Girolamo Franzosi, 1651

FRANZOSI, Girolamo (fl. 1650). De motu cordis, et sanguinis in animalibus pro Aristotele, & Galeno adversus anatomicos neotericos libri duo. Verona: Typis Merulanis, [1652].

Fine, uncut and unpressed copy of the first edition of this rare attack on Harvey and his followers. Both Franzosi and Harvey had been students at Padua of the ardent Aristotelian natural philosopher Cesare Cremonini (who famously refused to look through his friend Galileo's telescope). Although Harvey certainly would have thought of himself as Aristotelian, inspired by Aristotle's empiricist imperative to make scientific advancements, Franzosi's critique of his work on circulation is emphatically Aristotelian rather than Galenic. Franzosi shared Cremonini's scorn for the "trivia" of anatomical investigations which could contribute nothing to philosophy, and may have been motivated by an unspoken hostility to the fact that Harvey’s explanation did not account for the role of the soul—instead providing a wholly mechanistic explanation for the operation of the human heart.

Franzosi’s other works were influenced by Girolamo Cardano and Agostino Nifo, addressing topics as broad-ranging as dreams, prophecy, the imagination, and the therapeutic properties of viper venom. Krivatsy 4328. See Roberto Lo Presti, “The Theory of the Circulation of Blood and (Different) Paths of Aristotelianism. Girolamo Franzosi’s De motu cordis … libri duo: Teleology versus Mechanism?” in Gesnerus (2014), pp. 271-189.

Quarto (200 x 145mm). Text in double-rule, errata leaf at end. Woodcut crown of the dedicatee, Charles Gonzaga II, on the title; two small woodcuts of valves. 18th-century marbled boards, uncut. Provenance: signs of removed label from lower margin of title – Malan family of Merindol (bookplate by Giuffredi, "Deus arx mea").