Gregor Reisch

Gregor Reisch (Balingen, about 1467 to Freiburg 1525), Carthusian prior at Freiburg and confessor to the Emperor Maximilian, wrote the Margarita Philosophica, the Philosophical Pearl, as a textbook of the whole of knowledge for the university student. First printed at Freiburg in 1503, it treats in twelve books the seven liberal arts, natural philosophy and the soul, and it was reprinted at Strasbourg and Basel throughout the first half of the century, in editions enlarged by the printer Johann Grüninger.

For the historian of science the Margarita is a summary of the world as it stood on the eve of Copernicus: astronomy with volvelles, music, arithmetic with the Hindu-Arabic numerals, optics, and a woodcut world map that in the early editions still follows Ptolemy and from 1515 shows the new discoveries. The illustrations, hundreds of woodcuts, are among the best of the German press.

Our collection holds the Strasbourg edition of 1512 in a contemporary binding, with the woodcuts coloured at the time.