Govaert Wendelen · 1643
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Govaert Wendelen (Godefridus Wendelinus, 1580–1667) was a Flemish priest and astronomer. In this short tract, the “four-wicked lamp” of heavenly secrets, he publishes four astronomical claims in the manner of his age: first hidden in four Latin hexameters, the “shadows,” then revealed by anagram, the “lights.”
Each pair of lines is made of the same letters: 36, 37, 32 and 37. Revealed, the four lights claim that all natural days are equal; that an equal oscillation drives the Moon at its highest and its lowest; that a sextantal ratio governs the apsides; and that the Moon triples the year’s turns at the apsis of the Sun. Each light is followed by a brief explanation. The tract is dedicated to the humanist Erycius Puteanus and carries a letter from Puteanus to the reader.
The Lampas records the priority claims Wendelen staked out while preparing his Tabulae Atlanticae, and it is a curiosity of seventeenth-century scientific publishing.
The source is a copy in the Bavarian State Library, a tract bound into another volume.