapp edges, and lettered fore-edge, preserved in modern slipcase. A few lines underscored in an early hand; occasional small defects or abrasions within image area. Provenance: early ownership inscription “P. d Merenborch” struck through on title.
Second copy: 106 often full-page woodcuts and numerous criblée initials, all in woodcut and contemporary coloured. Folio (336 × ca. 224 mm). Modern half leather binding with two spine labels and gilt spine decoration. Occasionally faint colour offsetting. Provenance: splendid painted armorial device in gold, silver, and colours on verso of title belonging to Jean Prévot, mintmaster of Dijon, with motto “Tela praevisa minus nocent”; title additionally inscribed “Guyette Diaconus 1759.”
The State Handbook of the Late Roman Empire
The Notitia dignitatum is one of the most important surviving documents for the structure of the late Roman Empire.
Compiled after the permanent division of the Empire in 395, it records the civil and military offices of both the Eastern and Western Empires under Arcadius and Honorius. The work systematically lists court hierarchies, provincial administrations, military commands, bureaucratic offices, insignia of rank, and the shield devices of imperial units.
Its historical importance is immense because the text survives from only a single manuscript tradition descending from the now-lost Codex Spirensis, once preserved in the cathedral library of Speyer and no longer traceable after the seventeenth century.
The Basel edition of 1552 therefore became the principal vehicle through which Renaissance Europe rediscovered the administrative machinery of the Roman Empire.
Humanism, Empire, and Charles V
The edition was prepared by the Prague-born humanist Sigismund Gelenius (1497–1554), scholar, translator, and editor for the great Basel printing house of Froben. He dedicated the volume to Andreas Vesalius, personal physician to Emperor Charles V.
The political implications of the publication were unmistakable.
Europe itself stood divided between two rival imperial powers: Charles V and Francis I. At the same time the Ottoman threat loomed ever larger following the siege of Vienna in 1529. The Notitia dignitatum, with its vision of two emperors governing a unified Roman world, became more than an antiquarian curiosity. It offered a historical and ideological model for imperial coexistence at a moment of profound political instability.
Gelenius repeatedly emphasizes the dual structure of empire in his preface, comparing the divided Roman Empire to the larger and smaller limbs of a single body. The dedication to Vesalius, Europe’s greatest anatomist, transformed political theory itself into a form of imperial physiology.
More than 100 Extraordinary Woodcuts
The illustrations are among the greatest achievements of sixteenth-century historical printing.
Most derive ultimately from late antique models transmitted through the Carolingian manuscript tradition of the lost Codex Spirensis. Around 1536 the designs were translated into woodcut by Conrad Schnitt, who rendered architecture, armour, insignia, garments, codicils, weapons, vessels, and ceremonial devices in a remarkable late Gothic classicizing style.
Additional illustrations, probably designed by Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch after 1547, depict Rome and Constantinople beneath arcades symbolizing the dual imperial structure of East and West. Particularly striking is the differentiated colouring of Constantinople and the eastern territories, subtly alluding to the Ottoman conquest of the city and the fractured state of Christendom.
The insignia themselves possess extraordinary visual power. Every official received an imperial codicil upon entering office, and these ceremonial books appear here decorated with symbolic representations of the official’s duties. Thus the comes largitionum appears with vessels and provisions, while the primicerius notariorum bears writing implements and instruments of administration.
Unlike medieval heraldry, these emblems derive authority not from lineage, but from function itself. The imagery therefore embodies one of the central ideals of Renaissance humanism: the vision of an ordered imperial bureaucracy governed through competence and service rather than dynastic fragmentation.
The Beauty of the Colouring
The extraordinary contemporary colouring heightens the iconic quality of the imagery even further.
Military shields, codicils, architectural settings, ceremonial insignia, and allegorical figures are rendered in carefully differentiated tones of blue, green, red, gold, silver, and ochre. In the first copy, transparent highlights produce an almost luminous surface effect rarely encountered in sixteenth-century colour work.
The result is less a simple antiquarian handbook than a visual theatre of imperial administration.
Provenance
First copy: early ownership inscription “P. de Merenborch,” possibly Pieter van Merenborch of Utrecht, whose heraldic device appears in Pieter Saenredam’s famous painting of the Jacobskerk in Utrecht.
Second copy: painted armorial device of Jean Prévot, mintmaster of Dijon, with motto “Tela praevisa minus nocent”; later inscription “Guyette Diaconus 1759.”
Literature
Adams N 354; BM STC German 747; Brunet IV, 111; Ebert 14904; Graesse IV, 691; not in Heckethorn; Hieronymus 1984, no. 466; Jähns I, 126ff.; Lonchamp, Suisse 1164; Schweiger II/2, 618; VD16 N 1884.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 51a-b:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume II
