Un astrologo e un disastro. Novità su Antonio Arquato

An Astrologer and a Disaster : New Evidence on Antonio Arquato · Renaissance Ferrara fostered learned astrology both at the Este court and at the University. From this milieu emerged one of early modern Europe’s most famous prognostications, the Prognosticon de eversione Europae attributed to Antonio Arquato. Reprinted throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and translated into at least six languages, the Prognosticon has generated substantial scholarship at the intersection of astrological practice, political communication and European representations of the Ottoman Empire. Important questions, nevertheless, remain unexplored. This article offers a concise survey of the state of the art and introduces new or neglected evidence on three fronts : the Prognosticon’s movement between manuscript and print (translations, interpolations, commentaries, indirect transmission) ; Arquato’s works beyond the Prognosticon ; and his still thinly documented biography, now expanded by two unpublished autograph letters, one of which is preserved in two redactions, held in the Archivio di Stato di Modena.