Francofurti (Frankfurt), Beatus, 1600.
8vo. In contemporary full vellum with yapp edge with title in contemporary hand to spine. Small paper-label pasted on to spine. Annotations in contemporary hand to title-page. Title-page soiled and fist leaves with dampstain in margin, otherwise internally nice and clean. 500, (18) pp.
Later edition of Vallé’s highly popular and influential work on the medical reading of the Bible. Since the Middle Ages there had been a conflict between medicin and religion, and in more broader sense, a conflict between science and religion - This particularly evident in the realm of understanding the human body and health. “One of the best-known approaches to the medical reading of the Bible is Francisco Vallés’ De his quae scripta sunt physice in libris sacris sive De sacra philosophia (1587) [Fig. 11.1], a book that could be used in a double way, namely both as a means to read the Bible as a medical book and as an example of how one could use medicine to read the Book of God and Nature. In fact, Vallés’ text makes use of the medical items of the Bible linking them to Hippocratic and Galenic medicine. The scientific legacy of the Ancient World could be put in dialog with the scientific heritage of the Bible. This is why Vallés’ sacred philosophy should not be isolated from contemporaries’ pious philosophies, which were created since the 15th Century and proliferated in the 16th and 17th Centuries. These philosophies were the result of Renaissance humanism, both philological and scientific. In Vallés’ sacred philosophy, the conciliation between Aristotelianism, Galenic-Hippocratic medicine and theology is but a way to create a conceptual tool to understand the human body and disease.” (Pennuto, Francisco Vallés’ De Sacra Philosophia: a Medical Reading of the Bible). Three editions were published when Vallés was still alive: The first in Turin in 1587, the second and the third ones in Lyon in 1588 and 1592 respectively. After his deaths editions were published in France, Switzerland and Germany.
Order-nr.: 60914