DE L’ ISLE (INSULANUS), GUILLAUME: BYZANTINE EMPIRE

The map shows the Byzantine Empire divided into military-administrative units (themes). It was produced and published by Guillaume de L'Isle, but it was originally conceived by Anselm Bandur (Ston 1675-Paris 1743), the Benedictine of Dubrovnik, who was the curator of the Cosimo III Medici library in Florence and, as a well-known Byzantologist, he went to serve Louis XIV of France. In Paris, in 1718, he published his most famous work "Numismata Imperatorum Romanorum", which also contains one of the first extensive numismatic bibliographies. This map was very popular, and it was published in many editions of de l'Isle atlases, as well as in Covens and Mortier's atlases until 1789. It was also used with the Imperii Orientalis et Circumjacentium Regionum map in the 2nd edition of the book by French historian Charles du Fresne du Cange, "The History of Byzantine Doubles Commentario Illustratie", printed in Venice in 1729. Because that there are no traces of overlapping on the map, except in the middle, it is likely that the map originates from one of the de L'Isle's atlases, not from the du Cange's book, whose dimensions are of folio format, and the maps in it are multiple overlapped.