BY KEPLER’S TEACHER: MICHAEL MAESTLIN ON ASTRONOMY, 1588, IN BEAUTIFUL ORNATELY BLIND-STAMPED CONTEMPORARY VELLUM, WITH FINE WOODCUTS

MAESTLIN, Michael. Epitome Astronomiae, qua Brevi Explicatione Omnia, tam ad Sphaericam. Tubingae: Georgius Gruppenbachius, 1588. Thick 12mo, contemporary blind-stamped vellum with centerpiece motifs of eight muses. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

Second edition of this noted 16th-century introduction to astronomy, with six folding tables and numerous in-text astronomical woodcuts throughout. Beautifully bound in contemporary full vellum ornately blind-stamped with centerpiece motifs depicting eight muses.

One of the most learned and esteemed astronomers of the time, Michael Maestlin, professor of mathematics at Tübingen, taught Kepler and corresponded with him throughout their careers. Although he generally lectured on the Ptolemaic system, “Maestlin regularly discussed Copernicus in his classes, and there the young Johannes Kepler first learned of Copernican astronomy” (Owen Gingerich). Copernican theory, even when taught on the speculative basis permitted by the Roman Catholic Church until Galileo’s trial in 1633, was strictly prohibited at the outset by the Lutherans. Maestlin was the only contemporary theologian to advocate the new astronomy. Among Maestlin’s own achievements are “his correct description of earthshine, his observation and identification of the nova of 1572, and his attempt to determine the orbit of the comet of 1577-78” (Charlotte Methuen). “It is evident that after Kepler had left the Academy at Tübingen, Maestlin continued to direct his astronomical studies, providing him with advice, corrections, and in one letter, a full and much needed exposition of Copernican theory” (Anthony Grafton). The first known calculation of the golden ratio as a decimal of “about 0.6180340” was made by Maestlin in 1597 in a letter to Kepler. The publication of Kepler’s Mysterium cosmographicum (1596) was supervised by Maestlin, who determined it useful to add by way of an appendix “the dimensions of the spheres of the world, by which the planets are moved, according to the hypotheses of Copernicus,” with parameters from Erasmus Reinhold’s Prutenic Tables (1551). First published in 1582, Maestlin’s popular introduction to astronomy, begun when he himself was still a student at Tübingen, includes “the conventional classification of comets as meteorological phenomena,” despite his earlier conclusions that comets were not sublunar, but rather supralunar bodies (DSB). Epitome astronomiae went through seven editions between 1582 and 1624. Text in Latin. Without only leaf E1 (pages 65-66), containing a plate with volvelle. See Graesse IV, 333 (1610 edition). Early owner signatures, occasional marginal annotation.

Interior lightly embrowned, 17th-century paper repair to fore-edge margin of title page. Contemporary vellum lovely.