Olympia-2015

ORIGINS OF THE MODERN CALENDAR: THE TRUE FIRST EDITION49. [GREGORIAN CALENDAR]. Kalendarium Gregorianum perpetuum. Cumprivilegio summi Pontificis et aliorum principum. Rome, Ex officina DomeniciBasae, 1582.Large 8vo (225 x 160 mm), ff. [30], text partially printed in red, woodcut arms ofGregory XIII on title, woodcut initials; a fine, fresh copy with many lower edgesuntrimmed, in Italian contemporary brown morocco gilt, recased, endpapersrenewed. £8000First rare edition of the Calendar as reformed in 1582 by Gregory XIII andnow in use throughout the world. This edition is printed on fine paper and wasdestined for presentation to important dignitaries throughout the Catholic world. Asmaller-format reprint of 36 leaves was intended for more general circulation; thetwo editions are often confused in bibliographies.As the Julian Calendar, devised by JuliusCaesar (46 B.C.), did not correspond withsufficient accuracy to the period taken bythe earth to go round the sun (just under365¼ days), an error of ten days hadaccumulated by the sixteenth century.Pope Gregory, in his bull ‘Intergravissimas’ of 24 February 1582, orderedthat matters be remedied by reckoning theday after 4 October of that year as 15October […] As a reward to Antonio Giglio[brother of Aloigi Giglio, the creator of thereformed calendar] and to avoiduncontrolled reprinting of the calendar thePope issued on 3 April, 1582 a briefprohibiting any publication of the calendarwithout the approval of Giglio. Giglio fromhis side promised together with the printerto provide plenty of copies in due time.Soon the nuncios received a few copies tobe handed over to princes, bishops andother personalities together with a promiseof cases full of books soon to be sent. However, these copies were so much delayedthat scarcity of calendars became an obstacle in carrying out the reform’ (AugustZiggelaar, ‘The papal bull of 1582 promulgating a reform of the calendar’, in G. V.Coyne, M. A. Hoskin and O. Pedersen, eds., Gregorian reform of the calendar:Proceedings of the Vatican conference to commemorate its 400th anniversary 1582–1982, 1983, pp. 220–21).Very rare. Not in the British Library. Not found in RLIN. OCLC records one copyonly (Adler Planetarium, mistakenly(?) calling for 29 leaves only).