Chronological Demonstrations: Three Books

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Original title: Chronologicarum demonstrationum libri tres A Latin technical treatise in historical and sacred chronology, printed in folio at Frankfurt am Main in 1596 by the heirs of Andreas Wechel (with Claude de Marne and Johann Aubry), and reissued in quarto at La Rochelle in 1600 by Jérôme Haultin. Its title page announces three parts: a sequence of times carried from the beginning of the world to the year 1580 of the Christian era; demonstrations drawn from sacred writings and the cycles of the heavens; and a universal history composed out of temporal orders first explained and proved. Rather than narrating events, the three books argue and prove chronology, tying contested sequences to fixed epochs — the era of Nabonassar, the head of the Olympiads in 776 before the Christian era — and to dated celestial phenomena such as eclipses, equinoxes, and conjunctions, used as controls against Greek archon lists, Roman consular fasti, and Chaldaean and Persian regnal years. Book III treats jubilees and sabbatical years, Daniel's seventy weeks (read as weeks of years and terminating in the fifteenth year of Tiberius), and the identity of the Ahasuerus of Esther; it exposes the ancient histories forged by Annius of Viterbo under the names of Berosus, Manetho, and "Metasthenes" by internal stylistic evidence; it ranks the plain narration of Scripture above cyclical or astronomical calculation; and it declares the heavens liquid rather than composed of solid orbs. Appended calendrical matter faults the Julian year on the basis of six dated equinox observations from the Chaldaeans to one the author claims for himself in 1577, and proposes that monarchs shorten the years 1597, 1598, and 1599 to 360 days each, begin the year at the winter solstice, and omit one intercalation every 160 years, while declining to compute the terminal date of the world. The volume includes synoptic chronological tables, sabbatical and jubilee tables, and a printed lunar volvelle. 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

• Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here
• View the original source file

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