Toulouse: Colomiers, Jacques, 1554.
Toulouse physician and astrologer Auger Ferrier's discussion of the botanical properties of China root [the rootstock of Smilax chinæ] and how it is often confused with apios (spurge), and the New-World plants sarsaparilla and guaiac. China root, an East Asian rootstock with analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties.....
Paris: Simon de Colines, 1526.
First Edition of the French physician and astronomer Jean François Fernel's first published work, a pleasingly designed and printed treatise on astronomy, navigation, the science of astrolabes, and practical geometry, written when Fernel was only 24,1 and published before he turned 30. The work, which.....
Paris: Antoine Augereau for Galliot du Pré, 1532.
First Edition of the collected works of poet and playwright Guillaume Coquillart, printed in a comely lettre ronde by Antoine Augereau for Galliot du Pré. Born in Reims, Coquillart studied law in Paris, and eventually gained membership to the Basoche, the Paris.....
Antwerp: Coppens van Diest, 1564.
First Edition. Valentin Mennher, a member of the St. Ambrose guild of schoolmasters, was born in Bavarian Swabia c1521, and became a well-known editor and writer of mathematical textbooks.1 After travels in Italy, Germany, and Austria, he settled in Antwerp in 1549, where he produced.....
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.....
Bologna: Alessandro Benacci, c1559.
Only Edition. Bolognese poet Pierluigi Tarinti's first-person verse narrative, in traditional Dantean terza rima, recounts the author's horseback journey from Bologna to Scandiano (via Modena) one fine day "in the month which comes after August." Tarinti, who addresses his brother, plans a leisurely trip—partly because he.....
Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1551.
The remarkable case of young Margaretha Weiss [1529-?], a girl from the village of Rode outside of Speyer, who, for three years following her tenth birthday, reportedly neither ate nor drank, yet seemed to grow more or less normally, play with her friends, talk, laugh, and.....
Strasbourg: Joannes Knobloch, 1516.
Popular German-language epitome of Bolognese astrologer and chiromancer Bartolommeo della Rocca Cocles's Chiromantie ac physionomie anastasis. Cocles discusses, in 23 short chapters, the fundamentals of physiognomy: the nature of the four principal "complexions" (humors), and how to determine the character of a person by not just.....
![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.....
Wittenberg: Josef Klug, 1529.
Caspar Huberinus, a Bavarian transplant to Augsburg, was a late but ardent supporter of Luther and the Protestant cause: Huberinus's first book, a kind of commiseration and admission of confraternity with "secret Protestants"—incipient reformers still in the closet, as it were—did not appear until 1525. The.....