MAGINI, Giovanni Antonio.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Ephemerides coelestium motuum ab anno Domini 1608 usque ad annum 1630. An uncommon edition of Magini's ephemerides for the years 1608-30, expanding his publication of 1599 - here partially reprinted in volume I - with two supplementary volumes. Complete copies of early almanacs in such clean condition are scarce, as these popular books were often misused. This exceptionally fresh example has pertinent annotations, and a loosely inserted manuscript horoscope chart.Giovanni Antonio Magini (1555-1617) was a prominent Italian astronomer, cartographer, and professor of mathematics in Bologna, a chair for which he was preferred over Galileo in 1588. An admirer of Copernicus and a long-time correspondent of Brahe and Kepler, he proposed his own geocentric theory in 1589. His ephemerides, tables providing the position of celestial bodies in the sky at regular time intervals in the future, were first published in 1580, then periodically updated with new volumes. These works gained him international fame as an astrologer; during his life and well after his death, English and German almanacs were published under his name, and he was known as "The Italian prophecier".The present edition comprises three books, which also circulated as separate works, respectively containing the ephemerides for the years 1608-10, 1611-19, and 1620-30. Magini's fascinating introductory treatises to each explain the principles of astrology and astronomy, describing the movement of the planets, the fixed star

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