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MARCI, Ioannes Marcus. IDEARVM OPERATRICIVM IDEA or Hypotyposis et detectio illius occultæ Virtutis, which fertilizes seeds and produces organic bodies from them. Prague, Printed by the Archiepiscopal Seminary Press in 1635. 8vo. (195 x 150 mm). [350] p. 21 plates and diagrams in the text. Text in part heavily browned. Contemporary vellum binding. Exceedingly rare. Not in Harvard or Princeton. Found copies in the US at Yale and Cornell. The world catalogue lists only a few copies. No auction results. No copy in the trade. Jan Marek Marci (13 June 1595 10 April 1667), or Johannes (Greek: Ioannes) Marcus Marci, was a Bohemian doctor and scientist, rector of the University of Prague, and o(/0cial physician to the Holy Roman Emperors Ferdinand III and Leopold I.arci also had the honour of being the owner of the Voynich manuscript. At some point, he came into possession of the manuscript, apparently upon the death of his friend, the alchemist Georg Baresch. He sent the book to his longtime friend Athanasius Kircher with a cover letter dated 19 August 1666, or possibly 1665. Many of his works feature elaborate emblematic title pages, like ours. He wrote De Proportione Motus (1639), a book on motion and impact; Thaumantius (1648), about optics, colour, and the rainbow; and Idearum Operatricium Idea (1635) on occult virtues. In his time, Marci achieved fame for his discoveries in physics (spectroscopy, physical optics) and medicine. Among the most important recipients of his correspondence were prominent thinkers of his time, such as Athanasius. Kircher (1602 1680) and Galileo Galilei (1564 1642). The debates in their letters demonstrate the scope of their scienti*+c interests as well as the high level of their investigations. The main aim of the project, which also includes Marci s legacy in relation to other authors from the Prague medical faculty, is to contribute to the knowledge of the intellectual milieu that emerged after the Catholic Habsburgers. n 1635, he published his book Idearum Operatricium Idea, addressing the questions of conception and the development of the embryo. Marci used an analogy from optics to explain how complex life forms develop from a simple seed. Just as a lens takes a simple beam of light and transforms it into something more complex focusing it into a point or spreading it out in patterns he believed that a hidden "formative force" in the seed guided the growth of the embryo. This force radiated from the centre of the developing body and shaped the organism without losing any of its power. Marci s ideas were a strange mixture of the old Aristotelian theory of seed and blood, the new experimental approach, and the Kabbalistic mysticism of light as the fountain and origin of all things.
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