Astronomical sammelband with Sirr al-Asr r in a rare Burgos edition and a unique manuscript miscellany

[Aristotle (Pseudo-)]. Utilissimus liber Aristotelis de secretis secretorum.

€ 35.000,00

Rare Spanish edition of one of the most widely read texts of the High Middle Ages - the pseudo-Aristotelian "Secret of Secrets", purportedly a letter from Aristotle to his student Alexander the Great on an encyclopedic range of topics, including statecraft, ethics, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy, magic, and medicine, supposedly based on a tenth-century Arabic text. The present edition is one of only seven works attributable to the printer Andrés de Burgos, only briefly active in Burgos between May 1503 and June 1505.

Modern scholarship assumes the text to date from after the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity and before the work of Ibn Juljul in the late tenth century. The section on physiognomy may have circulated as early as AD 940. The Arabic text was translated into Persian (at least twice), Ottoman Turkish (twice), Hebrew, Spanish, and twice into Latin. The Hebrew edition also formed the basis for a translation into Russian. The first partial Latin version was prepared for the Queen of Portugal in ca. 1120 by the converso John of Seville; it is now preserved in about 150 copies under the title "Epistola Aristotelis ad Alexandrum de regimine sanitatis" ("Aristotle's letter to Alexander on good health"). The present second translation, and the first of the whole work, was done at Antioch ca. 1232 by the canon Philip of Tripoli for Bishop Guy of Tripoli.

II: First edition of Jacob Köbel's famous treatise on the astrolabe, including a full-page woodcut of a muse holding the sphere of the universe on the reverse of the title-page. Essentially an instruction on the use of the astrolabe, it demonstrates how to calculate time, location, and hours, including various explanatory diagrams and charming illustrations.

III: Rare Venice edition of one of the most influential works of pre-Copernican astronomy in Europe, Johannes de Sacrobosco's "De Sphaera Mundi" from ca. 1230, which introduced the fundamental elements of astronomy. Drawing heavily on Ptolemy's Almagest and Arabian astronomical concepts, it was one of Europe's most influential works on astronomy before Copernicus. The first edition was printed in Ferrara in 1472, and over 90 editions were published in the following two centuries.

IV: An anonymously composed Latin manuscript on astronomy, geometry, trigonometry and arithmetics, drawing on the works of Bohemian astronomer Christian of Prachatice (ca. 1360-1439) and Johannes von Gmunden (ca. 1380-1442), founder of the Vienna School of Astronomy, as well as other scholars. The text elaborates on astronomical calculations and the use of the astrolabe, including some trigonometric sketches for measuring height and angles. Prepared by at least three hands, the manuscript forms two distinct parts (the first comprising 44 pp., the second one 56 pp.) with Sacrobosco and Aristotle bound in between.