Crosses in the sky, from the Americas to the Arabian Gulf

Chacón, Alfonso. De signis sanctissimae crucis [...] tractatus.

€ 7,500.00

First and only edition of an uncommon and curious work - by turns astronomical, theological, and ethnographic - by a Spanish Dominican in Rome, concerned with reports of apparitions of the cross in the sky. Alfonso Chacón (ca. 1540-1601) was most interested in the cross which appeared in the skies over England and France in 1591, but his work sprawls across Arabia and the Americas, bolstered by reports from Jesuits in Asia and the New World, and from the blossoming understanding of astronomy in the West. Diagrams describe where in the sky crosses tended to appear and when in the day, and one shows the famous 1591 cross in detail.

Observations of celestial crosses have a long history stretching far back into the medieval period, and mix with scientific astronomical records more often than a modern scientist might expect. Chacón himself compares his cruciform apparitions to observations of the Great Supernova of 1572-74, and discusses the historical record of lights in the sky back to the reign of Constantine (whose conversion, one recalls, also involved a fiery cross in the heavens).

The work bears a few notes in a very early hand, including a handwritten alteration of "Alfonso Albuquerque saw a cross in the Persian Gulf" to read "Alfonso Albuquerque saw a cross in the Arabian Gulf". Altogether a fascinating work, little studied and not often found on the market, and a snapshot of the varied interests of the Renaissance.