Giovanni Pontano, Commentationes in centum sententiis Ptolemaei . A critical edition

The Pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium is a text of controversial origin. With more than two hundred manuscripts, it undoubtedly is one of the most popular works of Western Latin astrology. The Commentationes in centum sententiis Ptolemaei is an astrological work in two books in which Giovanni Gioviano Pontano provides an extensive commentary on the Centiloquium along with his own translation of the Greek text. The first book is addressed to the Duke of Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro, and the second one to Pontano’s close friend and member of the Neapolitan Academy Pietro Golino (Petrus Compater). The Commentationes had a substantial impact on the astrological Literature of the 15th-17th centuries. Published posthumously in 1512 by Pietro Summonte ‒ but early widespread through a noteworthy manuscript tradition ‒ it was reprinted over twenty times until 1674 and became the standard Latin translation of the Centiloquium. While ‒ together with the other treatise De rebus coelestibus ‒ it represents the most exacting of Pontano’s astrological prose, the Commentationes has never been published in a critical edition nor studied in its textual history.