[MINERALOGY & GEMSTONES] GEMMARUM ET LAPIDUM HISTORIA BY ANSELMUS BOETIUS DE BOODT 1647 THIRD EDITION

[BOODT, ANSELMUS DE (CA. 1550-1632); DE LAET, JAN (1582-1649)]. Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia. Quam olim edidit Anselmus Boetius de Boot, Brugensis, Rudolphi II. imperatoris Medicus. Postea Adrianus Tollius, Lugd.-Bat., M. D., recensuit; figuris melioribus, & commentariis pluribus illustravit, & indice auxit multo locupletiore. Tertia editio longe purgatissima. Cui accedunt Ioannis De Laet, Antvverpiani, De Gemmis & Lapidibus libri II. Et Theophrasti liber De Lapidibus, Gr. & Lat. cum brevibus notis. Lugdinu Batavorum [Leiden]: Joannes Maire, 1647. [Bound together with:] Ioannis de Laet Antvverpiani De Gemmis Et Lapidibus Libri Duo. Quibus præmittitur Theophrasti Liber de Lapidibus Græce & Latine Cum Brevibus Annotationibus. Lugduni Batavorum [Leiden]: Ex Officina Ioannis Maire. Anno….1647.

THIRD EDITION, EXPANDED AND WITH ADDITIONAL TEXTS. Two parts in one volume, leather-bound, hardcover, octavo (18cm x 12.5cm), pp. 576, 24; 64, 210, 6. Signatures: (?)4 A-Z8, Aa-Oo8, Pp4 (Pp4 blank); *-****8, A-N8, O4. Latin and Greek text, in roman letter. Bound in near contemporary full calf, banded spine, later morocco lettering-piece. Titles with woodcut printers device, woodcut head-pieces and decorative initials, two folding letterpress tables, illustrated with eighty-seven woodcuts of gems and minerals (including geodes, hematite, crystals, coral, and fossils), indexes. Condition: GOOD to VERY GOOD. Second part without a title, but otherwise collates complete. The binding is tight and secure with minor scuffing to covers. The text, plates and figures are generally clean. Bearing Medical Society of London stamp and hand-written owner's inscription to the title-page which is moderately toned.

Notes: Third edition, the best and most complete, edited by the Belgian physician Adrian Toll (1610-1675), of "one of the most important mineralogical works of the seventeenth century, marking a transition over previous lapidaries" (Schuh). The mineralogical researches of Jan De Laet and the translation (presumably by de Laet) of Theophrastus' "On Stones" are added here for the first time.

"In his 'Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia' Boodt, the Bruges humanist and court physician to Rudolf II of Bohemia, made the first attempt at a systematic description of minerals, dividing the minerals into great and small, rare and common, hard and soft, combustible and incombustible, transparent and opaque. He uses a scale of hardness expressed in three degrees and notes the crystalline forms of some minerals (triangular, quadratic, and hexangular). Boodt criticizes some of the views of Aristotle, Pliny, Paracelsus, and others, but accepts the existence of the four elements and three principles, although he also mentions atoms. He enumerates 600 minerals that he knows from personal observation, and describes their properties, values, imitations and medical applications. There are also tables of values of diamonds according to their size and a short description of the polishing of precious stones. Boodt cites nineteen authors and, besides the minerals known to him, gives a list of 233 minerals whose names he knows from Pliny and Bartholomeus Anglicus, among others." (DSB)

"De Boodt assembled virtually all of the knowledge then extant...by far the most thorough and complete up to date... [The book] is further distinguished by its intimate knowledge of the art of the lapidary and must therefore be regarded as the first treatise to offer more than the briefest views of gem cutting." (Sinkakas)

"One of the most important mineralogical works of the seventeenth century, Boodt's work marks a transition over previous lapidaries. A new era was marked with its publication, one in which the believes of the past began to be challenged, and the researchers began to use hypothesis and experimentation to present new ideas… Boodt was skeptical of the curative virtues of various gems. He suspected that it was coincidental that a specific type of gemstone was associated with a sick person who became well. Instead, he believed if stones had curative powers it was because they worked in concert with the body to effect a cure, not any supernatural property.

"Discussing the properties of stones, Boodt gives a long discussion of hardness. He provides the earliest system of hardness grading for the various stones, which acted as a crude index to distinguish imitation gems from genuine. He distinguished three degrees of hardness and also included softness as a related but different property. Soft stones are considered such if fingers alone are sufficient to rub away the surface. Hard stones are called hard when they can neither be rubbed away with fingers nor cut by iron. Hard stones are classified under three categories: (1) a steel file can scratch the stone, (2) only the use of the Smyrna stone [emerald??] can cut the surface, and (3) those that can only be rubbed away with a diamond point." (Mineralogical Record)

Brunet: 1, no. 1108; Dryander, Catalogus Banks, 1796-1800: 4, p. 6; Freilich Sale Catalog: no. 69; Roller & Goodman, Catalogue, 1976: 1, 140; Sinkankas, Gemology Bibliography, 1993: no. 781; Poggendorff: 1, col. 1341.