1557 Lycosthenes OMENS PROPHECIES MONSTERS UFO Occult FOLIO 1st ed. ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE WEIRD/>1500 WOODCUTS! Start Price USD 9.75 Current Price USD 5,300.00 Time Left - Bid Count 51 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Sunday, July 20, 2008 End Time Wednesday, July 30, 2008 Location Pittsburgh See more about '1557 Lycosthenes OMENS PROPHECIES MONSTERS UFO Occult' Description     [Early Printing] [Anomalous Phenomena - Early 'Fortean' literature] [Occult - Supernatural Events and Omens] [Natural Disasters] [Monstrous Births & Deformities] [Encyclopedias] [Medieval Bestiaries] [Early Book Illustrations] Printed by Henricus Petri, Basel, 1557. FIRST EDITION! Text in the original Latin. Profusely illustrated with about 1540 woodcuts by various artists. "This encyclopaedic chronology of portentious events in human history includes many monstrous births, both human and animal. Actual cases are uncritically mingled with mythical creatures." (Morton's Medical Bibliography). Scarce and sought after FIRST edition of this IMMENSELY INTERESTING AND INFLUENTIAL RENAISSANCE ANTHOLOGY OF OMENS AND PRODIGIES entitled Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon... ab exordio mundi usque ad haec nostra tempora [that is "Chronicle of Omens and Portents from the beginning of the world up to these our present times"] compiled by the Swiss philosopher, theologian and professor of grammar Conrad Lycosthenes, aka Konrad Wolfhart (1518-1561). This magnificent and fascinating Folio is, arguably, the most comprehensive early work dealing with natural and supernatural disasters, all sorts of unexplained phenomena, abnormalities and monstrosities. It reproduces literally hundreds of omen-reports spanning the whole of known history (up to the time of publication). Fires and earthquakes, floods and rains of unusual objects, comets and other aerial phenomena (including some UFO-like sightings!), plagues and pestilence, birth deformities and monsters (multiple limbs, double heads, Siamese twins, etc.) exotic animals, supernatural creatures and monstrous animal-people - most are illustrated! Conrad Lycosthenes (1518 - 1561) was a humanist and an encyclopedist, born Konrad Wolffhart in Ruffach in Alsace on August 8, 1518. He later changed his German name, Wolffhart, to its Greek equivalent Lycosthenes. He belongs to the numerous polyhistorians of the 16th century and was particularly fond of curiosities and oddities. From 1535 to 1539, Conrad studied philosophy in Heidelberg. In 1542, he left Heidelberg for Basel where he began teaching Grammar and Dialectics. In 1545, at the age of 27, he became Deacon in the Church of Saint-Leonard. On December 21 1554, he suffered from hemiplegia and lost the ability to use his right hand. He learned to write with his left hand and continued his literary works until his death from apoplexia at the age of 43. In 1552 Conrad Lycosthenes had published the first separate edition of Julius Obsequens, a Latin writer on prodigies (c. 400 AD) who arranged his material chronologically, drawing in large part on Livy. This work had proved popular and, building on this foundation, Lycosthenes undertook the present work. Believing, as he did, that prodigies or portents had a religious significance, he states in his preface that these portents are not purely fortuitous, but show "God's anger and severity towards crimes, and fortell great changes ("vicissitudines") in the world". Such happenings often have natural causes, but it is God who is nature's master and who uses it when he wishes to show his favour or disfavour towards mankind (such as the eclipse at the hour of Christ's death). Lycosthenes begins with the serpent talking to Eve and carries his narrative up to 1557, some sixty pages being devoted to the years 1550-1557. Its more than 1500 stunning woodcuts of disasters, horrors, marvels and monsters make the Lycosthenes book far and away the best and most comprehensive collection of its type, and one of the most famous and fascinating illustrated books of the Renaissance! Several of the book's woodcuts are by the Swiss artist Rudolf Hans Manuel Deutsch (1525 - 1571) and some are by David Kandel (1520 - 1592), among whose contributions is the famous woodcut of "Rhinoceros" on p.18 (repeated on p.518). The Rhinoceros woodcut (which was later used in the 1559 edition of Sebastian Munster’s Cosmographia) is closely based on the Albrecht Dürer's remarkable sketch of a rhinoceros. Dürer had never actually seen a rhino, but based his depiction on accounts of a rhinoceros sent as a gift to King Emmanuel of Portugal by King Muzafar of Cambodia, who then forwarded it as gift to the Medici Pope, Leo X. Unfortunately on the journey to Rome the ship carrying it was wrecked and the animal lost. It did, however, achieve an immortality of sorts through Dürer's work, and was to influence depictions of all species of rhinoceros for at least two centuries. Manuel Deutsch is known to have designed greatly acclaimed topographical views of cities for Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia as well as seven of the woodcuts for the first modern book on mining, George Agricola's De re metallica (Basle, 1556). The striking double-page 'centerfold' woodcut on pp.24-25 presents a large variety of aquatic and terrestrial animals including assorted sea-monsters, some shown attacking ships. Many of the woodcuts of various human monsters illustrating this book later appeared in Ambroise Pare's works. The Lycosthenes' book is also significant as one of the earliest collections of what would now be called 'UFO SIGHTINGS', including the following account from ancient Rome of 393 A.D.: "Strange lights were seen in the sky in the days of the Emperor Theodosius. On a sudden, a bright globe appeared at midnight. It shown brilliantly near the day star (planet, Venus), about the circle of the zodiac. This globe shown little less brilliantly than the planet, and little by little, a great number of other glowing orbs drew near the first globe. The spectacle was like a swarm of bees flying round the bee-keeper, and the light of these orbs was as if they were dashing violently against each other. Soon, they blended together into one awful flame, and bodied forth to the eye as a horrible two-edged sword. The strange globe which was first seen now appeared like the pommel to a handle, and all the little orbs, fused with the first, shone as brilliantly as the first globe." On page 494 there is a remarkable "UFO" woodcut which shows a spaceship-like flying object, illustrating a report of a comet (?) seen over Arabia in 1479!. Also described in the book are early sightings of Halley's comet. The book was published in Basel (Switzerland) in 1557, when Michel Nostradamus was in the very midst of writing his Prophecies. Nostradamus was evidently familiar with the Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon and borrowed several omen-reports directly from the Lycosthenes's book. Much of Lycosthenes' 'Chronicle' was subsequently translated into contemporary English by Dr Stephen Batman in his hugely popular 'The Doome, Warning to All Men' of 1581, which supplemented it with further reports gleaned by Batman mainly from England, especially during the 24 years that followed the publication of Lycosthenes' book. Bibliographic references: Adams W-250; Graesse IV 310; Caillet 11470; Garrison-Morton 534.50; Durling, NLM, 2878; Wellcome Cat. I, 3917; Zinner, Geschichte und Bibliographie der Astronomischen Literatur, 2177. Physical description: FOLIO. Textblock measures 296 mm x 195mm. Wide-margined, possibly uncut exemplar. Half modern dark-brown blind-tooled leather (pigskin) over original heavy beveled wooden boards (formerly chained with a small hole on top of rear board where the chain used to be fastened). Two clasps (recently replaced). Endpapers renewed. Pagination: [12], 670, [2] pp. Signature collation: a4 b2 A6 B-C4 D-Z6 Az-Zz6 AA-II6 KK4 LL6 [-Tt2,-CC5]. Lacking 2 leaves Tt2, CC5 (pp.487-8 and 577-8), which are included in modern facsimile; otherwise complete. Illustrated with about 1540 woodcut (some repeated) illustrations including a double-page woodcut of sea with various sea-monsters on pp.24-25, a full-page map of Sicily and part of the Mediterranean on.178. Woodcut illustration on title-page, and woodcut printer's device on verso of final leaf, several decorative woodcut initials. Preliminaries include Dedicatory Epistle and ("Catalogus omnium autorum ex quorum scriptis..."). Errata and colophon (Basileae, per Henricum Petri, mense Augusto anno M.D.LVII) on recto of last leaf (LL6r) with printer's device on verso. Condition: Original wooden boards rubbed and with several tiny wormholes. A small hole on top of rear board where a chain was formerly fastened to the binding. Low outer corner of rear board slightly chipped. The first and last leaf repaired and reinforced along inner margin. Damp-staining to inner margin and adjacent text, more severely affecting the preliminaries and first 20 pages of text, then becoming much lighter towards p.100, and gradually diminishing to almost unnoticeable towards the middle of the volume. Inner margins of the first 10 leaves damaged and torn near gutter, resulting in partial separation at gutter of a few preliminary leaves (though they are still attached!). Lacking two leaves: Tt2 and CC5 (which will be supplied to the buyer in modern facsimile). Leaves E3 and DD1 with marginal closed tears; leaf LL3 with a longer closed tear affecting text but with no loss. A rectangular piece (approx. 1x2 inches) cut out of leaf T1 (pp.209-210) with some loss of text on recto and part of woodcut on verso, and a smaller piece (less than a square inch) cut from leaf S1, slightly affecting a woodcut (the affected woodcuts are repeated elsewhere in the book). A few tiny wormholes, mostly marginal, and, even when entering text area. not affecting readability. Generally, a fair, acceptable, mostly clean, and uncommonly wide-margined example of this desirable rarity. Please click on thumbnails below to see larger images. The winner must contact us within three days, and payment is due within 7 days after the auction's end. Please be responsible and do not bid if you are not intending to pay. We reserve the right to cancel bids from eBayers with no feedback or a history of negative feedback. This rare book will be shipped FREE anywhere within the US by FedEx express (insurance included). International bidders are welcome to inquire about the shipping costs. Happy bidding. Take care. Place a Bid!