Astronomy. LEVERA. Three works in a volume.

LEVERA, Francesco. Dialogus contra duas hic transcriptas epistolas nuper editas in Prodromum Francisci Leuerae ... Autore Sauinio Muto

Romae, Typis Angeli Bernabò, 1664

3 works on a folio volume. 315x220 mm. Contemporary smooth vellum, handwritten title on spine. Pp. [4], 63, [1]. Coll.: [pi] 2 A-H4. Leaf pi 2 is blank. Vignette on title-page. A few pages with slight browning; nice specimen.

Bound with:

LEVERA, Francesco. De inerrantium stellarum viribus, & excellentia secundum quatuor positus earum insignes, relatiuos ad polos Zodiaci; ad polos mundi; ad aequinoctialem; & ad horizontes ...

Romae, Typis Angeli Bernabò, 1664

Pp. 105, [7], 1 leaf page. Coll.: +4 A-G4 H-P2 Q-R4. Vignette on title-page.

Cinti 142. 

Bound with:

LEVERA, Francesco. Nouae ephemerides motuum solis ab anno 1664. vsque ad annum 1670. completum a Petro Palatio Brixiensi ad longitudinem Almae Vrbis supputatae.

Romae, Typis Angeli Bernabò, 1664

Pp. 12, 12, 60, 4. Coll.: [cross]8 A-B2 ²A-G4 H-I2. Vignette on title-page.

Three rare first editions. Jesuit Francis Levera, 1622-1687, a mathematician and astronomer, protected and supported by former Queen Christina of Sweden, was a follower of Tycho Brahe, and had relied on his astronomical calculations, updating and extending them. In his works he presents a strictly geocentric universe, with not only stars but also planets generating their own light. He also accepted astrological theories on the association of celestial bodies, zodiac houses, etc. with natural properties (including weather) and human virtues and vices. He performed his calendrical calculations, less than a century after the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, with remarkable skill and rightly questioned the accuracy of some of the observations made by Cassini and his Bolognese school of astronomers, who sometimes drew conclusions that went beyond the limits of their still rather primitive telescopes.

- “Dialogus contra duas.” Opening are the two letters mentioned in the title, between Riccioli and Giovanni Domenico Cassini, in which serious inaccuracies are reproached to Levera, a follower of the Tychonic theory. The Dialogo responds to all these accusations and clarifies some passages in ‘Prodromus universae astronomiae,’ the work he had published the year before. Savinius Mutus is the pseudonym of Francesco Levera.

Cinti 143; Riccardi 190-1; Sotheran, First Suppl., p. 186, no. 2462.

- “De inerrantium stellarum viribus.” In this work Levera deals with the strength and influences of the fixed stars according to four main positions of them, relating to the Poles of the Zodiac and the World, the Equinoctial, the Horizons, the meridians and the vertices of the cities and regions of the Earth. 

Cinti 142; Riccardi 37-3; Sotheran, First Suppl., p. 186, no. 2462.

- “Nouae ephemerides motuum.” Levera presents here Palazzi's "Nuove Effemeridi" about the movements of the Sun from the year 1664 to 1670; after confirming the truth of the Roman Tables of solar motions and fixed stars, he illustrates the way to know whether the calculations of the ephemerides are accurate.