Erfurt: Georg Baumann, 1564.
First edition of an especially virulent astrological prediction for the year 1565 by the Erfurt physician and astronomer Joannes Hebenstreit, who produced prognostications for every year from 1553 until his death in 1569, but exemplars from some of these years have not survived. The text surrounding.....
Strassburg: Christian Egenolff, 1528.
First edition of this popular astrological folk-medicine guide, attributed to Johannes Müller von Königsberg, better known as Regiomontanus, the German astronomer and astrologer active in Vienna in the mid 15th century. Actual authorship is not known, but attribution to the well-regarded Regiomontanus certainly imparted commercial weight.....
Cologne: Peter Quentell, 1528.
A fine, compact edition of Johannes Liechtenberger's Pronosticatio latino, and the first to feature Anton Woensam von Worms's lively integral woodcuts. Liechtenberger's reputation as an astrologer and seer has always been suspect (even when he was alive), but his book's renown as a publishing phenomenon is.....
Basel: Oporinus, 1550.
In the 1549 first edition of the Initia doctrinæ physicæ—essentially the first scientific textbook of the Reformation—Philipp Melanchthon refutes the heliocentrism of Copernicus with a single blow, invoking Ecclesiastes 4:5: “The earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets.” Moreover, he writes, referring to Copernicus.....
Marburg: Christian Egenolff, 1542.
Extraordinary court report of the escalating dispute between Heinrich II of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel and the citizens of the Lower Saxony town of Goslar. It all started when Goslar municipal delegate to the 1530 Imperial Diet of Augsburg, Konrad Dellinghausen, failed to come to an agreement with Heinrich.....
Augsburg: Heinrich Steyner, 1532.
Johann Tallat von Vochenberg's pharmacopoeia and master-book on the art of treating various illnesses first appeared at Memmingen in 1497, and went through more than 20 editions. Our 1532 edition is evidently the last of these, but only the second in which appears a most interesting.....
Rome: Minucio Calvo, 1526.
First edition. A remarkable book of firsts in card games and gambling. Francesco Berni, born in Tuscany in the village of Lamporecchio about 1497, was court secretary to Leo X and Clement VII, a world of "glittering literary productivity, where the lines between poet, cleric, and.....
Paris: Ambroise Girault, c1530.
A compact edition, with an unrecorded imprint, of the most popular of all Christian devotionals, the Imitation of Christ, printed at Paris by Ambroise Girault about 1530. Known in more than 210 manuscripts antedating the handpress era, with dozens of stemmae, at least 76 incunable editions.....
Paris: Galliot du Pré, 1532.
Following his victory in the Battle of Marignano in September, 1515, Francis I of France, barely 21 years of age, negotiated with Pope Leo X to form what would become known as the Concordat of Bologna. It was signed in Rome on August 18, 1516.....
Basel: Peter Perna, 1581.
Later edition (first 1569) of the Swiss physician and philosopher Johann Jakob Wecker's two-part work on medicine and wine. The first part contains medical remedies (including many to treat plague) that Wecker learned in his years as a practicing doctor in Basel, which degree he acquired.....
Paris? 1578?
A request directed to Henri III of France to reduce the tax burden on the good subjects of Burgundy, arguing by virtue of case studies of suffering Burgundians that existing taxes and obligatory tributes are too large a strain on the tax base. The treshumble request is framed.....
![Ein Predigt von den Engeln. Mart. Luth. Wittemberg. 1531. [Colophon, C4v]: Gedruckt zu Wittemberg...](/pictures/thumb/15.png?v=1586443800)
Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1531.
Luther's sermon on angels, preached on the occasion of Michaelmas, 29 September 1530, was ostensibly about the Archangel Michael and the divine college of angels' reverence for God in Matthew 18.10, but the substance of the sermon was actually about fallen angels, in particular the Devil.....