The “book of secrets” tradition, immensely popular in Renaissance Europe, was a hybrid genre: part laboratory manual, part magician’s grimoire, part household compendium. Johann Jakob Wecker (1528–1586), physician of Colmar, compiled one of the most influential and widely read of these collections. First published in 1582, De Secretis remained in print for nearly two centuries, shaping the early modern idea of “secrets” as specialist knowledge, a lineage that survives today in the term “trade secrets.”
This 1598 Basel edition is the rare third edition, issued by Conrad Waldkirch. It organizes an astonishing breadth of material: mathematics, astronomy, engineering, cosmetics, pharmacology, alchemy, and magical operations. The delightful woodcuts depict experimental apparatus, geometrical and astrological figures, and diagrams of occult processes, making the book as visually striking as it is encyclopedic.
Wecker’s sources are vast, some 127 authors, including the pseudonymous Alexis of Piedmont, whose earlier Secreti he had translated in 1559. Here, however, Wecker goes further, systematizing the disparate traditions into a true encyclopaedia of the marvelous and the practical alike. While the “scientific” sections on mechanics, mathematics, and even music have long been neglected, collectors have treasured the passages on witchcraft, demonology, and occult medicine. In its entirety, De Secretis stands as a cultural mirror of late Renaissance curiosity: half scientific textbook, half cabinet of wonders.
Johann Jakob Wecker. De Secretis Libri XVII. Ex variis authoribus collecti, methodiceque digesti, & aucti. Accessit Index locupietissimus. Basel: Conrad Waldkirch. Kl.8°. (16), 667, (27) pp. Printer’s device on title. Illustrated with woodcuts of apparatus, geometrical and magical figures. Contemporary half-leather binding, spine worn, internally only minimally foxed.
The “book of secrets” tradition, immensely popular in Renaissance Europe, was a hybrid genre: part laboratory manual, part magician’s grimoire, part household compendium. Johann Jakob Wecker (1528–1586), physician of Colmar, compiled one of the most influential and widely read of these collections. First published in 1582, De Secretis remained in print for nearly two centuries, shaping the early modern idea of “secrets” as specialist knowledge, a lineage that survives today in the term “trade secrets.”
This 1598 Basel edition is the rare third edition, issued by Conrad Waldkirch. It organizes an astonishing breadth of material: mathematics, astronomy, engineering, cosmetics, pharmacology, alchemy, and magical operations. The delightful woodcuts depict experimental apparatus, geometrical and astrological figures, and diagrams of occult processes, making the book as visually striking as it is encyclopedic.
Wecker’s sources are vast, some 127 authors, including the pseudonymous Alexis of Piedmont, whose earlier Secreti he had translated in 1559. Here, however, Wecker goes further, systematizing the disparate traditions into a true encyclopaedia of the marvelous and the practical alike. While the “scientific” sections on mechanics, mathematics, and even music have long been neglected, collectors have treasured the passages on witchcraft, demonology, and occult medicine. In its entirety, De Secretis stands as a cultural mirror of late Renaissance curiosity: half scientific textbook, half cabinet of wonders.
Johann Jakob Wecker. De Secretis Libri XVII. Ex variis authoribus collecti, methodiceque digesti, & aucti. Accessit Index locupietissimus. Basel: Conrad Waldkirch. Kl.8°. (16), 667, (27) pp. Printer’s device on title. Illustrated with woodcuts of apparatus, geometrical and magical figures. Contemporary half-leather binding, spine worn, internally only minimally foxed.
