chastity of the canons of Saint Dié were not always above reproach-they feasted, drank, fought, and gallivanted; but, on the whole, they seem to have ruled strongly and well for the age in which they lived, and by the close of the fifteenth century the chapitre, then under the rule of Grand Prévot Louis de Dommartin, counted among its canons several men distinguished for their talents and learning. Among these the three most notable were the poet Pierre de Blarru, author of the "Nanciade," a stately Latin epic which celebrates the victory of Lorraine over the Burgundians at the battle of Nancy; Jean Basin, an accomplished linguist and rhetorician, whose elegant Latin was the pride of his associates; and Waltier, Gualtier, or Guatrin Lud, director-general of the mines of Lorraine and secretary to Duke René II., who was then the reigning sovereign of the province, and one of the most enlightened and versatile princes of his time. To these were added subsequently Martin Waldseemüller, from Freiburg in Baden, and Matthias Ringmann, a native of Schlettstadt in Alsace, both of whom were distinguished as linguists, geographers, and devotees of science and letters.

These five men and several others less notable, led by Guatrin Lud, and under the sympathetic patronage of Duke René, formed a club or society of learned and inquiring men, who about the beginning of the sixteenth century were associated at Saint Dié for mutual inspiration and assistance, under the title of "The Gymnase Vosgien," or Academy of the Vosges. This organization was not, as has been so often erroneously stated, a university, or in any sense a school or college for purposes of instruction, but a voluntary conclave of scholarly men, brought together by the sympathy resulting from similarity of tastes and purposes at a time when advanced culture was rare outside the

gion was then almost a wilderness, and the valley which enshrined the primitive chapel was called the Vale of Galilee. The chapel in time expanded into a church, which was christened Notre Dame, and around this there was built up a powerful monastery, with beetling walls and circling moat-a citadel of refuge and defence for the followers of the cross. The troubled centuries that followed brought strife and persecution to both saint and sinner, and toward 990 A.D. the monastery of Saint Diez was secularized and converted into a chapitre or abbey of prebendary canons, under the immediate control of a mitred prelate called Grand Prévot, who, under the privileges accorded by both Church and crown, ruled the surrounding district with almost the authority of a king. Close outside the protecting walls of the citadel there grew up in course of time the secular village of Saint Deodat, the name of which was abridged successively to Saint Diez, Saint Diey, and finally, by an edict of Pope Leo IX., to the Saint Dié of modern times.

If we may trust the testimony of certain secular historians, the sobriety and

larger cities and university towns. Similar clubs existed at that period in Heidelberg, Freiburg, Augsburg, and Basel, with all of which the gymnase at Saint Dié was in close and regular correspondence.

The Cosmographiae Introductio, as will hereinafter appear, was the collective product of the five principal members of the Vosgian Gymnase, and in view of their joint responsibility for its results, a brief personal introduction to each of them may be of interest at this point in the story. Portraiture in their time was in its infancy, but Lud and Ringmann were artists in their own right, and to this fact is due the portraits of four of the quintet which are here reproduced. Waldseemüller, as we shall see presently, quarrelled with his associates, and left the gymnase in anger; it is possibly due to this fact that no portrait of him is known to exist.

Duke René II., "King of Jerusalem and Sicily," was a grandson of "Good King René," and was not only a scholar and pa

triot, but a soldier of shining renown in an age when prowess on the field was the one sure title to fame. As the hero of the battle of Morat and the chivalrous conqueror of Charles the Bold, he figures conspicuously in the annals of his time. Upon his accession to the throne of Lorraine he found his country invaded and harassed by Charles and his Burgundians. After repeated but fruitless appeals to the King of France for promised aid, he raised a force of Swiss and Germans, and joining to these his own scanty but patriotic army, he fell upon and completely routed the invaders before the walls of Nancy in the year 1477. and there is to be seen to-day in the marshes near the town a cross, which marks the spot where the

body of Charles was found among the débris of the fight. René gave his fallen adversary a magnificent burial, and devoted the remainder of his life to study, the encouragement of learning, and to repairing the fortunes of his war-wasted province. He died in 1508, and his epitaph tells us that he loved but three things, Justice, Peace, and Letters.

Guatrin Lud, the founder and controlling spirit of the gymnase, was born at Saint Dié about the year 1448. He came from a wealthy and distinguished family, his mother, Jeannette d'Ainveau, being a daughter of one of the noblest houses of Lorraine, and his father a soldier of distinction in the service of the King. Guatrin's elder brother, Jean, was secretary

GUATRIN LUD.

to Duke René, and he it was who wrote out from René's dictation the sketch of the battle of Nancy which served as a frame-work to the poet Blarru in his composition of the "Nanciade."

He

Lud was liberally educated, and at an early age was nominated by Duke René as canon of the Abbey of Saint Dié, and became subsequently the foremost personage in that institution. He was no mere politician of the cloister, but a man of broad, progressive intelligence, whose liberal and enlightened ideas were at constant variance with the purblind monkish system under which he had been reared. At the age of thirty he was Sonrier, or chief judicial officer of the abbey; he dispensed justice under authority of the Prévot, and had nominal control of what then served as the village police. was a personal favorite of Duke René, to whom he had been appointed secretary in 1490. His brother Jean, director-general of the mines of Lorraine, died in 1504, and Guatrin was appointed to the vacancy thus created. The position was one of the most lucrative and important in the gift of the sovereign, and he fulfilled its duties with conspicuous zeal and ability. The mines of copper, silver, and iron in Lorraine had been neglected and mismanaged during the wars of the preceding century, and one of the most important tasks undertaken by René was their restoration to prosperity. In his

capacity as director of the mines, Lud adopted a special coat of arms, bearing as a device the implements. of mining on a shield supported by two kneeling figures, one in the costume of laborer, the other in that of master.

But his official duties did not divert him from the intellectual pursuits which united and absorbed the members of the gymnase. The discoveries of Christopher Columbus and other navigators had turned the attention of scholars everywhere to the study of cosmography, and it was determined by the gymnase to signalize itself and render a service to science by publishing a revised and improved edition of Ptolemy, with new maps and plates to represent the discoveries and progress that had been made since the eminent Alexandrian geometer had laid down his pen, more than thirteen hundred years before. The art of printing with movable types was then in its infancy, that is to say, hardly fifty years old. Printing facilities were everywhere rude and limited, and in order to carry out its plans, the gymnase needed a press and type of its own. Here the enterprise and wealth of Guatrin Lud came to the rescue. Already in 1494 he had set up in his house opposite the fountain in the principal street of Saint Dié a primitive printing-machine, equipped with a font of large round-faced type, on which had been printed the "bulle," or ordinance of a religious ceremony, entitled the "Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple." This ceremony was first celebrated by Canon