Name: First Printed Edition of Ptolemy's 'Almagest'
Author: Johannes Regiomontanus

The Sunderland Collection

Ptolemy’s 'Almagest', separated into thirteen sections or 'books', covers a general cosmology of the universe. This edition by Johannes Regiomontanus and Georg von Peurbach, published 31 August 1496, is packed with 279 woodblock prints that pepper the margins of the work, and illustrate various concepts explained in the text relating to the motions of the Heavenly bodies. The title page features the two authors/translators of the work, Peurbach and Regiomontanus, who sit beneath an armillary sphere.

The publication of the work directly inspired Nicolaus Copernicus to question the geocentric theory of the universe, which resulted in the publication of his 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' (1543), the foundation of modern astronomy. This work did not just serve as foil to Copernicus’ new theories; it also contained proofs that were fundamental to his development of a heliocentric system.

This rare example of the first printed edition of Claudius Ptolemy's 'Almagest' forms an important cornerstone of the cross-cultural evolution of human knowledge. The title derives from the transliteration of the Arabic: اَلْمَجِسْطِيّ, ‘al Megiste’ (‘The Greatest’), and it was enormously influential to medieval Islamic scholars and later to Renaissance Europe. Ptolemy’s work discusses astronomy and was arguably his most influential book, alongside the 'Geographia' (on geography) and the 'Tetrabiblos' (on astrology).

Ptolemy's work - originally titled 'Mathematike Syntaxis' ('Mathematical Syntax') - was first translated from Greek into Arabic in the late-eighth and early-ninth centuries, and then became known as the 'Almagest' (from the Arabic: لْمَجِسْطِيّ, 'al Megiste' or 'The Greatest'). The first translation from Arabic into Latin was by Gerard of Cremona (1114–1187) in the second half of the twelfth century, but it was not until the fifteenth century that manuscripts in both Greek and Latin began to circulate widely throughout Europe.

This book was commissioned by Cardinal Bessarion (1403–1472), who sought a new and abridged translation of the 'Mathematike Syntaxis' from the original Greek. Peurbach, however, died prematurely in 1461. In the preface of the work, Regiomontanus accounts that on Peurbach’s deathbed, he asked Regiomontanus to complete the work, which he did. Regiomontanus had hoped to publish his 'Epitome' much earlier than 1496 at his own short-lived Nuremberg press (active 1473–1475), but his premature death at the age of forty in 1476 delayed its appearance for more than twenty years.

Title page

Frontispiece

Page with circular diagrams

Illuminated letter 'T'

Illuminated letters

Illuminated letter 'V'

Illuminated letter 'O'

Illuminated letter 'S'

Illuminated letter 'D'

Illuminated letter 'A

Illuminated letter 'L'

End page

An extremely rare example of Ptolemy’s 'Almagest', bound in a delicate contemporary Italian binding. The book was, at once, the foundation of both classical and modern astronomy: the first appearance in print of a Latin translation of the work from the original Greek which, when read by Nicolaus Copernicus, inspired the theories which led to the publication of his own landmark work, 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' ('On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres') in 1543.