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Influential and popular work on natural history and magic

PORTA, Johannes Baptista (Giambattista).
Magiae naturalis, sive de miraculis rerum naturalium libri IIII. Cum indice.






Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, 1585. 16mo. Sl. later vellum. 296, (8) pp.

Rare 7th edition of Porta's popular work on natural history and magic in four books. Originally published in folio at Napels in 1558, it was first published by Plantin in 1560, and several times republished: in 1560, 1561, 1564, 1567 and 1576). Plantin also provided an Index to the work, first in the 1576 edition, repeated in the present edition. The book became the most popular treatise on natural magic and was much republished and translated in all European languages, including a translation in Dutch, published by Plantin in 1566. According to Caillet, the book was most popular in France as it was the best practical and ceremonial treatise on natural magic, also including many curious secrets on women's beauty and make-up.
The author, Giambattista della Porta (ca. 1540-1615), a celebrated physician, philosopher and caballist, who lived and worked in Napels, published a new edition of his  work at Napels in 1589, but next to the new edition, the old  four-book edition kept being published all through the 17th century, becoming a real popular book which could be bought cheaply.

These early editions in four books, containing the secrets of nature, which he began to study when he was fifteen, is rather strictly limited to the natural variety and is perhaps more prosaic than might be expected by modern minds. This may have been partly because of the deletions by the censors of which Porta complains in his preface. It is quite evidently a continuation and repetition and compilation of the medieval books of secrets and experiments (see Thorndike, vol. 2, chapt. 63-5). The first introductory book, which remained essentially the same in all editions, discussed the chief causes, manifest and occult, of natural marvels and marvellous artificial operations: the elements and their qualities, forms, celectial influence, sympathy and antipathy, likeness and occult virtue, with some attention to time and place, to methods of preparing and mixing compounds, and to the properties of fountains; the second is devoted to various marvellous experiments and tricks from the transmutation of plants to secret modes of writing, from cosmetics to soporifics, from magic lamps to love philters and fascination. The third book deals with chemical experiments, and the fourth with optical experiments and mirrors, closing with the time-honored themes of physical ligatures, the virtues of stones and of images carved on gems.
Apart from the mixture of curiosity and credulity common in late  Renaissance science, the book represents a serious attempt to define and  describe natural magic and some refined application of mathematical and experimental techniques in science, including perspective.

Good copy, with the bookplates of the Bibliothèque de Mr. E.M. Mangel, and Gordon W Jones, M.D., Falmouth, Virginia.-  (Small tear in title and fol. T1 (repaired), title a bit soiled, sl. browned).
Voet 2090; Belg. Typogr. 4045; Thorndike VI, pp. 418-22; Machiels P 1131; cf. Caillet 8854 (edition 1560); STC Dutch p. 172 (Plantin-edd. of 1561 and 1564); Adams P 1932-1933 (Plantin-edd. of 1560 and 1567); no Plantin-editions in Ferguson, Duveen, or Bibliotheca Esotherica.

Related Subjects: 16th Century  Occult  Popular Books 

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