Aldrovandi — Five Pages of Celestial and Atmospheric Prodigies from the Monstrorum Historia, Bologna 1642 - Huge Military Significance

Five folio leaves from Ulysses Aldrovandi's Monstrorum Historia (Bologna, 1642), drawn from the closing section of the work — the Admiranda Chasmatum Varietas, or "Marvellous Variety of Atmospheric Chasms." Each leaf is printed on both sides, giving the buyer ten pages of original Latin text and woodcut illustration in total, with five major full-page figures.

This set carries more weight than its size suggests. Among the five leaves are both the opening chapter of the celestial-prodigy section and the very last printed leaf of the entire Monstrorum Historia — the closing colophon page, with its printer's ornament, devotional inscription, and the magnificent final sentence in which Aldrovandi himself concedes the limits of human reasoning before the truly miraculous.

The Plates

Page 734: Chasma cum diuersis effluuijs — a fiery atmospheric chasm with various flame-like emissions, labelled with the meteorological scheme A. Lucida exhalatio, B. Orizon, C. Locus sub Orizonte, D. Vinculum exhalationis (bright exhalation, horizon, place beneath horizon, bond of the exhalation).

Page 736: Chasma cum effluuijs et crucibus — a chasm bearing twin crosses inscribed within solar discs, the visual record of a sky portent observed by the Flemish astronomer Cornelius Gemma during the imperial siege of Magdeburg.

Page 737: Chasma aliud — another chasm with bursting exhalations, labelled with its own meteorological scheme.

Page 740: Monstrosum Solis Schema — a diagrammatic figure of the sun (E) surrounded by parhelia (K, L, M, O) at the cardinal directions Oriens, Septentrio, Occidens, Meridies, with a small figure suspended above. Aldrovandi's attempt to render the geometry of a parhelic display.

Page 747: Admirabile Crucis signum in Luna — the appearance of a great cross in the moon, one of the most reproduced woodcuts in the entire history of celestial-prodigy literature.

The Closing Leaf

Page 748 carries the final paragraph of the entire Monstrorum Historia, followed by the printed conclusion Historiae Monstrorum finis (End of the History of Monsters), the devotional abbreviation L.D.D.O.S.V., and the printer's typographic flourish that ends the volume. The substantive closing passage reads:

"Haec sunt quae quoad causas physicas de praedictis effectibus pronunciare possumus. Quando autem huiusmodi caelestia monstra à manu Divini Opificis immediatè prodeunt, eorum causas humani ingenij acumen penetrare, neque reddere potest."

In English:

"These are the things which we are able to declare concerning the physical causes of the aforementioned effects. But when celestial monstrosities of this kind proceed immediately from the hand of the Divine Maker, the keenness of human wit can neither penetrate their causes nor account for them."

This is Aldrovandi's whole encyclopaedic project distilled into a single sentence. Natural philosophy explains the physical world up to a point; beyond that point sits the domain of the genuinely miraculous, where human reasoning runs out. After more than seven hundred pages cataloguing monsters of every kind, the work signs off with a confession of the limits of method.

Military Historical Significance

The Latin text on these leaves names specific historical military events that the celestial signs were taken to portend:

1568 September - "before the inauspicious irruption of German troops into Belgium"

This is Duke of Alva's campaigns in the Eighty Years' War / Dutch Revolt. In April 1568 William the Silent's brother Louis of Nassau invaded the Netherlands from Germany. The decisive battle was the Battle of Jemmingen on 21 July 1568, where Alva crushed Louis of Nassau's army. Aldrovandi places the celestial sign in September 1568, which would be the immediate aftermath - the period when Spanish forces under Alva consolidated their grip and when William of Orange's own invasion attempt across the Meuse failed in October 1568. The "German troops" reference fits this period of mercenary armies pouring into the Low Countries.

1569 September/December - Cornelius Gemma's bloody cross

This sits in the Eighty Years' War during Alva's "Council of Troubles" reign of terror. Cornelius Gemma was a professor at Louvain (where his father Gemma Frisius had taught) and was an actual eyewitness to these events. The "Spanish soldiers stationed in Belgium" are Alva's tercios - the elite Spanish infantry garrisoning the Spanish Netherlands during the bloodiest period of suppression. Gemma published his observations in his 1575 work De naturae divinis characterismis - so Aldrovandi is citing a real, datable astronomical-historical text, not folklore.

1571 September - "another Chasma at Louvain in Belgium"

This is the period leading up to and during the Sea Beggars' capture of Brielle on 1 April 1572, the spark that reignited the Dutch Revolt after the lull of 1569-1571. Late 1571 was also the year of Lepanto (7 October 1571) - the great naval battle against the Ottoman fleet. The "another chasma" near Louvain in September 1571 sits exactly in the build-up window before both these events.

1114 Easter - "Henry V Emperor of the Romans, vast chasm at Easter"

Easter 1114 was 19 April. Henry V was indeed Holy Roman Emperor (1111-1125). He spent most of 1114 at war - he was campaigning in Saxony against rebellious nobles (Lothair of Supplinburg, who would later succeed him) and dealing with the Saxon Rebellion. The Battle of Welfesholz (11 February 1115) - where the Saxons under Lothair defeated Henry V's general Hoyer of Mansfeld - happened the following winter. So the Easter 1114 prodigy precedes a major military setback for the Imperial cause.

1583 conjunction in Leo

The Great Conjunction of 1583 was widely interpreted as a portent. Politically it sits at the start of the War of the Three Henrys in France (1585-1589) and during the run-up to the Spanish Armada (1588). Tycho Brahe wrote on it.

Magdeburg under "Maurice and Albert" - the imperial siege

This is the Siege of Magdeburg (November 1550 - November 1551) during the Schmalkaldic War / Princes' Revolt against Charles V. Maurice of Saxony (the elector, then loyal to Charles V) and Albert Alcibiades of Brandenburg-Kulmbach jointly led Imperial forces against Magdeburg, which had refused the Augsburg Interim. The city held out for thirteen months under heavy bombardment before capitulating on terms in November 1551. Aldrovandi's "fifteen months" is close enough. This was a major turning point - immediately after Magdeburg fell, Maurice secretly switched sides and joined the Protestant Princes' Revolt in 1552 that drove Charles V from Innsbruck and led to the Peace of Passau and ultimately the Peace of Augsburg.

Why these pages matter:

The Admiranda Chasmatum Varietas is one of the earliest systematic European attempts to bring the long tradition of celestial-prodigy reportage under a single descriptive framework. Aldrovandi (or more precisely his editor Bartholomaeus Ambrosinus, who completed the volume after Aldrovandi's death) gathers Pliny, Plutarch, Aristotle, the medieval chroniclers, and the contemporary Flemish astronomers into a single ordered catalogue. The marginal headings throughout the section — Coelestium triplex discrimen, Monstra circa Solem, Cur Halo circa lunā frequentior, Causa physica — show the work's hybrid character: equal parts natural philosophy, historical reportage, and theological speculation.

The marginal note on page 743 (Cur Halo circa lunā frequentior) offers a piece of genuine physical reasoning: halos appear more often around the moon than the sun because solar heat dissipates the small clouds that would otherwise produce the mirror-like reflection, while lunar light, being weaker, allows them to persist. This is Aristotelian meteorology at work in the seventeenth century — the same intellectual current that would, within a generation, give way to Cartesian and then Newtonian explanations.

Key Details

Author: Ulysses Aldrovandi (1522–1605) Edited by: Bartholomaeus Ambrosinus Published: Bologna, Nicolas Tebaldini, 1642 From: Monstrorum Historia cum Paralipomenis historiae omnium animalium Medium: Original 17th-century woodcuts on laid paper Format: Five folio leaves, each printed on both sides (recto and verso) Size: Approximately 24 × 36 cm (9.5" × 14") each Condition: Very good throughout, with crisp impressions and only light age toning consistent with the period

Provenance

From a broken-up library copy of the 1642 Bologna edition, formerly in the collection of Eduardo Obejero Urquiza per ex libris evidence. The lithographed bookplate itself does not accompany these leaves.

Collector Positioning

Five leaves from the closing section of the Monstrorum Historia, including the very last printed leaf of the volume. The combination of the cross-in-moon woodcut, the parhelion-diagram schema, the twin-crosses chasma plate, and the closing colophon makes this a particularly coherent set rather than a random scatter of leaves from across the work. For a buyer interested in the history of astronomy, the history of meteorology, or the history of the prodigy literature that flourished between the printing revolution and the Scientific Revolution, this is unusually well-chosen material.

The Aldrovandi monster volumes appear at auction in complete form only rarely, and the celestial section in particular tends to be cherrypicked by collectors interested in the cross-in-moon and the parhelion plates. To find these leaves together with the closing colophon is genuinely uncommon.

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