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Details
GALILEO GALILEI (1564-1642)
Dialogo ... sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo tolemaico, e copernicano. Florence: Giovanni Batista Landini, 1632. 4° (220 x 158mm). Woodcut printer's device on title. Frontispiece in later facsimile. Woodcut illustrations and diagrams in the text, woodcut headpieces and initials. Cancellans slip pasted over shoulder-note on F6v. (Variable light spotting and browning, some staining particularly affecting gatherings 2F-2K, a few leaves with neat marginal repairs occasionally affecting side-notes, first gathering guarded in, title torn and neatly repaired affecting one line, paper flaw affecting text on B7r, 2F1 and 2F6 with neatly-repaired tears on text, lacking final blank 2K4.) Later vellum, lettered in manuscript on the spine (vellum lightly marked).
FIRST EDITION. 'UNA DELLE PIù CELEBRI OPERE DI GALILEO' (Cinti). Although Galileo had been forbidden to hold or teach Copernican theory by Pope Paul V in 1616, following the election of Pope Urban VIII in 1623 he travelled to Rome to seek permission to discuss the Copernican system in print; this permission was granted in 1624, with the proviso that the Ptolemaic system was impartially and equally represented. The resulting work was the Dialogo ..., which represented the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems through two spokesmen who both attempt to convince an educated layman of the correctness of their particular viewpoints; this technique ensured that both systems would be seen to be advocated with equal vigour. The resulting text was 'a masterly polemic for the new science. It displays all the great discoveries in the heavens which the ancients had ignored; it inveighs against the sterility, wilfulness, and ignorance of those who defend their systems; it revels in the simplicity of Copernican thought and, above all, it teaches that the movement of the earth makes sense in [...] physics' (PMM).
Dialogo ... was published in March 1632 in the present edition, initially without controversy. However, after a short time the Vatican reacted to the book by commanding the printer to stop issuing it and ordering Galileo to travel to Rome to appear before the Inquisition in October of that year. Galileo resisted the instruction (partly on grounds of ill health), but was forced to appear before the Inquisition for the trial, which began in April 1633. Galileo was prosecuted vigorously on the basis of questionable and specious evidence, forced to recant his Copernican heresies, and condemned to life imprisonment (which was commuted to house arrest); the Dialogo ... was placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum, where it remained until 1822. Brunet II, col.1462; Carli and Favaro 128; Cinti 89 (noting cancellans slip on F6v, 'tale cartellino ci deve essere, se si vuole che l'essemplare sia perfetto'); Dibner Heralds (1980) 8; Gamba 475; Grolier Science 18c; Norman 858; PMM 128; Riccardi I, i, cols 511-512; Waller 12043.
Dialogo ... sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo tolemaico, e copernicano. Florence: Giovanni Batista Landini, 1632. 4° (220 x 158mm). Woodcut printer's device on title. Frontispiece in later facsimile. Woodcut illustrations and diagrams in the text, woodcut headpieces and initials. Cancellans slip pasted over shoulder-note on F6v. (Variable light spotting and browning, some staining particularly affecting gatherings 2F-2K, a few leaves with neat marginal repairs occasionally affecting side-notes, first gathering guarded in, title torn and neatly repaired affecting one line, paper flaw affecting text on B7r, 2F1 and 2F6 with neatly-repaired tears on text, lacking final blank 2K4.) Later vellum, lettered in manuscript on the spine (vellum lightly marked).
FIRST EDITION. 'UNA DELLE PIù CELEBRI OPERE DI GALILEO' (Cinti). Although Galileo had been forbidden to hold or teach Copernican theory by Pope Paul V in 1616, following the election of Pope Urban VIII in 1623 he travelled to Rome to seek permission to discuss the Copernican system in print; this permission was granted in 1624, with the proviso that the Ptolemaic system was impartially and equally represented. The resulting work was the Dialogo ..., which represented the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems through two spokesmen who both attempt to convince an educated layman of the correctness of their particular viewpoints; this technique ensured that both systems would be seen to be advocated with equal vigour. The resulting text was 'a masterly polemic for the new science. It displays all the great discoveries in the heavens which the ancients had ignored; it inveighs against the sterility, wilfulness, and ignorance of those who defend their systems; it revels in the simplicity of Copernican thought and, above all, it teaches that the movement of the earth makes sense in [...] physics' (PMM).
Dialogo ... was published in March 1632 in the present edition, initially without controversy. However, after a short time the Vatican reacted to the book by commanding the printer to stop issuing it and ordering Galileo to travel to Rome to appear before the Inquisition in October of that year. Galileo resisted the instruction (partly on grounds of ill health), but was forced to appear before the Inquisition for the trial, which began in April 1633. Galileo was prosecuted vigorously on the basis of questionable and specious evidence, forced to recant his Copernican heresies, and condemned to life imprisonment (which was commuted to house arrest); the Dialogo ... was placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum, where it remained until 1822. Brunet II, col.1462; Carli and Favaro 128; Cinti 89 (noting cancellans slip on F6v, 'tale cartellino ci deve essere, se si vuole che l'essemplare sia perfetto'); Dibner Heralds (1980) 8; Gamba 475; Grolier Science 18c; Norman 858; PMM 128; Riccardi I, i, cols 511-512; Waller 12043.
Provenance
Letter 'H' added to diagram on M8v by an early hand.
Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann (inventory no. Y-37).
Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann (inventory no. Y-37).
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