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Libro de reloges solares
Science

Libro de reloges solares

Roiz, Pedro · Valencia · Pedro de Huete · 1575

One of the earliest books on sundials in Spanish, by a pupil of the astronomer Jeronimo Munoz; woodcut diagrams throughout. Of great rarity: only two copies recorded at auction in the past century.

FM-0096
€ 4.800
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Key Properties

Author: Pedro Roiz

Title: Libro de reloges solares

Imprint: Valencia, Pedro de Huete, 1575

Edition: First edition

Format: Quarto

Collation: [4] leaves, 120 pages, [2] leaves

Illustration: Woodcut on the title page; woodcut illustrations throughout the text

Binding: Eighteenth-century full calf

Collation & Technical Description

Quarto. [4] unnumbered leaves, 120 pages, [2] unnumbered leaves. Woodcut on the title page and woodcut illustrations throughout the text. Bound in eighteenth-century full calf.

Condition

Minor wear and a few small repairs, otherwise a good copy in its eighteenth-century full calf binding.

References & Bibliography

Salva 3811; Palau 275689. Not in Picatoste, Apuntes para una biblioteca cientifica Espanola del siglo XVI.

Description

One of the earliest books on gnomonics, the art of the sundial, to be published in Spanish. Pedro Roiz, a Valencian cleric devoted to mathematics and astronomy, was a pupil of the celebrated astronomer Jeronimo Munoz; he served as parish priest of San Valero, taught mathematics, and later became a canon of Valencia cathedral. His book, dedicated to Juan de Borja, is a practical manual in a clear and detailed style, treating the design and construction of sundials of every type, with woodcut diagrams throughout the text.

Historical Significance

The book belongs to the flowering of practical mathematics in sixteenth-century Valencia around Jeronimo Munoz, the astronomer famous for his observation of the new star of 1572, and it carried that school's knowledge of astronomy and geometry into everyday use: the measurement of time by the sun. In an age before reliable mechanical clocks, gnomonics was applied astronomy, and Roiz's treatise made it available in the vernacular for the first generation of Spanish readers. The book is of great rarity: only two copies are recorded as offered for sale since 1920 (Rare Book Hub), and it is absent from Picatoste's standard bibliography of sixteenth-century Spanish science.