A Newly Identified Treatise on the Tables of Marseilles (Twelfth Century) and Its Non-Ptolemaic Planetary Theory (original) (raw)
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2013
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Before the age of Arabic-Latin translations of scientific texts in the twelfth century, planetary astronomy (with the exception of lunar and solar cycles needed for the purpose of computus) was in the Western world mainly restricted to information found in ancient encyclopaedias, such as those of Pliny, Calcidius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella and Isidore of ~eville.' None of these authors had taught how to locate the planets in the zodiacal signs at a given time. This knowledge is normally provided by astronomical tables which indicate the position of the planets a t regular intervals over a certain period of time. Such material does not appear to have been known in the West before the Latin translations of the Arabic tables of al-Khwiirizm-and the Toledan Tables in the first half of the twelfth century. A possible exception is the Preceptum Canonis Ptolomei, a set of astronomical tables, together *I a m most grateful to Vera Rodrigues, Charles Burnett and Bruce Eastwood for their comments on earlier versions of this paper, and to Jill Kraye and Kristine Haugen for generously giving their time to improving my English. Early medieval planetary astronomy has only recently begun to receive serious scholarly attention. See in particular W. M. Stevens, 'Astronomy in
Vivarium, 2024
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Mediterranea: International Journal on the Transfer of Knowledge, 2018
This article offers the first study and critical edition of the Liber de motibus planetarum (Lmp), a neglected Latin text on planetary theory that appears anonymously and without any clear indication of date or place of origin in nine manuscripts of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. An analysis of its sources and parallels to other Latin treatises and translations from Arabic indicates that the Lmp originated in England in the third quarter of the twelfth century. A plausible terminus post quem is provided by the appearance of similar passages in the anonymous treatise Ptolomeus et multi sapientum (1145), which can be linked to Abraham Ibn Ezra and his astronomical tables for the meridian of Pisa. The Lmp would appear to be historically significant for its relatively detailed textual and diagrammatic presentations of Ptolemy’s planetary models as composed of multipart physical orbs. While it is generally accepted that physicalized or ‘orbed’ versions of these models entered Latin astronomy through the influence of Ibn al-Haytham’s Maqāla fī hayʾat al-ʿālam (On the Configuration of the World), the early history of this idea in a Latin context has not been studied to any deeper extent. In this regard, the Lmp offers clear evidence that Ptolemaic orbs and diagrams representing them already were a part of Latin astronomy three centuries before Peuerbach’s Theoricae novae planetarum (1454).
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The study of ancient astronomy calls to arms a number of disciplines: philology, codicology, algebra, geometry, illumination and art history, astrology, and of course astronomy itself. This book admirably succeeds in bringing together outstanding specialists from these different fields and in addressing several questions: How many are the fixed stars? How can astronomy help discover the geographical coordinates of a city? How do you construct an Aratean sphere? How is the representation of the sky rendered in illustrations ranging from medieval manuscripts to 18th-century sculpture gardens? How does the ancient mechanism of catasterism work? How are pagan constellations interpreted in Christian settings? This collection of essays provides new editions and new interpretations of astronomical texts from such diverse authors as Eratosthenes and Manilius, Aratus, Germanicus and al-Sūfī, Ptolemy and Carolingian scholars. Readers with diverse interests will benefit from this book.