pdf - Roger Gaskell Rare Books

convicta, & funditus eversa. Opus hermeticum, vere didacticum...
De quinta essentia magno perfectoque lapidis magisterio... diligenta
elaboratem.
Frankfurt: ex oYcina typographica Ioannis Saurii impensis Petri KopY,
1607.
8vo: A–3M8 (blank 3M8), 468 leaves, pp. 926 [2] (last 2 pages blank).
153 x 96mm. Severely browned and paper brittle with several short
marginal tears; small worm holes aVecting individual letters.
Binding: Eighteenth­century vellum boards, early MS lettering on
upper page edges.
First edition. Wellcome 3777; Duveen p. 357.
A reply to the attacks of the Paris Academy of Medicine, instigated by Riolan,
after the publication of Libavius’ Alchymia recognita, emendata et aucta, (1606).
Duveen calls it ‘a splendid defence of alchemy.’
‘Libavius was... involved in the conXict between, on one side, the French
Calvinist–Paracelsists Joseph Duchesne and Israel Harvet – whom he supported
– and, on the other, the Galenist Catholic professor of medicine of
the university of Paris, Jean Riolan. To an aggressive pamphlet by Riolan,
Libavius replied with the 926 page Alchymia triumphans (1607), demonstrating
point by point the ignorance of his adversary.’ (Wlodzimierz Hubicki, DSB
8:310a.)
123
LIBAVIuS, Andreas (1555–1616)
De universitate, et originibus rerum conditarum contemplatio
singularis, theologica, et philosophica, iuxta historiam Hexaëmeri
Mosaici in Genesi propositam instituta, et in VII. libros distributa.
Frankfurt: excudabatur typis Ioannis Saurii, impensis Petri KopYi,
bibliopolae, 1610.
4to: A–5D4 (blank 5D4), pp. [12] 742 [14] (last two pages blank).
Title within a woodcut border.
200 x 160mm. Light browning.
Binding: Contemporary vellum, recently rebacked in morocco.
Provenance: Inscription on title, ‘Casparii PfaVe[?] 1612 [...]’; library
stamp, cancelled, of the university of Helmstedt on verso of title.
Inscribed ‘Walter and Magda Pagel’ on pastedown.
First edition. Another issue or edition was published by KopV in 1620.
VD17 39:119916C.
One of Libavius rarer works. Partington summarises the contents as follows:
‘Deals with six days of Creation; pillars of Seth (p. 32); aqua sicca=mercury
(p. 216); transmutation of plants (p. 268); rejects the divining rod (p. 350, de
Virgula divina theses, mentioning Agricola); rejects astrology (pp. 361, 401);
accepts the barnacle goose (p. 533)’ (Partington I, pp. 251–2).