Updates

2026-11-03

Added four works on the instruments of computation and observation around Tycho Brahe: his own Triangulorum Planorum et Sphaericorum Praxis Arithmetica (1591), the working manual of trigonometry behind the Uraniborg observations; the Fundamentum Astronomicum (Nicolaus Reimers Ursus, 1588), whose world system Tycho accused Ursus of stealing from him; and the Observationes Hassiacae (ed. Willebrord Snellius, 1618), the Kassel observations of Landgrave Wilhelm IV, the other great body of precision observation from before the telescope.
Added the first part of Giovanni Battista Riccioli’s Almagestum Novum (1651), Books I–VII, with the map of the Moon whose crater names astronomers still use.

2026-10-29

Added the Thesaurus Observationum, Tomus Tertius and Tomus Quartus (Tycho Brahe, ed. J. L. E. Dreyer, 1925–1926), continuing the record of what Tycho and his assistants observed over twenty-one years on Hven and afterwards in Bohemia.

2026-10-25

Added four works on witchcraft and superstition: Quaestio de Strigibus (Bartolomeo Spina, 1523), the Dominican answer to the sceptics; Tractatus de Superstitionibus (Martín de Arles, c. 1510), a Navarrese archdeacon’s field report on the popular religion of his own parishes; Flagellum Haereticorum Fascinariorum (Nicolas Jacquier, 1458), the first sustained inquisitorial defence of the reality of the witches’ sabbath; and De Lamiis (Thomas Erastus, 1578), a Heidelberg physician’s dialogue on what witches can and cannot actually do.
Added three works by Govaert Wendelen: Loxias (1626), on the obliquity of the ecliptic; Arcanorum Caelestium Lampas (1643), four astronomical claims hidden in Latin hexameters and then revealed by anagram; and Eclipses Lunares (1644), seventy years of lunar-eclipse observations laid down as the foundation for his Tabulae Atlanticae.

2026-10-19

Added the Thesaurus Observationum, Tomus Primus and Tomus Secundus (Tycho Brahe, ed. J. L. E. Dreyer, 1923–1924): the record of what Tycho and his assistants observed over twenty-one years on Hven and afterwards in Bohemia.
Added the Ephemerides Brandenburgicae (David Origanus, 1609): day-by-day positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets for sixty years, 1595–1655, computed on both a Tychonic and a Copernican basis.
Added Phénomènes psychiques au moment de la mort (Ernesto Bozzano, 1923): a methodical collection of cases reporting phenomena at and around the moment of death.
Every existing work has been reissued with editorial improvements.

2026-09-08

Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata and De Mundi Aetherei Recentioribus Phaenomenis (Tycho Brahe), Rosa Ursina sive Sol (Christoph Scheiner) and Astronomia Danica (Longomontanus) are now citation grade, bringing to eight the works read complete against their sources. What the grades mean.
Every work in the corpus has been reissued in a new page layout, carrying a pass of mechanical repairs across the translations.
Astronomia Danica is now dated from its first edition of 1622; the scan the translation follows is the revised second edition of 1640, as its edition note records.

2026-08-30

Added Sefer HaTechunah (R. Chaim Vital, 1542-1620) – his treatise on astronomy, from a manuscript written in a rabbinic hand in Damascus in the early seventeenth century, the city where its author spent his last two decades and within a generation of his death. It enters the corpus at citation grade, read complete against the manuscript rather than sampled.
Nechmad VeNa’im (David Gans) and Astronomia Reformata (Giovanni Battista Riccioli) are now citation grade, bringing to four the works read complete against their sources. What the grades mean.
The rest of the corpus has been reissued, with small refinements applied across many works.

2026-08-13

Be’er HaGolah (Maharal of Prague) is now citation grade, the first work in the corpus read complete against its source rather than sampled. 5,711 sentences were collated clause by clause against the Hebrew; the 38 defects found, four of them meaning-changing, are fixed. What the grades mean.

2026-08-07

Added Pedro Nunes’s Opera (Coimbra, 1573) — the collected Latin works of the royal cosmographer of Portugal and the leading mathematician of the age of discoveries, in the author’s own final edition: the two books on the art and science of navigation, the annotations on Peurbach’s planetary theory and on Aristotle’s mechanical problem of the rowed ship, the critique of Oronce Finé, and the treatise on twilight with Alhazen’s book on its causes.
The rest of the corpus has been reissued. A pass of mechanical edits brought the English into a more consistent modern register — many fixes of archaic wording and grammar, smoothing constructions that had come through the translation reading stiffly — without altering the sense of the text.

2026-08-04

Added Be’er HaGolah (R. Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague, 1598) — his defense of the Aggadah, the non-legal portions of the Talmud, against the critics of his age who read its stories as absurd and its science as discredited.

2026-07-31

Added two works: Clavius’s Opera Mathematica, Tomus V — his own account of the Gregorian calendar reform he principally engineered — and Willebrord Snellius’s Eratosthenes Batavus (Leiden, 1617), the first modern measurement of the Earth’s circumference by triangulation.
Every work has been reissued. Greek passages quoted inside the Latin texts were audited page by page and corrected throughout, and some editorial scaffolding that had been showing through into the reading text has been cleaned out.

2026-07-30

Added seven works to the corpus: Midrash HaḤokhmah (Judah ben Solomon ha-Kohen), Tomes I–IV of Clavius’s Opera Mathematica, and Refractiones Coelestes and Rosa Ursina sive Sol (Scheiner).
Sefer HaBris HaShalem (Hurwitz) was retitled from its earlier heading, Sefer HaBrit HaShalem.
Every work has been reissued. The translator version is unchanged, but proper names and technical vocabulary are now held to one consistent form across the whole corpus; earlier printings let variants through.

2026-07-05

Added eight works to the corpus: Milchamot HaShem (Gersonides), Sefer HaBris HaShalem (Hurwitz), Tzemach David (Gans), Keli Ḥemda and Orah Selulah (ibn al-Aḥdab), Roba’ Yisrael (ibn Tibbon), Perush Sod HaIbbur (Jacob ben Samson), and Sefer HaḤeshbon VeHaMiddot (Comtino).
Cheshbon Mahalechot HaKochavim (bar Ḥiyya ha-Nasi) was retitled from its earlier heading, Po’al ha-Shem ve-Cheshbon Mahalechot HaKochavim.
Some works now carry improved source records – Nechmad VeNa’im, for one, now cites the National Library of Israel’s own digitized exemplar.

2026-06-29

All translations are now at version 2, regenerated with the corrected pipeline. Version 1 turned out to be an intermediate stage and has been superseded.
Added new works to the corpus – most recently Sefer Tsurat HaArets, Kitsur HaMelakhat HaMispar, and Sefer Elim.
Draft editorial footnotes are now available for download from a footnotes link beneath each work’s title.