Roman letter, 72 leaves, 30 lines, five fine woodcut initials with a white interlaced branchwork design on a black ground. Guide letters for the...
MoreRoman letter, 72 leaves, 30 lines, five fine woodcut initials with a white interlaced branchwork design on a black ground. Guide letters for the smaller initials. Small 4to (200 x 147 mm.), antique blindstamped calf (extreme inner margins of five or six leaves expertly & almost invisibly strengthened, verso of final leaf a little dusty). Nuremberg: Johann M?r of K?sberg (Regiomontanus), [ca. 1473-74]. First edition of the first printed book on astronomy; of the greatest rarity with only two other copies having appeared at auction in the last fifty years. "The work of Manilius was the main exemplar of that 'poetic astronomy' which exerted such a powerful influence on German humanist thought from Regiomontanus to Conrad Celtis and beyond."-Rose, The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics, p. 105. Regiomontanus envisioned the new invention of the printing press as one of the chief means of restoring mathematics and astronomy. It was this book and the others in Regiomontanus' publishing program with which he formally launched the renaissance of astronomy and mathematics, issuing the most important texts in edited and corrected editions. The Astronomicon describes the sphere, zodiacal and other constellations, great circles, comets, and astral influences on human beings. It put forward a number of sound astronomical hypotheses, especially relating to the nature of the stars, and became an important textbook, representing the most advanced views on astronomy of ancient Roman times. The text of the poem, composed in the first century A.D., had only recently been discovered when it received this, its first printing. This book was printed at the press of Regiomontanus, the foremost astronomer of the time, who established the first observatory in Europe, and was the first publisher of astronomical and mathematical literature. He had finally settled in Nuremberg after a career in Italy under Cardinal Bessarion and, more recently in Vienna, as librarian to Mathias Corvinus. The press was probably a private one and not a commercial office; it was the first scientific publishing house. Its output was limited to some ten titles, all issued within a year and a half, of which this is the only one to bear a full colophon. The type, apparently never used again, seems to have been cut in imitation of the smaller type of Sweynheym and Pannartz at Rome. It is amongst the most elegant of the early roman types used in Germany. This and the second edition (Bologna: ca. 1474) were printed from independent sources. The great modern editor of Manilius, A.E. Housman, considered this the more important textually and believed that Regiomontanus must have corrected the text himself as so many corrections are not to be found in any surviving manuscript (Housman, V, p. xvii). Neither of Manilius' other great editors, Scaliger and Bentley, knew of this edition, and so Regiomontanus' corrections were incorporated into the text only in the 20th century. This is an extremely rare book. As we have mentioned above, only two other copies have appeared at auction in the past fifty years. The ISTC-in-progress records only the Chapin, Harvard, Huntington, and Morgan Library copies in the U.S. Fine copy. 18th-century crowned stamp on outer margin of title and foot of final leaf. ❧ B.M.C., II, p. 456. Goff M-202. Klebs 661.1. Lalande, p. 9-"Le premier livre d'astronomie qu'on imprima." Stillwell, The Awakening Interest in Science during the First Century of Printing 1450-1550, 75. .
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