BOOK OF MICHAEL OF RHODES VOLUME I

This solid, beautifully produced book contains a perfect facsimile of the 15th century manuscript created by the Venetian mariner Michael of Rhodes, with each folio reproduced at its actual size, including a number of blank pages. Michael of Rhodes joined the Venetian navy as an oarsman in 1401, and over the next 40 years he was constantly at sea on voyages with Venice's commercial and military fleets, fighting in several battles and rising to the highest ranks available to someone who was not an aristocrat. In 1434 he began to write a manuscript distilling the knowledge he had acquired, including commercial mathematics, astrology, portolans, and the first extant treatise on shipbuilding. Some parts of the manuscript, particularly the sections on shipbuilding, were copied in the succeeding century, after which the manuscript disappeared for several hundred years until 1966 when it suddenly appeared at Sotheby's and passed into private hands. In 2000 it was sold again to a collector who made it available to the Dibner Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and this facsimile is the first in a three-volume series by MITC. The second volume transcribes and translates the manuscript, and the third collects scholarly studies discussing the world of Michael Rhodes, his mathematics, use of visual imagery, portolan, shipbuilding text, calendar, almanac and system of time reckoning. This first facsimile volume is beautiful to look at, not only because of the elegance of the script but also because of Michael's attractive illustrations, particularly the colourful signs of the Zodiac. 519 facsimile pages in colour.