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BERIGARD, Claudio [Claude Guillermet] Dubitationes in dialogum Galilaei Galilaei Lyncei in Gymnasio Pisano mathematici supraordinarij. Florence Petri Nesti 1632

Small 4to. [20.7 x 14.7 cm], 68, (2), ff. (errata and final blank). Bound in later blue morocco gilt, early private library stamp on title. Some toning and foxing, primarily in gutter. Generally very good.

Rare first and only edition of this understudied treatise, the first critique of Galileo’s Dialogo, by a staunch proponent of fixed-earth Aristotelianism. Galileo had finally obtained permission to publish the Dialogo in Florence in February 1632. Bérigard responded quickly, writing his refutation in Pisa on June 1st, 1632. Less than two months after the appearance of Bérigard’s tract, sales of the Dialogo were suspended and copies were confiscated by Inquisition, following which Galileo was summoned to Rome in October. Bérigard refrains from personally attacking Galileo, someone whose many discoveries he had long admired. Instead, he criticizes the structure of Galileo’s work, asserting that the interlocutor Simplicius, the proponent of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic theory in the Dialogo, did not offer a sincere defense of that theory. Implying that this tactic was a ‘prevarication’ of Galileo’s, Beauregard then makes his own attempt to prove the correctness of the Ptolemaic theory. The text contains many references to Kepler, Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe.Despite the confrontational stance taken in the Dubitationes, Galileo refused to be drawn into a personal vendetta with Bérigard, with whom he was evidently acquainted. While in exile in Siena, Galileo commented on Bérigard’s motivations for publishing this attack: “...Bérigard and Chiaramonti, professors at Pisa, have written long works against me—the latter in his own defense; the former against his wish, as he says, but at the instigation of one who may be useful to him!” (From a letter to Elia Diodati, July 25, 1634).Bérigard (Beauregard, 1578-1663) studied medicine and philosophy at Aix-en-Provence before being summoned to Tuscany in 1625. There, he served as secretary to Christina of Lorraine, mother of Grand Duke Ferdinand II. He taught philosophy, botany, and mathematics at Pisa from 1628 to 1640, and then moved to Padua where he became well known as a teacher, succeeding Liceti in 1653. In his later years, he followed Gassendi in reviving atomism, and devoted himself to rational physics. His only other published work is Circulus pisanus (1643, 2nd ed., 1661), a synopsis of his courses at Padua OCLC lists Cornell and Bibliothèque de l’Observatoire de Paris, ICCU adds only two copies in Italian libraries.

* Cinti 90; Carli-Favaro 129; DSB II.12-14; Stillman Drake, Galileo against the philosophers, p. 136; not in Riccardi or in the Honeyman collection; Schumann Cat 500, #25: “the ‘opening gun’ in the campaign against Galileo’s Dialogi”; NBG V.526-7.

$US45000

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