El non plus ultra de el lunario, y pronostico perpetuo, general, y particular para cada reyno y provincia...expurgado segun el expurgatorio del año 1707 de la Santa Inquisicion, y aora nuevamente reformado y añadido

by Gerónimo (Jerónimo) Cortés | edited by Pedro Enguera

Barcelona: María Ángela Martí, 1760

[16], 312 p. | 8vo | pi^8 A-T^8 V^4 | 154 x 105 mm

A later edition of the Valencia mathematician's Lunario perpetuo, which appeared as early as 1594. It was wildly popular, no doubt on account of its obvious everyday utility. A version even turns up in the 1683 inventory of a Mexico City bookseller. Editions prepared by Barcelona mathematics professor Pedro Enguera appeared as early as 1715 and seem to have been no less popular. Just in case the book's intended popularity should be in doubt, its Everyman raison d'être, the prologo al lector makes clear that it is decidedly not for those well versed in mathematics. And if, heaven help us, the book should happen to fall into the hands of a mathematician, the editor implores him "to give it to some friend of yours who doesn't know as much." ¶ Not limited to a single year, this kind of almanac combines chronological elements of enduring and everyday benefit. It opens with a thorough discussion of earthly time and some salient astronomical details, and then delves into the perpetual calendar. However, the tabular version of the calendar (p. 64-65) covers only the years 1761-1784. These sections instead focus on helping the reader understand how to prepare these calculations themselves. (Teach a person to fish, right?) There are sections on dominical letters, golden numbers, lunar epacts, movable feasts, the essentials of any perpetual calendar. Examples of these calculations plot years millennia into the future. ¶ But the majority of the text is dedicated to what 15th- and 16th-century readers might have recognized as a practica: temporal instructions on how to harmonize your everyday living with nature. What agricultural tasks should one accomplish each month? When does one plant particular crops, or castrate animals? What are the best months for undergoing different medical treatment, or to bathe oneself? What are a given time period's astrologically favored events? Basic weather expectations? Each month also includes its own perpetual calendar, providing daily lunar epacts, dominical letters, dates, and feast days. True to its late medieval forebears, the next section covers the seven classical planets. For each, there's a discussion of what to expect from those times of the year under its influence, touching on health, psychology, weather, and more. Next is a similar discussion of the twelve-month zodiac, with details on what to expect by way of character, hazards, etc. ¶ These sections are followed by discourses on eclipses and comets; a lengthy table of astronomical conjunctions; medicinal purging recommendations; and dozens more pages of general medical guidance, largely structured as discussions of select Latin verses. The entirety is illustrated with THREE DOZEN WOODCUTS: the four winds on p. 19, one diagramming the North Star on p. 25, a full-page astronomical man on p. 233, two bloodletting diagrams on p. 234-235, plus a small seasonal woodcut at the beginning of each monthly guide, a larger one for each of the seven planets, and smaller ones again for each month of the zodiac. ¶ WorldCat reports no copies of this edition in North America.

PROVENANCE: An early user has added more than a dozen pages of manuscript at front and back, demonstrating deep engagement with the heart of the book's matter. Most of the notes are chronological calculations, including a standout perpetual calendar at front for the years 1812-1836. For each year, our reader has provided a variety of annual chronological markers, including its dominical letter, linking dates to their days of the week; its golden number, marking its place in the 19-year Metonic lunar cycle; its lunar epact, used to reconcile the solar and lunar calendars; and a variety of movable feasts. The front paste-down has a table of the 28-year solar cycles for select years 1744-1813, and a two-page table at back provides lunar epacts for 1767-1826. A handful of leaves bear brief marginalia, too. A note on p. 46 augments instructions for finding the lunar epact of a given year, instructions perhaps useful for producing the aforementioned table. Annotations on p. 67-70 demonstrate particular interest in the church calendar. Brief annotations to the conjunction tables highlight the years 1812, 1813, 1814, and 1815, perhaps indicating when our annotator was active. Taken together, the reader's STUDIED AND COMPLEX ADDITIONS REFLECT THE VERY USE FOR WHICH THE BOOK WAS INTENDED. ¶ On the two-page spread of the rear endsheet (interrupted by the inserted lunar epact table), is probably the oldest note of all, and no less engaging: the words for a prayer, if not a DEVOTIONAL FOLK SONG, which overlap a good deal with Los cantarcillos de María pastora. A performance is available online, or check out this 1758 chapbook edition.

CONDITION: Contemporary limp parchment, retaining at least parts of the original ties. ¶ First dozen leaves dampstained at the top, and foxed throughout. The binding soiled; second leaf of the inserted epact table torn and rather crudely glued to the rear paste-down, obscuring some of the devotional song.

REFERENCES: Horacio Capel, "El público y la circulación de obras de geografía en la España del siglo XVIII," La ciencia y su público: perspectivas históricas (1990), p. 235 ("work of the 16th century that was known in numerous editions during the following century, modernized and expurgated in the 18th, newly edited and still reprinted in Barcelona in 1793"); p. 74 (a focused discussion on the book's discourses on humoral medicine; "Cortés demonstrates how all of nature is coordinated around the qualities of heat, humidity, coldness, and dryness"); Irving A. Leonard, "On the Mexican Book Trade, 1683," The Hispanic American Historical Review 27.3 (Aug 1947), p. 426 (a copy of Cortés's Secretos, lunario, y tesoro in a Mexican bookstore in 1683); Sandra Establés Susán, Diccionario de mujeres impresoras e libreras de España e Iberoamérica entre los siglos XV y XVIII (2018), p. 361 (for this woman-owned press, the widow of Maur Martí, active 1754-1770)

Item #575