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GALILEI, Galileo (1564-1642). Dialogo ... sopre i due massimi sistemi del mondo Tolemaico, e Copernicano. Florence: Giovanni Battista Landini, 1632.
First edition, from the library of Pierre Des Noyers, of Galilei's celebrated defence of Copernican heliocentrism and the direct cause of his trial and imprisonment. In 1624, eight years after Pope Paul V had forbidden him to promulgate the Copernican theory, Galileo was granted permission to write on the subject by the new Pope, Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini, 1568-1644), his friend and patron for more than a decade, on the condition that Aristotelian and Copernican theories were put forward equally and impartially. To this end Galileo wrote his work as a dialogue among Salviati, an advocate for Copernicus, Simplicio, an upholder of the Ptolemaic and Aristotelian orthodoxy, and Sagredo, an educated layman who acts as adjudicator. Ostensibly impartial, the work ‘is 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 philosophy, that is, in physics... The Dialogo, more than any other work, made the heliocentric system a commonplace’ (PMM). Galileo lost the support of Urban VIII by ascribing one of his views to the simple-minded Aristotelian Simplicius and was called to Rome for trial by the Inquisition. His sentence of life imprisonment was immediately commuted to permanent house arrest and the Dialogo was placed on the Index, where it remained until 1832. The Braune copy once belonged to a near-contemporary of Galileo, Pierre Des Noyers. Secretary and personal treasurer to Louise-Marie Gonzaga, Queen of Poland, Des Noyers had a deep knowledge of Poland and a strong interest in science; he was a correspondent of Hevelius and many other men of scientists and intellectuals across Europe. Carli and Favaro, p. 28; Cinti 89; Dibner, Heralds of Science, 8; Grolier/Horblit 18c; Norman 858; Wellcome 2647a; PMM 128.
Quarto (210 x 153mm). Engraved frontispiece by Stefano della Bella, woodcut Landini device on title, 31 woodcut text diagrams and illustrations, woodcut ornamental initial, type-ornament head- and tailpieces and factotum initials. With the errata leaf, pasted-on correction slip on p.92, and manuscript addition of letter H to diagram on p.192 (without final blank, frontispiece remargined, P8 lightly spotted). 18th-century mottled calf, gilt spine, later red edges (wormtrack on front cover, discreetly recased). Provenance: [Pierre] Des Noyers (1608-1693; title inscription).
First edition, from the library of Pierre Des Noyers, of Galilei's celebrated defence of Copernican heliocentrism and the direct cause of his trial and imprisonment. In 1624, eight years after Pope Paul V had forbidden him to promulgate the Copernican theory, Galileo was granted permission to write on the subject by the new Pope, Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini, 1568-1644), his friend and patron for more than a decade, on the condition that Aristotelian and Copernican theories were put forward equally and impartially. To this end Galileo wrote his work as a dialogue among Salviati, an advocate for Copernicus, Simplicio, an upholder of the Ptolemaic and Aristotelian orthodoxy, and Sagredo, an educated layman who acts as adjudicator. Ostensibly impartial, the work ‘is 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 philosophy, that is, in physics... The Dialogo, more than any other work, made the heliocentric system a commonplace’ (PMM). Galileo lost the support of Urban VIII by ascribing one of his views to the simple-minded Aristotelian Simplicius and was called to Rome for trial by the Inquisition. His sentence of life imprisonment was immediately commuted to permanent house arrest and the Dialogo was placed on the Index, where it remained until 1832. The Braune copy once belonged to a near-contemporary of Galileo, Pierre Des Noyers. Secretary and personal treasurer to Louise-Marie Gonzaga, Queen of Poland, Des Noyers had a deep knowledge of Poland and a strong interest in science; he was a correspondent of Hevelius and many other men of scientists and intellectuals across Europe. Carli and Favaro, p. 28; Cinti 89; Dibner, Heralds of Science, 8; Grolier/Horblit 18c; Norman 858; Wellcome 2647a; PMM 128.
Quarto (210 x 153mm). Engraved frontispiece by Stefano della Bella, woodcut Landini device on title, 31 woodcut text diagrams and illustrations, woodcut ornamental initial, type-ornament head- and tailpieces and factotum initials. With the errata leaf, pasted-on correction slip on p.92, and manuscript addition of letter H to diagram on p.192 (without final blank, frontispiece remargined, P8 lightly spotted). 18th-century mottled calf, gilt spine, later red edges (wormtrack on front cover, discreetly recased). Provenance: [Pierre] Des Noyers (1608-1693; title inscription).
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