SACRO BOSCO, Johannes de (fl. ca 1230-1240). Sphaera mundi, cum commento Wenceslai Fabri de Budweiss. Leipzig: Wolfgang Stöckel, 1499.

Small 4to (208 x 139 mm). Collation: A-C6 D4 E-G6 H4 I6 . 49 leaves (of 50, lacking I6, blank). 39 lines. Types: 160, title and headings; 81, text (leaded); 73, commentary. Capital spaces, with capitals, initial strokes and underlines supplied in red. Woodcut printer's device at end hand-colored in red and green, 28 woodcuts in-text, a few hand-colored in outline in red, one full-page. (Some browning or staining.) Later vellum (some minor soiling). Provenance: Diagram on title-page and marginal notes and diagrams throughout in a contemporary hand; Jois Henrici (17th-century inscription on title)

A close reprint of Landsberg's edition of ca 1497, the first to be published with commentary by Wenzel Faber von Budweis (1455-1518), an astronomer, astrologer and theologian from Bohemia. Sacro Bosco's Sphaera Mundi, in which he sets out the basic principles of spherical astronomy, was widely commented upon, corrected and republished across Europe. First written in about 1220, the Sphaera Mundi is "a small work based on Ptolemy and his Arabic commentators antedating the De sphaera of Grosseteste. It was quite generally adopted as the fundamental astronomy text, for often it was so clear that it needed little or no explanation. It was first used at the University of Paris and from the middle of the thirteenth century it was taught in all the schools of Europe. In the sixteenth century it gained the attention of mathematicians, including Clavius. As late as the seventeenth century it was used as a basic astronomy text" (DSB XII, p. 61).

RARE: according to online records, only one copy of this edition has sold at auction in the last 50 years; ISTC traces only 12 copies at institutions worldwide. BMC III 655; Goff J420; GW M14592; HC 14123; not in BSB-Ink.

Selections from the Property of Dr. Eugene Vigil, Antiquariat Botanicum

SACRO BOSCO, Johannes de (fl. ca 1230-1240). Sphaera mundi, cum commento Wenceslai Fabri de Budweiss. Leipzig: Wolfgang Stöckel, 1499.