Two Copernican works including the Important Third Edition of "De Revolutionibus" and the First with Commentary
Astronomia instaurata libris sex conprehensa. qui de revolutionibus orbium calestium inscribuntur.
Amsterdam: Wilhelm Janson, 1617.
Full Description:
COPERNICUS, Nicolaus. Astronomia instaurata libris sex conprehensa qui de revolutionibus orbium calestium inscribuntur Amsterdam: Wilhelm Janson, 1617.
The important third edition, and the first to contain commentary by Nicholaus Muller Professor of Mathematics at the University of Groningen. This edition also contains extensive corrections. Quarto (9 1/4 x 6 5/8 inches; 235 x 170 mm). [22], 487, [1, blank] pp. Bound without blank leaf ****4 as usual. Woodcut printer's device on title, numerous woodcut diagrams throughout the text, decorative woodcut initials.
This edition was published to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of Copernicus's death in 1543. It was published one year after the work was decreed suspended 'until corrected' by papal authority; the effects of this decree were largely confined to Italy, however. According to An Annotated Census of Copernicus's De revolutionnibus (2001), by Owen Gingerich, "this third edition is as scarce as the second edition of 1566."
[Bound together with]:
BARANZANO, Giovanni Antonio Redento. Uranoscopia seu De coelo in qua universa coelorum doctrina clarè, dilucidè & brevitur traditur. Geneva: Pierre & Jacques Chouet, 1617[-1618].
First Edition. Complete, in three parts. Quarto (9 1/4 x 6 5/8 inches; 235 x 170 mm). 20, 246, [15, index], [1, blank]; 271, [27, index; [31], [1, blank] pp. With woodcut architectural border on general title-page. One folding woodcut illustration and two folding letterpress tables. Numerous woodcut illustrations, initials, and head and tailpieces in the text. With a separate title-page for part one, and half-titles for parts two and three. Very rare, only two copies have sold at auction since 1974.
Two works bound together in contemporary vellum. Vellum with some repairs. Vellum rubbed and a bit soiled. Contemporary ink manuscript title on spine. Newer front endpapers. Nearly invisible professional repairs to margins of title-page and preliminaries of Copernicus. Some light soiling to top margin. A small hole to top outer margin of pages 205-206. A closed tear neatly repaired to folding plate in second work. Old ink drawings to read endpapers. Overall a very good copy of both works.
"The publication of 'On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres' in 1543 was a landmark in human thought. It challenged the authority of antiquity and set the course for the modern world by its effective destruction of the anthropocentric view of the universe... Renaissance mathematicians, following Ptolemy, believed that the moon, sun and five planets were carried by complex systems of epicycles and deferents about the central earth, the fixed pivot of the whole system. In Copernicus's day it was well known that conventional astronomy did not work accurately, nor did further study of Ptolemy seem to put the matter right. Copernicus... determined to abandon the fixity of the earth, and all the complexities in the treatment of the motions of the celestial bodies that follow from such a conception. With the sun placed at the centre, and the earth daily spinning on its axis and circling the sun in common with other planets, the whole system of the heavens became clear, simple, and harmonious" (Printing and the Mind of Man 70, citing the 1543 first edition).
The second work is a first edition of Baranzano’s defence of the Copernican system in two lengthy parts, plus the addition of a third part, Nova de motu terrae Copernicolo iuxta Summi Pontificis mentem disputatio, in which Baranzano retracts his assertions subsequent to pressure from the archbishop of Milan.
Printing and the Mind of Man, 70 (regarding first edition).
HBS 69361.
$60,000.
Price: $60,000.00
Item #69361