Milestones of Science Books

ALBERTUS MAGNUS.

De animalibus libri vigintisex novissime impressi [emendati per M.A. Zimaram].

Venice: hires of Octavianus Scotus, 1513.

Soft cover. Folio - over 12 - 15" tall. Very Good. Item #003828

Folio (315 x 215 mm). [6], 105 (i.e. 205) [1] leaves. Woodcut initials, colophon and printer's device on final leaf verso. Signatures: aa⁶, Aa-Zz⁸, Aaa-Bbb⁸, Ccc⁶. Bound without final blank leaf 3C6. Contemporary limp vellum, spine with old, hand-lettered vellum reinforcement (slight chipping and partial splitting of vellum at extremities, vellum somewhat soiled, spotted and wrinkled, straps gone, free endpapers removed). Text quite crisp and clean with only very little age-toning; upper margin of first gatherings brown-stained near gutter, outer margins with occasional minor dampstaining and spotting, c. 40 leaves with wormtrack near upper corner. Provenance: ownership signature on title page, old incription on front pastedown ("Iac. Ant. Tuscul.") ----

FINELY PRINTED VENETIAN POST-INCUNABLE EDITION of "one of the outstanding works of scientific interest written between the time of Pliny and the sixteenth century" (Stillwell).
Albertus' De animalibus libri was widely used not only in the 13th and 14th centuries, but also in the age of Humanism, in the form of manuscripts and printed editions as well, and until the first half of the 16th century, it retained its status as an authoritative text. In the 15th and 16th centuries, it was available not only in Iatin editions, but also in vernacular translations, enriched with illustrations (Enekel & Smith, Zoology in Early Modern Culture. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2014, p.212).
"The year 1249 marked a turning point in the intellectual career of Albert the Great. This was the year he finally acceded to the pleas of his Dominican confreres to compose a work explaining the natural science of Aristotle. The immediate product of this decision was Albert's paraphrastic commentary on the Physics, but there were long-term results as well. This work was but the first part of what was to become one of the major literary productions of the Middle Ages; a production which would establish Albert as, according to his envious contemporary Roger Bacon, an auctoritas on equal footing with Avicenna, Averroes, and Aristotle himself. Albert's project, intended to 'make the new learning of Aristotle intelligible to the Latins,' was largely concerned with the natural sciences. He not only commented extensively on all of Aristotle's libri naturales; but also recorded his own extensive researches in several fields. By far the largest part of this vast compilation of the sciences is that devoted to zoology. Albert's massive De animalibus libri XXVI is not only the longest of his Aristotelian commentaries but also represents one of the most extensive records of empirical observation published before modern times." (K. F. Kitchell Jr., I. M. Resnick, On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica by Albertus Magnus, Review by M. W. Tkacz, The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 55, No. 2, p.371).
Bibliography: Index Aurel. 102.543; Adams A 524; BM STC, Italian Books p. 12; Edit 16, CNCE 787; Stillwell, Awakening 566 rem. - Visit our website to see more images!

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