Book in Italian and Latin.

Hardback edition, size 17 x 25 cm, I-XIII, 426 pp. Edizioni Valdonega 1955.

This collection of previously unpublished works by Fracastoro, published thanks to the Accademia di Agricoltura, Scienze e Lettere di Verona to commemorate the fourth centenary of the death of the great scientist (in 1553), was taken from two codices preserved in the local Biblioteca Capitolare and a single codex from the Vatican Library. It is made up of essays on various subjects and fragments of varying length, numbers of repeats and remakes, which, when brought together and as far as possible reconstructed (although complete reconstruction was impossible), revealed all their historic importance as much when examined individually as when taken together to confirm the universality of Fracastoro’s knowledge and his place as the greatest of the great who investigated nature and truth.
Therefore, for the first time readers of this book can read the first news of the success of his long poem on syphilis, his reasons for composing such a work, some of the Church of Verona’s reactions to the Protestant doctrines that were invading Europe, information about the accession of the Bishop G.M. Giberti and about his life, writings on the Bible, philosophy, cosmogony and astronomy as well as some significant passages from a treatise on botany. Bembo’s critical analysis of the first draft of “De morbo Gallico”, which was dedicated to him, not only confirms the literary tastes of Padua’s ‘literary arbiter’ and his relationship with Fracastoro, but also demonstrate the relationship of the two letterati with both classical antiquity and some of their most glittering contemporaries.
The volume is illustrated with portraits of the scholars who took part in some of the talks given by the author on the book and with facsimiles taken from the manuscript itself.