Johannis de Dondis Paduani civis Astrarium: facsimile du manuscrit de Padoue et traduction française

Padova & Paris: Biblioteca Capitolare; Les Belles Lettres, 1987. FACSIMILE REPRODUCTION. Reproduction in photographic facsimile of manuscript D39 of the Capitolare Library of Padova. Soft vellum binding leather laces in imitation of the original. A fine copy. This is a facsimile of MS D39, the manuscript of Dondi’s Tractatus astrarii in the Biblioteca Capitolare in Padova. This facsimile was issued with a separate text volume, which is not present. Both were limited to 500 copies printed.

The Astrarium was a complex astronomical clock built between 1348 and 1364 in Padova, Italy, by the doctor and clock-maker Giovanni Dondi dall'Orologio. The Astrarium had seven faces and 107 moving parts; it showed the positions of the sun, the moon and the five planets then known, as well as religious feast days. It was one of the first mechanical clocks to be built in Europe.

Dondi documented the Astrarium in detail in the Tractatus astrarii. In the introduction, Dondi writes that his machine was built in accordance with the 13th-century Theorica planetarum of Campano di Novara, and to demonstrate the validity of the descriptions of the motion of heavenly bodies of Aristotle and Avicenna. The Tractatus survives in twelve manuscript sources. The autograph in the Biblioteca Capitolare of Padova (MS. D39) and a copy of it, also in Padova, are certainly the work of Dondi. The other sources are rewritten versions of the autograph, to which Dondi's contribution is as yet unclear. The last known description dates back to 1529, when Emperor Charles V arrived in Italy. Giovanni Dondi describes its construction in a treaty, and it was thanks to this original text that it was possible to rebuild the astrarium in 1963. The autograph manuscript was published in 1987 in a critical edition with colour facsimile and French translation by Emmanuel Poulle as the first volume of the Opera omnia of Jacopo and Giovanni Dondi.