Marlin Blaine
Marlin Blaine is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at California State University, Fullerton. His research focuses on Early Modern literature in English and Latin, as well as classical reception.
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Roman numerals must be capitalized and their values, when totaled, must correspond to the date of an event which the text was composed to commemorate. In this case, the numerical total is 1619, the year in which the rebuilding of the Plaza Mayor, which commenced in 1617, was officially declared to have been completed. The author of these verses is identified as Iacobus Verulitius, whose identity until now has remained unknown. This essay demonstrates that “Iacobus Verulitius” is a Latinized form of the name of Jacques Vervliet, a Flemish printer employed in Madrid at the Imprenta Real under Tomás Junta (or Junti), a member of the famous Junta or Giunta family of printers. Though my identification of Vervliet as the author of the chronogram clears up the issue of authorship, it raises other questions: why was a printer recruited to compose these verses, and does his participation in Mancelli’s engraving suggest that the Imprenta Real itself might have been involved the printing of it? In addition to exploring these questions, I suggest that Vervliet may also have written the Latin lines contained in one of the print’s other cartouches. Finally, my analysis of the chronogram, two Latin epigrams by Vervliet published in other books, and the additional couplet on the Mancelli engraving that he may have written, offers a glimpse of the learnedly creative activities of an expatriate tradesman in Baroque Madrid and the nature of his contribution to an important document in its history.
Roman numerals must be capitalized and their values, when totaled, must correspond to the date of an event which the text was composed to commemorate. In this case, the numerical total is 1619, the year in which the rebuilding of the Plaza Mayor, which commenced in 1617, was officially declared to have been completed. The author of these verses is identified as Iacobus Verulitius, whose identity until now has remained unknown. This essay demonstrates that “Iacobus Verulitius” is a Latinized form of the name of Jacques Vervliet, a Flemish printer employed in Madrid at the Imprenta Real under Tomás Junta (or Junti), a member of the famous Junta or Giunta family of printers. Though my identification of Vervliet as the author of the chronogram clears up the issue of authorship, it raises other questions: why was a printer recruited to compose these verses, and does his participation in Mancelli’s engraving suggest that the Imprenta Real itself might have been involved the printing of it? In addition to exploring these questions, I suggest that Vervliet may also have written the Latin lines contained in one of the print’s other cartouches. Finally, my analysis of the chronogram, two Latin epigrams by Vervliet published in other books, and the additional couplet on the Mancelli engraving that he may have written, offers a glimpse of the learnedly creative activities of an expatriate tradesman in Baroque Madrid and the nature of his contribution to an important document in its history.