For high-octane Lutheran polemic disguised as astrology in the context of the 1524 flood controversy, Johann Copp has few equals. After publishing practicas for 1521 and 1522 dedicated to Martin Luther, he published a prognostication for 1523 and 1524 that claimed merely to represent the influences of the stars on the upcoming years. And if the motions of the planets foretold warfare, bloodshed, and a rebellion of the common people against the clergy, he certainly meant them no ill-will and was sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
No one was really fooled about Copp's threat against the clergy, and he seems to have found it necessary to walk back his predictions, which were over the top even in a Lutheran-sympathetic territory. In 1523 he published a prognostication "written more clearly than a year before," in which his dedicatory epistle goes to an equivalent extreme in its obsequiousness towards Prince-elector Frederick III of Saxony. Even that wasn't enough, and Copp had to leave Saxony for Bohemia.
The secondary literature on Copp is limited. The one article on him was published in Swedish in 1923: O. Walde, "Doktor Johann Copp. En Astrolog Och Läkare Från Reformationstiden i Svensk Tjänst," Lychnos 2-3 (1937-38): 79–111, 225–67. Heike Talkenberger also discusses Copp and his works extensively in Sintflut (pp. 224-35).
Until recently, the only digital facsimiles of Copp's works were several editions of a treatise on the use of the astrolabe and one edition of his practica for 1522 (VD16 C 5022). Recently the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek released a digital edition of his prognostication for 1523 (VD16 C 5026). I wish either Leipzig or the Germanisches Nationalmusem in Nuremberg would digitalize Copp's last prognostication of 1523 to complete the trilogy (VD16 C 5023; I don't see an extant copy of the other two editions, VD16 VD16 C 5024 and ZV 24182).
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