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156 C&t&lina Velculescu, V. Guruianu 4

In 1813 we find the miscellaneous contents of §chei (with minor dif-ferences), that is Povestea farilor ... Asiei and Imparfeala dintdi. Cozmograjie ..., copied by the verger, furrier, miniaturist and chronicler Ioan sin Dobre of the Batiste Church in Bucharest, yet he did not use the Brasov manu-script as his sources.¹² It seems that another manuscript¹³ dating from the first years of the 19th century also contains a brief and transformed variant of Povestea farilor ... Asiei and of Imparfeala dintdi. Cozmograjie .... but it also contains several chapters not to be found in the former manuscripts

(1436 and 3404).

In Costea Dascalul’s manuscript, the two fragments of Cosmography are placed after Fiori di Virtu and the Physiologus and before the History oj Syntipa of "Persia” and the History of Aesopus of "Great Phrygia”. The description of the Asian countries in the cosmography seem to answer the need of the reader to learn as much as possible of far-away places, of exotic and mythical people and animals, that are mentioned in the above texts.

The fragment called Povestea farilor ... Asiei (ms. 1436, f. 49—68) has among its most remote sources a similar text with one of the various sources used by Sebastian Munster for his Cosmography ¹⁴ towards the middle of the 16th century. Indeed, there are explicit similarities between the Ro-manian version (f. 49—66) and the German version (ed. 1567) of Munster's Cosmography (pp. 1348—1417). It is yet surprising to find out that the Roma-nian text contains information present only in the French version 1568 of Munster's book. A good example is the story entitled De amazonine neveaste (About Amazons, ms. 1436, f. 63^v — 65^v). A similar narrative is included in Munster’s editions (1567 ed., pp. 1326—1327; 1568 ed., pg. 1189) but there is a different variant only in the French version (pp. 1268—1269). The story of ms. 1436 is closer to the latter French version, yet it differs by several details added to version written at §chei.

The narrative about the Amazons in the latter French version and that of Costea Dascalul's originate from one of the chapters of the Universal History by Trogus Pompeius, a work which is preserved only in Justin's short transformed narrative. In the manuscript of §chei, the Historian Justin ¹⁵

¹²    Rom. ms. BAR, 3404, f. 9—19; for morę details see "Manuscriptum", 1991, no. 2—4, pp. 26 — 33 and 1992, no. 1 — 4, pp. 224—233.

¹³    Rom. ms. BAR no. 1282, f. 178—186, see also the bibliography at the previous

notę.

¹⁴    Sebastian Miinster, Cosmographei, Basel, 1550 (photo-print edition in the series Thea-trum orbis terramm, Amsterdam, 1967, edited by R. A. Skelton and A. O. Vietor, Iniroduc-tory notę by Ruthardt Oehme). The text comparisons were achieved by using the two editions existing in the Library of the Romanian Academy; the German edition of 1567 and the French edition of 1568. For other instances of Munster's Cosmography in the European culture, see F. Lestringant, op. cit., in notę 6.

For the mediaeval period, see David Woodward, Mediaeval Mapaemundi in The His tory of Carthography_t vol. I, Carthography in Prehistorie, Ancient and Medieval Europę and the Mediterranean, edited by J. B. Harley and D. Woodward, Chicago, 1987, pp. 286 — 370.

¹⁶ We are referring to the Latin historian who lived in the 2nd century A. D. See Justini Historiarum ex Pompeio Trogo Libr i XLIV, Amsterdam, 1635, pp. 25—27.

For the fables on the Amazons, Picolomini, Opera Omnia, Basel, 1551, p. 298; see also Paulus Orosius Adversus Paganos Historiarum Lebri VII (1615 edition, pp. 40—41).

For the fragment De amazonine neveaste we also studied, besides the two editions of S. Munster’s Cosmography preserved in the Romanian Academy Library in Bucharest, other editions existing in a number of libraries. all over the country. Some of these editions can be situated in the same category of texts with the already ąuoted French edition of 1568