Christopher Cattan

Seigneur Christophe de Cattan, also called Christopher Cattan (flourished 1530s-1540s, died before 1558), presumed Francophone and Anglophone variants of the Italian name Cristoforo Cattaneo (a form sometimes used for him in current scholarship), was an Italian humanist author of the second quarter of the sixteenth century.

He is known as the learned author of a work about Geomancy,[2] which was published posthumously in 1558 in Paris as La Géomance du Seigneur Christofe de Cattan,[3] with further printings in 1567[4] and 1577.

The first appearance in print of the book of Geomancy bearing Cattan's name is in a form revised and augmented by an editor.

The editor was Gabriel Dupréau [fr] of Marcoussis, Essonne (in the Latin form, Gabriel Prateolus (or Praïeolus) Marcossius), 1511–1588, an anti-Protestant theologian, the notable scholarly translator (from Latin into French) of the works of William of Tyre,[9] and author of De Vitis, Sectis et Dogmatibus Omnium Haereticorum, a directory of all heretics and heresies.

One Francis Sparry was a bookseller in St Michael Wood Street (in the City of London) who had dealings with the Stationers' Company over the illegal import of bound books from Rouen during the later 1550s.

[14] The English translation has been attributed to the young Francis Sparry who accompanied Sir Walter Ralegh to Guyana in 1595.

The title Seigneur is equivalent to "Lord", and the introduction of "de" into the name, and the term "Gentilhomme" indicate an aristocratic or gentry status.

[20] The examples, which Cattan presents as real "readings" performed by himself for various named persons, include reference to his master M. de Tays.

Scholarly opinion at present is said to incline to the identification of a Genoese called Cristoforo Cattaneo as the author of the Geomancy, also considering this as his only known published work.