Sacrobosco Johannes de; Regiomontanus; Georgius Peurbachius

SPHAERA MUNDI. Regiomontanus, DISPUTATIONES CONTRA CREMONENSIA DELIRAMENTA. Georgius Peurbachius, THEORICAE NOVE PLANETARUM

      Venice: [Bonetus Locatellus for] Octavianus Scotus, 4 October 1490. A very early issuance of these pre-Copernican texts of astronomy. Printed in Roman type, 41 lines without headlines. With 4-line and 12-line white-on-black woodcut initials, a full-page allegorical woodcut of Astonomia seated on a throne and flanked by Urania and Ptolemy, seven wood cut diagrams printed in 2 or 3 colors, and numerous other woodcut diagrams throughout including one of an armillary sphere, and the woodcut printerOs mark printed in red 4to (195x 135mm), bound in full antique vellum. 48 leaves, unfoliated. A very fine copy, complete and uncommonly fresh; a few leaves shaved close by the binder affecting a few letters at the outside margin.. rare. An early printing of this great scientific text and one of the two earliest astronomical books ever issued. Sacrobosco's SPHAERA MUNDI is probably the most popular astronomical text ever written. Originally printed at Ferrara in 1472, it was only the second astronomical book ever printed and among the earliest scientific text in any field. Although it did not advance astronomical knowledge beyond that attained by the Arabs in their commentaries on Ptolemy, it gained a great reputation; twenty-four editions appeared before 1500, and at least forty between 1500 and 1647, when the last edition was printed at Leiden. Little is known of Sacrobosco himself. It is believed he was of English origin, but unquestionably lived in the first half of the thirteenth century as professor of astronomy at Paris and it is known that he died in that city in 1256. He owed his reputation as an astronomer chiefly to this astronomical textbook "De Sphaera Mundi," which was used at universities all throughout Europe for several centuries. The exact place and time of his birth is unknown. As the Latinized name Sacrobosco seems to be a translation of the English name Holywood or Holybush, many believe that Holywood (now Halifax), in Yorkshire, was his birthplace. Others give it as Holywood near Dublin; others again claim that he came from Scotland. Sacrobosco studied first at Oxford, but then went to France, where, as a contemporary of St. Thomas Aquinas, he proved himself an efficient teacher of mathematics and astronomy. At that time many were deterred from undertaking the study of astronomy by such ponderous (and at that time largely obscure) works as those of Ptolemy, Alfraganus, and Albategnius, so Sacrobosco wisely resolved to write a compendium of spherical astronomy, which universities could use as a textbook. How well-timed and well received his book was is shown by the numerous editions published before the middle of the seventeenth century when the new Copernican theory was generally adopted. Georg Peurbach lived from 1423-1461 and was the teacher of Regiomontanus (1436-1476), another of the great early Renaissance scientists of astronomy. The work here included by Regiomontanus has to do with corrections rendered to planetary tables and it is accompanied not only by SacroboscoOs text but by Peurbach"s NOVAE THEORICAE PLANETARUM. OPeurbach and Regiomontanus were the outstanding astronomers of their time and their early deaths were "a serious loss to the progress of astronomy... [which] left the technical development of mathematical astronomy deprived of substantial improvement until the generation of Tycho Brahe" (ibid). Around 1454 Peurbach composed his textbook of astronomy, NOVAE THEORICAE PLANETARUM (published in N!rnberg,1473), which became the standard astronomical text for over a century and a half, as well as writing, with Regiomontanus, the Epitome of Ptolemy (published in 1496), the clearest and most accurate exposition of Ptolemaic astronomy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Following Arab astronomers, Peurbach "added trepidation to Ptolemy"s six motions of the celestial spheres and substituted solid crystal spheres for the hypothetical circles employed in Ptolemy"s Almagest" (Watson citing Stillwell).