Leonard Digges, A Prognostication Everlasting of Right Good Effect…; Lately corrected and augmented by Thomas Digges his sonne (London, 1605)
This Sun-centered cosmic section represents the first published defense of Copernicus in England, and it was printed in a work of meteorology. The Earth carries its meteorological regions of water, air and fire along with it, as a single “globe of mortalitye.” The fixed stars, each far larger than the Sun, extend “infinitely up” in a “Pallace of Foelicitye.”
Leonard Digges wrote this prognostication in a genre known as “astro-meteorology.” Astro-meteorologies were early modern versions of The Farmer’s Almanac. They attempted to provide annual guidance for agricultural activities and other events on the basis of meteorological and astronomical patterns.
Thomas, his son, published an updated edition in which he substituted the Copernican system for his father’s reliance upon the Ptolemaic. An appendix includes the first English translation of Book 1 of Copernicus’ On the Revolutions.
