PEZEL, Christoph [with] CAMERARIUS, Johann Rudolph [and] TANNER, Adam.

£9,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

The elegant armorial binding bears the arms of the French politician, historian and bibliophile Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553-1617) joined with those of his second wife, Gasparde de la Chastre. The monogram contains their initials interlaced. De Thou served Henry III and Henry IV as councillor of state, became director of the royal library in 1593 and president of the Parliament of Paris in 1595. His outstanding library, famous among contemporaries and open to scholars and foreigners, was one of the most important private libraries of the end of the 16th century, for the quality of its content and its size (it contained an estimated number of 9,000 volumes in 1617). Remarkably, for the first time, the volumes were systematically bound in rich armorial bindings, changing according to the marital status of their owner. After de Thou s death, the library was inherited by his son Jacques-Auguste II de Thou in 1642. The volume contains excellent copies of the first editions of three fascinating works on astrology. The first, Praecepta genethliaca is a treatise by the reformed theologian Christoph Pezel (1539-1604). It examines the twelve astrological houses of the horoscope (corresponding to the twelve signs) - with particular focus on the sixth, concerned with illness and it contains a section on the history of astrology and prediction. The engraved title page, possibly realised by Theodore de Bry or one of his school, has been defined as one of the most delightful in the early a

• Binding: Hardcover

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