270 COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 



Introduction to Cosmography, together with some principles of Geometry neces 

 sary to the purpose. Also four voyages (navigationes) of Americus Vespucius. A 

 description of universal Cosmography, both stereometrical and plauometrical, 

 together with what was unknown to Ptolemy and has been recently discovered. 



Distich. Neither the earth nor the stars possess anything greater than God or 

 Caesar, for the God rules the stars and Caesar the climes of the earth. 



Among the inmates of the monastery the three most notable were the 

 poet, Pierre de Blarru, Jean Basin, an accomplished linguist, and Wai - 

 tier or Gautrin Lud, director of the mines of Lorraine and secretary to 

 Duke Eene II, the sovereign of the province and one of the most 

 enlightened princes of his time. To these were subsequently added 

 Martin Waldseemuller and Matthias Kiuginan, both of whom were dis 

 tinguished as linguists, geographers and devotees of science and letters. 



Under the ninth title, &quot;De quibusdam cosmographiae rudimentis,&quot; the 

 author, who has been describing Europe, Asia, and Africa as three 

 climates or grand divisions of the globe, as designated by Ptolemy, 

 abruptly launches the following proposition : 



Americo. Nunc vero and hecpartes sunt latins lustrata) et alia quarta pars per 

 Americu Vesputium (Vt in sequentibus audietur) inventa est-qua non video cur 

 quis hire vetet ab Americo inventore sagacis ingenij viro Amerigen quasi Americi 

 terram sive American! discendam-cum Europa et Asia a niulieribus sua fortita sint 

 nomina. 



Which in English reads: 



But now that these parts have been more widely explored and another fourth part 

 discovered by Americus Vespucius (as will be seen hereafter), I do not see why we 

 should quietly refuse to name it America, namely, the land of Americus or America, 

 after its discoverer, Americns, a man of sagacious mind, since both Europe and Asia 

 derived their names from women. 



&quot;But for these nine lines,&quot; says Harrisse, &quot; written by an obscure geog 

 rapher in a little village of the Vosges, the Western Hemisphere might 

 have been called The Land of the Holy Cross, 7 or Atlantis, or 

 Columbia, Hesperides, or Iberia, New India, or simply The 

 Indies, as it is designated officially in Spain to this day.&quot; 



As it was, however, the suggestion of Hylacomylus was immediately 

 adopted by geographers everywhere; the new land beyond the Atlantic 

 had, by a stroke of a pen, been christened for all time to come. 



The village of St. Die (Urbs Deodati) was founded about the year 

 660 A. D., by St. Deodate, ex-bishop of Nevers, who resigned his 

 bishopric and retired to a pleasant valley on the headwaters of the Eiver 

 Meurthe. Here he founded a chapel which he named &quot;Galilee.&quot; The 

 chapel in time expanded to a church, was christened Notre Dame, and 

 around it was built a powerful monastery with beetling walls and encir 

 cling moat, a citadel and defense for the followers of the cross. 



Under the patronage of Duke Kene a society of learned and inquiring 

 men was constituted, which, about the beginning of the sixteenth cen 

 tury, were associated at St. Die for mutual inspiration and assistance, 

 under the title of &quot;Gynmase Vosgien,&quot; or Academy of the Vosges. 



