Granada M.A., Mosley A., Jardine N. (Eds.) Christoph Rothmann's Discourse on the Comet of 1585

Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2014. — 396 p. — (History of Science and Medicine Library 44 : Medieval and Early Modern Science 22) — ISBN: 900426034X.Christoph Rothmanns Discourse on the Comet of 1585 offers the first edition of the Latin treatise after it was published in 1619. It is accompanied by an English translation and a full introduction and commentary.
In this volume we present and interpret an important but long-overlooked text on a comet that appeared in the skies above Europe in 1585. In the sixteenth century cometary theory experienced a series of decisive changes closely connected to the cosmological revolution then underway and, in particular, to the substitution of the traditional dichotomy between the celestial and sublunary
worlds with the concept of a unified universe. According to the Aristotelian cosmology prevailing in the West since the thirteenth century, comets were meteors—that is, they were ephemeral phenomena that belonged to the sublunary world of generation and corruption and were entirely impossible in the immutable celestial world, where the only change admitted was the everlasting circular and uniform motion of the ethereal spheres. Consequently, comets were not considered phenomena proper to astronomy, but sporadic formations studied within meteorology, especially in commentaries on Aristotle’s treatise Meteorologica—the work which contained (in chapters 3–7 of book one) the explanation of comets commonly accepted. The text presented in this volume illustrates a radical departure from that view, and the acceptance of comets as celestial objects with enormous astronomical and cosmological significance.Dialexis Cometae qui Anno Christi M.D.LXXXV. mensibus Octobri et Novembri apparuit
A Discourse on the Comet Which Appeared in the Months of October and November of 1585
Appendices: Related Texts and Translations
How to Present a Copernican Comet: The Form and Tactics of Christoph Rothmann’s Dialexis on the Comet of 1585
Cometsas Boundary Objects
The History and Historiography of Early Modern Comets
A Brief Note on Cometary Parallax