Francesco Capuano di Manfredonia

One of the most important commentaries on Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera was written by Francesco Capuano da Manfredonia and printed toward the end of the year 1499 in Venice. Capuano was professor of Astronomy at Padua and had already published a commentary on Peuerbach’s Theoricae planetarum in 1495. He subsequently entered into the ranks of the Lateran Canons Regular, taking the name Giovanni Battista. Later editions of his commentary on Sacrobosco’s Tractatus (Venezia, 1518 and 1531) were published under the name Giovanni Battista Capuano and contain a revisited text of that work. The two different redactions of the commentary on the Sphaera allow us to illustrate the radical transformation the text underwent. The two redactions of the prologue that opens the commentary are compared.