SACROBOSCO Liber Iohannis de Sacro Busto, de Sphera.

Addita est praefatio in eundem librum Philippi Mel. ad Simonem Gryneum Impressum Vitebergae per Josephum Clug, 1534. 12mo. pp. [85]. Modern quarter blue morocco over marbled boards, title in gilt along spine. Early marginalia on final three blanks. In very good condition.
No copy located on JISC.

Johannes de Sacrobosco (also written Ioannes de Sacro Bosco), later known as John of Holywood (c.1195-c.1256), was a medieval scholar, Catholic cleric, and astronomer who taught at the University of Paris, where he became one of the most influential scientific teachers of the thirteenth century. Despite his prominence, remarkably little is known with certainty about his early life or education, and his place of birth has long been a matter of scholarly debate.
A near-contemporary, Robertus Anglicus, wrote in 1271 that Sacrobosco was born in England, though this assertion is unsupported by firm evidence and has never been conclusively substantiated. In the sixteenth century, the antiquary John Leland speculated that he was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, a claim later rejected by William Camden. Other traditions placed his origins in Scotland: Thomas Dempster identified him with an Augustinian canon of Holywood Abbey in Nithsdale, while John Veitch suggested Galloway, proposing that he studied among the monks of Whithorn and Dryburgh.
Ireland for centuries featured in discussions of Sacrobosco’s origins. Edmund Campion and Richard Stanihurst associated him with Holywood, County Down, though modern scholars, notably Olaf Pedersen, regarded this as conjecture arising from the familiarity of the placename rather than documentary proof. A similar claim for Holywood, County Wicklow, likewise lacks evidential support. More compelling, however, is the testimony of James Ware, writing in 1639, who believed Sacrobosco to have been born near Dublin. Later scholars may not have been aware that the seat of the Sacrobosco (or Hollywood) family in medieval Ireland was Artane, just north of Dublin.
Local Irish historical records point to Artane Castle as the ancestral home of the Hollywood family and support the tradition that Johannes de Sacrobosco was born there. While absolute proof remains elusive, as is often the case with medieval figures, the Artane origin aligns convincingly with both the documentary tradition and the survival of the Holywood name in Ireland. For these reasons, an Irish origin for Sacrobosco is not only plausible but increasingly persuasive, situating one of medieval Europe’s most influential scientific writers within an Irish intellectual lineage.
Preface by Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560) German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, an intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and influential designer of educational systems.
Provenance: With the engraved bookplate of Coeli Enarranti Gingerich, the distinguished American historian of astronomy and long-time editor of the Journal for the History of Astronomy. Gingerich’s library was noted for its concentration on medieval and early modern cosmological and computistical texts, and his ownership marks this copy as having belonged to a major twentieth-century scholar of Sacrobosco and his intellectual legacy

[CAT 164]