Aureum caelimundium, seu liber de caelo et mundo.

£2,250 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Extremely rare edition of the only published work of Battista Gargiaria listed by Censimento Edit 16. We can locate only one other copy outside Italy at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The author is generally described as a Bolognese jurist who flourished in the second half of the sixteenth century, but this may be a confusion arising from the fact that G. B. Gargiaria published several works on the law in Bologna in the mid 17th century. On the title to this work he is described as ‘most diligent master and investigator of heavenly, terrestrial and universal [mundanarum] matters’. The book is described as published in the year of the world 5797. In the preface addressed to all those desirous to learn of natural things the author indicates that he has been prevented from publishing the book by various external forces but that now a happy conjunction of time and matter has enabled him to print it. Gargiaria has compiled a digest of opinions (not one of them identified) on the physical nature of heaven and earth. The first section (ff. 2v-13v) discusses the ‘entitas’ of the heavens. There then follow (ff xiv-xxx plus [4] ‘Opiniones de caelo multiformes et super quidditate eiusdem’. This consists of a large number of 3- or 4-line definitions, not one of them attributed to a name. He follows traditional Aristotelian distinctions so in the first part we have a wide range of views on the essence and “quiddity” of the heavens. There then (ff. xxxi -xxxvr) follow the views of philosoph

• Year: 1569

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