SACROBOSCO, Johannes de, & Gerard of Cremona.

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Sphaera mundi. First illustrated edition of this essential work of astronomy; lacking three leaves in the supplemental Theorica Planetarum, otherwise an attractive copy, with neat contemporary annotations. Sacrobosco's Sphaera Mundi is a basic account of the spherical geometry underpinning the mathematical astronomy of Ptolemy and his Arabic commentators, first published in 1472. It was one of the earliest astronomical books ever printed and has been called "the most used textbook in astronomy and cosmography from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century" (Thorndike, p. 1). It was extraordinarily successful: there are hundreds of extant manuscript copies, over 30 incunable editions (this is generally considered the fourth), and more than 200 printings in the 16th century. The interest in Sacrobosco's work and computations was no doubt fueled by the mathematical demands of the art of navigation, a key advantage in the frantic race for control of the New World. In fact, other editions of Sacrobosco's work were published with fledgling accounts of Spanish discoveries, such as the 1551 Paris printing which included Eliae Vineti's Scholia with references to the East and West Indies. The first edition of Sphaera Mundi was printed together with Gerard of Cremona's Theorica Planetarum, another astronomical treatise derived from Ptolemy by way of the Arabic Almagest. The following editions left this out or substituted it with other related works; this is the first edition to reunite

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