Friday, August 15, 2014

Adding an author to a fragmentary incunable prognostication

Identifying the author of a fragmentary annual prognostication is sometimes difficult, requiring a significant amount of research. Other times, it only takes a few minutes.

This week, the Heidelberg university library released a facsimile of ISTC ip01005937/GW M35611, a fairly extensive fragment that is lacking an incipit, so no author had been identified. Leaf 1v did provide a complete list of chapters, however, and the structure looked familiar. After checking my records, I found that the text of the fragment was identical to that of another incucanble edition: Bernardinus de Luntis, Judicium for 1492 (Rome: Stephan Plannck, [around 1492]; ISTC il00392200, GW M19510). The identity of the two texts can be verified by comparing the facsimile provided by the BSB, so Bernardinus de Luntis should be added as the author to ISTC ip01005937/GW M35611. I sent a note on to Berlin to that effect.

Bernardinus de Luntis is otherwise known to ISTC/GW only through one additional practica, for 1493: ISTC il00392300/GW M19511, again printed by Stephan Plannck. It's not unusual for astrologers to have a career in print that only lasted a few years, but the distribution of surviving copies is a bit odd in this case: apart from one copy in the Vatican, the other three are all in German-speaking Europe, in Basel, Heidelberg, and Munich. Apart from a brief mention by Simon de Phares in his Recueil des plus célèbres astrologues, not much appears to be known about Bernardinus de Luntis.

Update: Klaus Graf adds a few more references to Bernardinus de Luntis here.

4 comments:

  1. http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/948994378/

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  2. Thanks for the additional bibliography.

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  3. Another biographical note on a similar obscure author Sibenbürger http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/953085301/

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  4. Thanks again! I'd missed the two digitized editions of Sibenbürger from the MDZ, too.

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