75 2114 Astronomy Sacrobosco J de
- Leaf A8 misbound; two of the three small moving parts of 3 woodcuts lacking as very often; final ±40 lvs. (vague) waterstain in lower (blank) margin; a few repaired blank corners.
= Zinner 2204; not in Adams. "Sacrobosco's fame rests firmly on his De Sphaera, a small work based on Ptolemy and his Arabic commentators, published about 1220 and 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 (...) There are only four chapters to the work (...) After Manilius' Astronomica, The Sphere was the first printed book on astronomy (Ferrara, 1472) (...) For eighty years after Barocius in 1570 had pointed out some eighty-four errors, The Sphere was still studied, and in the seventheeth century it served as a manual of astronomy in some German and Low Countries schools. Often it appeared with commentaries by the most distinguished scholars of the time". (DSB XII, p.61).