622 - PIETRA SANTA, SILVESTRE

PIETRA SANTA, SILVESTRE PIETRA SANTA, Silvestre.- "PANEGYRICUS... NOVA STELLA" Circa 1637. Small folio, contemporary parchment bound with interlaced clasps. 55 numbered folios. Astronomical manuscript in humanist script, 21 lines per page, in Latin and Greek, for which we have found no bibliographic information. Attributed to Silvestre Pietra Santa (Rome 1590-1647), also known as Coellus Servili; he was a well-known Jesuit, editor, heraldist, active religious visitor, and a great polemicist against the Protestants. The work begins by acknowledging the discovery of the "Nova Stella" and how this event served the Lutherans as a superstitious pretext to attack the Catholic Habsburg Empire. The author structures the book into eleven chapters where he argues several theories and explanations for the appearance of the star in 1572. He adds that from that year of 1572 a splendid cycle began in Europe after the victory against the Ottomans. .