Rocca, Giovanni Battista de (1653- )

Transcripts on astrology, Cabala, etc., with other holograph notes and an autobiography to 1667: partly in Latin, partly in Italian. Illustrated with 20-pen-drawn cabalistic 'Rotae' and a few horoscopic figures. Contents: Orighetti (P.). Instruttione sopra l'opera del P. Titi (26 ll.). Cardanus (H.). Tractatus de cometis [Extract] (6 ll.). - Tractatus de judiciis nativitatum [Extract] (6 ll.). [Anon.]. Ars Cabalistica (1 l. + 24 pp.). [Anon.]. De magnis conjunctionibus (2 ll.). Rocca (G. B.). Horoscope of friends, with astrological notes 1673-74 (4 ll.). - Notularium stellarum fixarum (13 pp.). - Disgrazie che il Signor Dio mi ha mindita per li miei peccati in mia vita et grazie fattemi per sua misericordia (11 ll.). This contains his autobiography from his birth at Genoa in 1653 to 1667. It mentions a severe epidemic fever there in 1656, and gives a full account of his own maladies, and the illnesses and deaths of various relatives and friends. On the penultimate leaf is the date 1698, and on the last leaf a table of fixed stars. The first work is a continuation of that begun-but struck through-in his 'Speculum astrologicum' (MS. No. 4230). Produced in Genoa.

1698

1 volume 154 ll. 4to. 21 × 15 cm. Original vellum binding, with flap: leather tie wanting. The t.p. and first leaf are wanting, but a copy of the latter written later has been inserted. There are many blank leaves.

Purchased 1910.

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).