Skyscript Astrology Forum

I found'it by coincidence and I thought that the members would be interested in it.

Here is the link:
http://digital.slub-dresden.de/sammlung ... 5482437/0/

Have fun!

BTW it?s a very well structured work, so you can zoom easily to a certain issue

Thanks, Sasha!

It's a remarkable service to have a copy of this free to view online, when you consider that the last copy of this work, albeit one printed in 1551 (presumably the first collected edition, the text you link to being evidently a reprint from ten years later in 1561, and library records on COPAC supporting the existence of copies from both these years) sold at auction for $120,000 at Christie's, New York, on April 17th 2007.

I get the impression that the three books on the judgements of nativities included in this work may in fact be the very same as those in the standalone work by Sch?ner 'De Iudiciis Nativitatum Libri Tres' (1545), a copy of which sold for $54,000 at the same auction as the $120,000 copy of the Opera Mathematica.

Which would be to say that the Opera Mathematica is merely a compilation published six years later of those books plus a few other shorter works - in which case its value at over twice the price of the original edition would strike me as somewhat questionable.

But I am boldly speculating here based on the mere sight of the contents page in the Opera Mathematica, and until someone has confirmed this, it may be as well to reserve judgement on whether or not the three books on nativities in this volume are the very same as in 'De Iudiciis Nativitatum Libri Tres'.

Philip

Thank you too for the interesting informations that you brought.

Hi Sasha!

Though I don't have Rob Hand's published translation of Book I of 'De iudiciis nativitatum libri tres' to hand as my copy is in storage, so I can't directly compare it with the source material here, it does look to me so far as though my first impressions were correct as I 'leaf' further through the electronic book.

The three books on the judgements of nativities here start on pages 133, 288 and 334, and the last one ends shortly before the end of the volume itself (which runs to page 470). This is interesting to me in that Rob Hand stated his intention of releasing Books II and III of 'De iudiciis...' in a single volume to complement his already-published translation of Book I and thus complete his translation of the overall work. When one considers that in the Latin original Book I runs to about 155 pages and Book II only 46, this declared intention of his makes very good apparent sense. With Book III running to about 130 pages, when combined with Book II it would make for around 176 pages of Latin source text for Rob to translate, resulting in a projected final product for his translation of Books II and III together that would be only slightly longer than that for Book I alone.

Now that I've mentioned Rob Hand in this context, I ought to add that I assuredly do hope that this very important translation of his will see the light of day, since there are many of us who have been awaiting it with bated breath (so to speak) while he has been diverted from his programme of translations by the demands of his post-graduate studies.

Perhaps someone with a copy of the Project Hindsight translation of Sch?ner's 'Opusculum Astrologicum' could check it against the first 132 pages of the 1551-published compilation to which Sasha's link runs, and determine whether these pages are the source text for this Hindsight-issued translation or an entirely different work again? This could be quite useful and interesting to know also. But the fact that the Opusculum Astrologicum as published by Project Hindsight was a somewhat shorter work than these 132 large pages would suggest to me that if it is the same work then most of the tables in it were expurgated by Project Hindsight in order to save printing costs and keep it down to the desired size format without running into a second softcover volume.

Philip

There is something very strange here if I'm not mistaken, of the nature of an inconsistency between the contents of the scanned copy linked to by Sasha and all other copies of Sch?ner's Opera Mathematica found in library holdings.

The copy of this collected work in its 1561 impression that Sasha linked to contains one general introductory book on astrology followed by Sch?ner's three books on the judgements of nativities.

Yet all other copies to which I can find reference in UK libraries do not appear to contain the three books on the judgements of nativities at all, though they do contain the initial book on astrology, but with other completely different contents to follow, of only peripheral relevance at best to astrology, which would seem to make a lot more sense of the title 'Opera mathematica' than the apparent contents of the scanned copy.

Here for example is the description given at COPAC of the copy of the 1561 edition held by UCL:

http://www.copac.ac.uk/wzgw?id=08022338 ... sn=2&rn=11

While the initial book on astrology is present, the three books on the judgements of nativities are manifestly not, and the page collation for the second, third and fourth books proves it, since the third book is much lengthier in sheer page count than is the second book on the judgement of nativities that comes third in the copy linked to by Sasha.

So for some reason that is not yet clear, the copy linked to by Sasha would appear to be a most unusual compilation of the first book from Sch?ner's 'Opera Mathematica' followed by Sch?ner's 'De iudiciis nativitatum libri tres'. Perhaps this was an exceptional contemporary binding job by someone whose chief interest was astrology, and who therefore sought to unite the astrological contents from two of Sch?ner's works under one binding even when that was not how anybody had published them?

Hi Phillip,

The Opusculum Astrologicum (a short collection of astrological works) was first published in 1539. The three Books on Nativities were published in 1545, two years before Schoner?s death.The Opera Mathematica (?Great Mathematical Work?) was published posthumously by Schoener?s son in 1551. I have no idea why its contents vary in the way you?ve noticed, but I would expect this to include any former works of note. Maybe later editions had alterations of content?

Dear Deb,

Thank you for the helpful information about the publication date for the Opusculum Astrologicum etc., as well as the date of the author's death and the circumstances surrounding the publication of the Opera Mathematica.

If the copy of the Opera Mathematica found on the website linked to by Sasha had been printed in a different year from the copies in British university libraries referenced at COPAC as having very different contents, then it would strike me as more plausible that they had simply been different editions, although even then this would seem unlikely in view of the fact that all contents after the first 133 pages of both 'variants' have absolutely nothing in common with each other - if it had been the case that one collected edition had added to the contents of an earlier one, as for instance happened in later editions of the collected astrological works of Jerome Cardan, then this would have been plausible, but in this instance it would appear to be a case of Books II, III and IV of the Opera Mathematica as they stand in the 1561 second edition at all libraries in the UK having been completely removed and replaced by the three books on the judgements of nativities in the volume linked to by Sasha whose title page indicates that it too was printed in 1561. Hence my presumption that the volume linked to by Sasha is not a complete copy of any true edition of the Opera Mathematica, but rather a custom binding of its first book with the three books on the judgements of nativities that were otherwise never included in the Opera Mathematica.

However, I suppose it will not be possible to prove this without actually seeing the copies of the 1561 edition of the Opera Mathematica held at other libraries that have it - though it would strike me as highly unlikely that every library on COPAC to have a copy had misrepresented its contents so gravely as would be required if they were in fact a match for the copy linked to by Sasha!

Regardless, the copy linked to by Sasha should prove very interesting to members of Skyscript if added to the links page, since even if it is a custom binding of part of one work with the whole of another, the contents of both are of great interest to astrologers!

Best wishes,

Philip

Hello again,

I found on same site a scanned copy of another edition
De iudiciis nativitatum libri tres
Norimbergae, 1545, publisher: Montanus& Neuber

the link:
http://digital.slub-dresden.de/sammlung ... 5259013/0/

Excellent, Sasha!

Now this makes the peculiar scan of 'Opera Mathematica' even stranger, because although the text itself is identical, a cursory comparison of the printing of the text of 'De Iudiciis Nativitatum Libri Tres' between the 1545 standalone edition you have linked to and the unexpected occurrence of the same work in Dresden's volume that begins as 'Opera Mathematica' shows that the two copies are markedly different in their typesetting.

If you go to page 133 of the volume that should be 'Opera Mathematica', that is where the first book on the judgement of nativities begins. The same book starts on page 21 of the standalone 1545 first edition, but compare the printing (ignoring the fact that on the later copy a critic has vandalised the text by striking through many words by hand) - the woodcut for the 'S' that begins 'Solent' is much larger on the 1545 edition, and the heading 'Modus investigandi verum gradum Ascendentis per animodar' that appears just over half-way down the page is much more clearly set in relief from the previous paragraph and the one to follow on the 1545 edition.

This finding must cast doubt on my earlier working theory that the edition of the three books on the judgements of nativities that finds itself attached to the first book of 'Opera Mathematica' in place of the remaining books of 'Opera Mathematica' in the copy held by Dresden's university library has merely been expurgated from a standalone first edition - unless there were variant printings of this.

Another peculiarity of the first page of the first book on the judgements of nativities in the 'Opera Mathematica'-bound copy is that it is paginated at the top with a mysterious 'LV' (55), that makes no sense in the context of either the 1545 first edition of 'De iudiciis' or the 1561 second edition of 'Opera Mathematica', since if it was the 55th page of any volume or part thereof, it comes too soon for the former edition and much too late for the latter.

Stranger still (in my opinion at least) is the fact that the nativity diagrams in the second page of the first book on the judgements of nativities differ markedly between these two copies. In the original 1545 edition (see page 22 thereof), 3 degrees Leo appears to be on the cusp of the 10th house in the second (lower) of the two nativities drawn on this page; but in the copy that has been incorporated into Dresden's peculiar volume that begins as 'Opera Mathematica' (see page 134 thereof), this has been changed to 4 degrees Leo, and the caption in the centre of the figure has been abbreviated, with the words 'Hora Veneris' (hour of Venus) and 'Dies Jovis' (day of Jupiter) removed altogether.

This puzzle could entertain me for many hours with textual comparison but unfortunately I do not have more time for this just now. However I would love to know the history of the mysterious Dresden copy of the 'Opera Mathematica'!

Philip

Yes, thanks Sasha. I've added both links to the 'texts' link from the home page.

And thanks for the observations Phillip.