Description:
4to (178x134 mm). [6] leaves. Collation: A4 B2. With a woodcut illustration on the title page. Later boards. On the front pastedown bookplate Ex-libris Franz Pollack Parnau. Slightly uniformly browning, a good copy.FIRST EDITION. Presented as a 'Practica', i.e. a booklet containing astrological predictions, it is in reality a mocking poem on the genre, about which Rasch holds forth in even greater detail in his Gegenpractic of 1584.
In the rhymed dedication poem to Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria Rasch mentions two of his works to be published, his Weinbuch (1580) and the Cometen Buch (1582).
Under the woodcut on the title page is a Latin citation on predictions from Lucas Panaetius, a humanist from Ulcinj (Montenegro) active in Venice, probably taken from his prefatory letter ad- dressed to Rosello de Rosellis printed in Caesar's Commentary (Venezia, 1511).
For him there are three kinds of prognostication: there are first of all, prophecies for no specific year, perhaps dealing with the end times, but… Read More