Almanacco Perpetuo

TL;DR — An early-modern Italian perpetual almanac — weather prognostication, comets, eclipses, and how to compute Easter.

⬇ Download the archived copy — kept here so the document survives its source going dark. Public domain by age (pre-1929).

718 pages of early-modern Italian practical astronomy and astrology. The Almanacco Perpetuo of Rutilio Benincasa was among the most reprinted books in Italy for two centuries; this copy carries the additions signed by Ottavio Beltramo, who notes in the index which chapters are his.

The Tavola delle cose più Notabili gives the flavour: how to forecast weather from the Moon and from the Sun, what the rainbow signifies, how hail and fog and thunder are generated, where winds come from, what the dark patches on the Moon mean, the nature of comets and eclipses and when they have appeared and what followed — then a whole treatise on the calendar, the Golden Number, the Dominical Letter, the Roman Indiction, and rules for finding Easter.

It is a working manual, not a curiosity — the reference book a literate person used to know when to plant, when to sail and when to expect a feast.

Where this came from

• Added directly to the collection.

718 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.