Johannes Sacrobosco

Trattato della Sphera, nel quale si dimostrano, & insegnano I principii della astronlogia raccolto da Giouanni di Sacrobusto, & altri, Astronomi, & tradotto in lingua Italiana. Per Antonio Brucioli. et con nuove annotationi in piu luoghi dichiarato.

      Venice 1543 Francesco Brucioli & I Frategli recent velum boards, flat spine with calf label. The “title-boarder with signs of the zodiac. The lower half of the boarder block contains a device of a bull on a shield within a ring. This is apparently the device of the translator, Mauro of Florence, rather than that of the printer.” (Mortimer)“Johannes Sacrobosco was an English scholar and astronomer/astrologer who taught at the University of Paris and wrote the authoritative mediaeval astronomy text Tractatus de Sphaera…He was educated at Oxford University. According to a seventeenth century account, he arrived at the University of Paris on June 5, 1221. In due course, he began to teach the mathematical disciplines at the University of Paris. About 1230, his most well known work, Tractatus de Sphaera, was published. In this book, Sacrobosco discussed the Earth and its place in the Universe. It was required reading by students in all Western European universities for the next four centuries. Its description of the Earth as a sphere and its popularity exposes the nineteenth-century opinion that medieval scholars thought the Earth was flat as a fabrication. In his Algorismus, theorized to have been his first work, Sacrobosco showed himself to be a strong proponent of Arab methods of mathematics, his Algorismus being the first text to introduce Hindu-Arabic numerals and procedures into the university curriculum” (Journal for the History of Astronomy, 16 (1985): 175-221) 8vo Title within a decorative engraved boarder of the signs of the zodiac. Elaborate initials, and contains a profusion of wood cut text illustrations relating to the globe and astronomical observations. The final leaf contains an image of a globe depicting North America, and other continents, not in Shirley. Printer's device on the verso of the final leaf. Minor restoration to upper part of leaf 3 otherwise, an excellent copy, text and illustrations are clean and crisp. A few pages contain contemporary ink marginalia. Alden 543/17 ;Sabin 74810; Mortimer 452 P. engraved title, blank, (2), (48)