The Summary of Physics Restored

Edition Statement

This Diotimos edition presents a fresh English translation from the complete Enchiridion physicae restitutae printed at Geneva by Jean-Antoine and Samuel de Tournes in 1653, using the copy held by ETH-Bibliothek Zürich as Rar 4790 and digitised by e-rara. The original book is anonymous; the conventional attribution to Jean d’Espagnet is retained as an attribution. The historical title, address to students, eight-line epigram, all 245 canons, original marginal notes and citations, and concluding FINIS are included.

The Summary of Physics Restored is the reading title used here. Enchiridion means a handbook or manual; physica is natural philosophy, a field wider than the modern academic discipline called physics. The historical English title The Summary of Physicks Recovered, documented in 1651, supplies the familiar title tradition. The new translation follows the linked Latin witness rather than modernising that earlier English version.

Latin and English are paired by stable passage identifiers. The annotations and supporting essays, glossary, contextual lexicon, reading routes, questions and subject index are modern Diotimos material. They are identifiable as commentary rather than additions to the anonymous author’s canons.

Five files accompany the edition: PDF, editable Word, Markdown, a Latin–English EPUB, and a separate English Reading EPUB. The English Reading EPUB retains every English historical passage, annotation and study feature while hiding the parallel Latin reading blocks. Latin terms and source titles remain where the commentary requires them.

No historical reading passage of the selected Enchiridion has been abridged. The combined title advertises a second work, the Arcanum hermeticae philosophiae opus. That independently paginated companion has its own Diotimos edition and is not part of the Enchiridion’s 245-canon sequence. The digitisation’s modern library notice, blank surfaces, repeated running heads, catchwords and ornaments are accounted for as physical features; the title device’s verbal maxim is translated.