Deep in this folio, in the treatise on the creatures that live underground, Agricola stops writing about bats and salamanders and turns to the demons. Some are murderous: at Annaberg a spirit in the mine called the Rose Crown killed twelve miners with its breath, and the workings, rich as they were, stood abandoned. Others are almost companionable, small imitators of men that the German miners called cobali, goblins that clatter about the shafts, seem busy at every task, and accomplish nothing. The miners blamed those goblins for the treacherous ore that looked like silver and yielded poison instead, and named the ore after them; chemistry keeps the accusation on the periodic table to this day: cobalt. All of this is reported soberly, by the most careful observer the mining industry had yet produced, in the same measured Latin he uses for pumps.
This book of mines and demons is one of the monuments of Renaissance science. Georg Agricola, town physician of Joachimsthal and then Chemnitz during the great Saxon and Bohemian silver rushes, spent a quarter century compiling De Re Metallica: twelve books covering everything, the finding of veins, the digging and timbering of shafts, the great machines for hauling and pumping and ventilating, assaying, smelting, glassmaking, salts. It appeared at Basel in 1556, months after his death, and remained the standard manual of the industry for two centuries. What made it irreplaceable was the pictures: some 270 woodcuts, many near full-page, showing waterwheels and whims, furnaces in section, miners at ladders and windlasses, even ore-carts running on wooden rails, the ancestor of every railway. Herbert Hoover, mining engineer long before he was president, thought it important enough to translate with his wife Lou in 1912, and their edition made Agricola a household name among engineers.
The occult seams run right through it. Book Two contains the classic early discussion of the divining rod, the forked hazel twig that was supposed to twitch above hidden veins; Agricola describes the practice in detail, weighs it, and concludes that a serious miner should trust the natural signs of the earth instead, one of the more consequential acts of skepticism in the history of prospecting. And the accessory treatises gathered in this edition give the full range of his underground world: the origins of subterranean fluids, the nature of fossils and minerals (the founding text of mineralogy), old and new mines, the dialogue Bermannus, and the creatures, demons included, that share the darkness with the miners.
This 1657 Basel folio, printed by Emanuel König, is the fourth and last of the early Latin editions, and the title page announces its ambition: in this final edition the twelve books travel with the six accessory treatises, the whole Agricola corpus in a single volume, with the Latin-German glossary of mining terms at the end for the practical men who needed to know what a Fundgrube was. The celebrated illustration program is complete, down to the large folding sheet of surveying instruments called for at folios 97 and 100, the measuring rod and the waxed circles by which a mine was mapped in the dark.
And yes: players of Dungeons & Dragons who have met a kobold in some torchlit corridor have met these very creatures, carried down through four centuries of German folklore into modern fantasy; Agricola's is among the earliest detailed reports of them ever printed.
Our copy is a clean, fresh one in a handsome later binding of half dark calf over cloth boards, the spine gilt in compartments with a red morocco label and the date at the foot, modern marbled endpapers. Old ink inventory numerals on the title are the only traces of earlier owners. Complete copies of any early edition are keenly pursued by collectors of science, technology, and the esoteric alike; the 1657, with its accessory treatises, is the edition that gives you everything Agricola knew about what lies under the earth, demons and all.
Georgii Agricolae Kempnicensis medici ac philosophi clariss. De Re Metallica Libri XII... Quibus accesserunt hac ultima editione, Tractatus ejusdem argumenti... Basel: Emanuel König, 1657. Folio, later half calf. The fourth and last of the early Latin editions, and the most complete: the twelve books with the full suite of woodcuts, plus the six accessory treatises, including De Animantibus Subterraneis.
AGRICOLA, Georg (1494-1555). De Re Metallica Libri XII. Quibus officia, instrumenta, machinae, ac omnia denique ad metallicam spectantia, non modo luculentissime describuntur... Quibus accesserunt hac ultima editione, Tractatus ejusdem argumenti... De Animantibus Subterraneis; De Ortu & Causis Subterraneorum; De Natura eorum quae effluunt ex Terra; De Natura Fossilium; De Veteribus & Novis Metallis; Bermannus sive de Re Metallica Dialogus. Basel: Emanuel König, 1657. Fourth and last early Latin edition; first published Basel, 1556.
Physical Description: Folio (about 34.5 x 20.5 cm). [1], [1 blank], [3], [3 blank], [8], 708, [58], [2 blank], [32] pp., the final section comprising the Latin-German glossary of mining terms and the indexes. Woodcut vignette to title (the assayer at his furnace, repeated at p. 176), roughly 270 woodcut illustrations in the text, many near full-page, and the folding woodcut surveying figures called for at folios 97 and 100, printed on one large folding sheet, present. Woodcut initials and ornaments. Collated complete.
Binding: Later half dark brown calf over cloth boards, gilt rules, raised bands, spine gilt in compartments, red morocco lettering label, date gilt at foot, marbled endpapers. Clean and firm.
Condition: Light browning and scattered spotting, minor fraying to the fore-margin of the title, a short tear at the lower inner corner of the folding sheet, old ink inventory numerals to title. A crisp, wide-margined copy.
Deep in this folio, in the treatise on the creatures that live underground, Agricola stops writing about bats and salamanders and turns to the demons. Some are murderous: at Annaberg a spirit in the mine called the Rose Crown killed twelve miners with its breath, and the workings, rich as they were, stood abandoned. Others are almost companionable, small imitators of men that the German miners called cobali, goblins that clatter about the shafts, seem busy at every task, and accomplish nothing. The miners blamed those goblins for the treacherous ore that looked like silver and yielded poison instead, and named the ore after them; chemistry keeps the accusation on the periodic table to this day: cobalt. All of this is reported soberly, by the most careful observer the mining industry had yet produced, in the same measured Latin he uses for pumps.
This book of mines and demons is one of the monuments of Renaissance science. Georg Agricola, town physician of Joachimsthal and then Chemnitz during the great Saxon and Bohemian silver rushes, spent a quarter century compiling De Re Metallica: twelve books covering everything, the finding of veins, the digging and timbering of shafts, the great machines for hauling and pumping and ventilating, assaying, smelting, glassmaking, salts. It appeared at Basel in 1556, months after his death, and remained the standard manual of the industry for two centuries. What made it irreplaceable was the pictures: some 270 woodcuts, many near full-page, showing waterwheels and whims, furnaces in section, miners at ladders and windlasses, even ore-carts running on wooden rails, the ancestor of every railway. Herbert Hoover, mining engineer long before he was president, thought it important enough to translate with his wife Lou in 1912, and their edition made Agricola a household name among engineers.
The occult seams run right through it. Book Two contains the classic early discussion of the divining rod, the forked hazel twig that was supposed to twitch above hidden veins; Agricola describes the practice in detail, weighs it, and concludes that a serious miner should trust the natural signs of the earth instead, one of the more consequential acts of skepticism in the history of prospecting. And the accessory treatises gathered in this edition give the full range of his underground world: the origins of subterranean fluids, the nature of fossils and minerals (the founding text of mineralogy), old and new mines, the dialogue Bermannus, and the creatures, demons included, that share the darkness with the miners.
This 1657 Basel folio, printed by Emanuel König, is the fourth and last of the early Latin editions, and the title page announces its ambition: in this final edition the twelve books travel with the six accessory treatises, the whole Agricola corpus in a single volume, with the Latin-German glossary of mining terms at the end for the practical men who needed to know what a Fundgrube was. The celebrated illustration program is complete, down to the large folding sheet of surveying instruments called for at folios 97 and 100, the measuring rod and the waxed circles by which a mine was mapped in the dark.
And yes: players of Dungeons & Dragons who have met a kobold in some torchlit corridor have met these very creatures, carried down through four centuries of German folklore into modern fantasy; Agricola's is among the earliest detailed reports of them ever printed.
Our copy is a clean, fresh one in a handsome later binding of half dark calf over cloth boards, the spine gilt in compartments with a red morocco label and the date at the foot, modern marbled endpapers. Old ink inventory numerals on the title are the only traces of earlier owners. Complete copies of any early edition are keenly pursued by collectors of science, technology, and the esoteric alike; the 1657, with its accessory treatises, is the edition that gives you everything Agricola knew about what lies under the earth, demons and all.
Georgii Agricolae Kempnicensis medici ac philosophi clariss. De Re Metallica Libri XII... Quibus accesserunt hac ultima editione, Tractatus ejusdem argumenti... Basel: Emanuel König, 1657. Folio, later half calf. The fourth and last of the early Latin editions, and the most complete: the twelve books with the full suite of woodcuts, plus the six accessory treatises, including De Animantibus Subterraneis.
AGRICOLA, Georg (1494-1555). De Re Metallica Libri XII. Quibus officia, instrumenta, machinae, ac omnia denique ad metallicam spectantia, non modo luculentissime describuntur... Quibus accesserunt hac ultima editione, Tractatus ejusdem argumenti... De Animantibus Subterraneis; De Ortu & Causis Subterraneorum; De Natura eorum quae effluunt ex Terra; De Natura Fossilium; De Veteribus & Novis Metallis; Bermannus sive de Re Metallica Dialogus. Basel: Emanuel König, 1657. Fourth and last early Latin edition; first published Basel, 1556.
Physical Description: Folio (about 34.5 x 20.5 cm). [1], [1 blank], [3], [3 blank], [8], 708, [58], [2 blank], [32] pp., the final section comprising the Latin-German glossary of mining terms and the indexes. Woodcut vignette to title (the assayer at his furnace, repeated at p. 176), roughly 270 woodcut illustrations in the text, many near full-page, and the folding woodcut surveying figures called for at folios 97 and 100, printed on one large folding sheet, present. Woodcut initials and ornaments. Collated complete.
Binding: Later half dark brown calf over cloth boards, gilt rules, raised bands, spine gilt in compartments, red morocco lettering label, date gilt at foot, marbled endpapers. Clean and firm.
Condition: Light browning and scattered spotting, minor fraying to the fore-margin of the title, a short tear at the lower inner corner of the folding sheet, old ink inventory numerals to title. A crisp, wide-margined copy.
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