LVOVICKY, Cyprián Karásek (1514-1574). De coniunctionibus magnis insignioribus superiorum planetarum, solis defectionibus, & cometis. Lauingen: Emanuel Salczer, 1564.

A popular astrological history predicting the end of the world, by a correspondent of Tycho Brahe. The author, also called Cyprian Leowitz, was born in Bohemia but spent much of his career in the courts of Germany, eventually becoming a professor and the director at a school in Lauingen. This book was published under the patronage of Maximilian II, and is, as stated in the preface, "a special history of the entire Fourth Monarchy, accommodated to celestial causes and the motion of the stars." It explains the events since the beginning of the Roman empire in light of astrological conjunctions, comets, and eclipses, and looks forward to the future—predicting major change (even perhaps the second coming of Christ) in concert with the 1583 conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.

An edition in German was published by the same press in the same year, alongside several undated German extracts from the Strasbourg press of Samuel Apiarius. The Latin text was printed in London in 1573, suggesting a large audience hungry for prophetic predictions from one of the leading astrologers of the Renaissance. Rare at auction, RBH records only one copy of this edition offered. Zinner 2343; VD16 L 1257 (reports an additional gathering of four leaves with a final blank, not seemingly present in most (any?) other copies; the present one collates as those held by Penn, Harvard, Rome, and Cambridge, all apparently complete).

Quarto (188 x 148mm). Part title on L1. A few woodcut initials and ornaments (a little spotting around the edges, small repairs to blank lower corners of gathering N). Modern calf with morocco title label on upper board (a little worn at extremities). Provenance: pencil annotations – Royal Library, Munich (duplicate stamp).