SCEVOLINI, Domenico “Discorso” [Giordano Ziletti, 1565] Astrology

SCEVOLINI, Domenico. Discorso di Domenico Scevolini, nel quale con le autorità così de’ Gentili, come de’ Catolici si dimostra l’Astrologia Giudiciaria esser verissima & utilissima; dannando coloro, che l’usano malamente, & impongono necessità ne gli atti humani.

In Venetia: Appresso Giordano Ziletti al segno della Stella, 1565. Quarto, 8.25" x 6". Collation: [2], 58, [4] pp. Woodcut printer’s device on title page; woodcut headpieces and historiated initials throughout. Bound in later marbled paper–covered pasteboard boards, likely early–mid 19th century; spine unlettered, bearing an early manuscript shelf number (“74”?). Printed bookseller’s label of Domenico Cesconi, Negoziante di Libri Antichi e Moderni, Verona (dated 1838) affixed to front pastedown. Additional early manuscript shelf or inventory markings to front and rear pastedowns. Moderate, even age-toning; scattered light staining and foxing; paper sound; binding firm. Very Good.

A posthumously published Venetian defense of judicial astrology, written at the height of sixteenth-century debate over astrology’s legitimacy within Christian natural philosophy. Scevolini argues for astrology as a science of secondary causes—grounded in celestial influence yet subordinate to divine providence and human free will—explicitly rejecting deterministic or fatalistic interpretations. The text engages classical, Arabic, and Christian authorities, including Aristotle, Ptolemy, Albumasar, and Augustine, situating astrology within a moral and theological framework acceptable to Counter-Reformation Catholic thought.

Printed by Giordano Ziletti, a Venetian publisher noted for issuing learned and sometimes controversial works, the Discorso appears to have circulated narrowly among scholarly and ecclesiastical readers. No later editions are commonly recorded. The survival of this copy in a functional marbled-board binding, already in place by 1838, suggests long institutional or academic use rather than decorative rebinding.