MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS

OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

Stephen C. McCluskey

arly Medieval astronomies and cosmologies arent what they used to be.
When I was a graduate student in the history of science it was traditional
to skip from the astronomy of late antiquity, typified by the work of
Ptolemy, with only a brief mention of the encyclopedic compilations and handbooks of late Roman antiquity, to the twelfth-century reception of his astronomy
through translations from the Arabic. In more popular works, the neglect of the
early Middle Ages was even more striking. In the 1930s a popular history of astronomy summarized the progress of astronomy from the Council of Nicaea to the
time of Copernicus in four blank pages.1 A more recent history written by a distinguished astronomer allocated ten pages to what he called the dark, thousandyear interlude from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, and most of that section
dealt with the alleged conflict between Christianity and science and with the place
of astronomy in the Islamic world.2
In the years since my graduate studies, many historians have focused our attention on the written evidence for early medieval astronomy, examining neglected
medieval texts dealing with a range of astronomical issues, and the commentaries
and marginal annotations and diagrams created by medieval scholars to clarify
An abridged version of this article was presented at the conference Cosmology Across Cultures, in
Granada (Spain), 812 September 2008, and appears as Astronomies and Cosmologies in the Latin
West, in Cosmology Across Cultures, Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series, 409, ed.
by Jos Alberto Rubio and others (San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2009), 22836.
1
Henry Smith Williams, The Great Astronomers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1930), pp.
99102.
2
Robert Wilson, Astronomy Through the Ages: The Story of the Human Attempt to Understand the Universe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 4150.

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Stephen C. McCluskey

the astronomical and cosmological portions of ancient encyclopedic texts. These

investigations have led to a new understanding of the study and development of
astronomies and cosmologies during the so-called Dark Ages. In the past decade
two book-length surveys3 and many detailed studies of different aspects of early
medieval astronomy have been published.
Early medieval astronomical and cosmological study and teaching were based
much more on the interpretation and elaboration of received texts than they were
on observations of celestial phenomena. The fact that medieval scholars took the
effort to copy ancient texts provides our first evidence of the extent of medieval
knowledge of and interest in astronomy. Going beyond mere copying, some medieval users collected excerpts from ancient texts. At the simplest level such excerpts
indicate the specific interests of the collector but sometimes excerpts were selected
and organized to resolve particular astronomical questions for the students who
were their intended readers. In addition, simple marginal or interlinear glosses or
detailed commentaries were added to copies of some ancient texts, thus providing
the commentators original insights into the meaning of those texts. Finally, we
find original contributions to astronomical theory and practice appearing in original medieval texts, some of which, in turn, gathered their own annotations.
These largely neglected texts have provided new insights into the changing astronomical interpretations and teaching practice of medieval scholars.4 In this article I
want to draw on recent historical studies (particularly those of the late Arno Borst
in Constance, Bruce Eastwood at Kentucky, David Juste in Sydney, Dan McCarthy
in Dublin, Barbara Obrist in Paris, Dibh Crinn in Galway, Wesley Stevens in
Winnipeg, and Faith Wallis at McGill) to provide a few examples of our emerging
understanding of these early medieval astronomical and cosmological traditions.
You may have noticed that my title speaks of astronomies in the plural. This
reflects the fact that while we all see the same sky, different communities address
different concerns and ask different questions as they look at the sky and consequently develop different astronomical models that are appropriate to answer
those questions.5 It is useful to consider five distinct, yet interacting astronomical
3

Stephen C. McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1999); Bruce S. Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens: Roman Astronomy
and Cosmology in the Carolingian Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
4
This discussion benefits from the similar analysis by Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, p. 23.
5
Stephen C. McCluskey, Different Astronomies, Different Cultures, and the Question of
Cultural Relativism, in Current Studies in Archaeoastronomy: Conversations across Time and Space,
ed. by John Fountain and Rolf Sinclair (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2005), pp. 6981.

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MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

traditions in the Early Middle Ages: the ancient Roman tradition of astronomy
as one of the mathematical disciplines within the seven liberal arts; the arithmetical tradition of computus, concerned with determining the date of Easter;
the practical tradition within monastic communities of observing the Stars to
determine the time to pray; a concern with the annual motion of the Sun along
the horizon for various purposes including the orientation of churches; and
finally, the various techniques applied to astrological prognostication. Table 1
summarizes several parameters we can use to distinguish these five astronomical
traditions.
Table 1. A Taxonomy of Early Medieval Astronomical Traditions
Roman
(Liberal Arts)

Computus

Monastic
Solar Horizon
Timekeeping Astronomy

Astrology

Method

Descriptive

Predictive

Observational Observational

Predictive

Principal
Bodies
Considered

All

Sun & Moon

Sun & stars

Sun

All

Types of
Phenomena

Continuous

Discrete

Continuous

Discrete

Various

Considered
in Terms

Spatial

Primarily
temporal

Spatial/
temporal

Spatial/
temporal

Various

Kind of
Model

Geometrical

Arithmetical

n/a

n/a

Various

Reference for
Observation
or Model

Ecliptic/stars

Year/month

Horizon/day

Horizon/year

Ecliptic/
horizon

Benchmark
for Reference

n/a

Equinox/
new Moon

Horizon

Equinox

Various

Mode of
Explanation

Descriptive

Descriptive

Descriptive

Descriptive

Causal

Function

Theoretical

Practical

Practical

Practical

Practical

General
Approach

Secular

Sacred

Sacred

Sacred or
secular

Secular

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Stephen C. McCluskey

The general medieval cosmological picture was presented within the Roman
pedagogical tradition of the seven liberal arts, specifically within the study of
the four mathematical arts of the quadrivium: astronomy and geometry, music
and arithmetic. The astronomy of the liberal arts was not a practical art, but
was concerned with imparting the rudiments of astronomical theory as part of a
general liberal education. A principle focus of this tradition was expressed early
in the sixth century by Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy: The heavens
are less to be admired for [their vastness, mightiness and swiftness] than for the
reason by which they are governed.6 Medieval discussions of the liberal art of
astronomy focused on reading, excerpting, and reinterpreting works by Macrobius,
Pliny, Martianus Capella, Boethius, Calcidius, and Isidore of Seville. Such medieval interpretations appear in marginal and interlinear annotations to classical
texts. The chief significance of these glosses for the development of medieval
astronomy is the extent to which these interpretations were copied into other
manuscripts of the same text, sometimes unchanged and sometimes with additional modifications, and were taught in schools.7 The importance of this active
tradition of interpretation for the later development of medieval astronomy
is suggested in one thirteenth-century guide to the liberal arts, which names
Martianus Capella as the efficient cause of the study of astronomy, not, as we
might expect, Ptolemy.8
The astronomy of the liberal arts was related to the continuous figures of
geometry, rather than to the discrete numbers of arithmetic, and thus employed
a paradigm of the continuous motions of the heavens. Late Roman and early medieval accounts framed the motions of the heavenly bodies within a geometrical
model of spheres and circles. Thus we find discussions of the circles dividing the
heaven: the equator; the tropics; the arctic and antarctic circles; the circle of the
zodiac; the meridian and the horizon; the two colures passing from the equator
to the poles, one through the equinoxes and the other through the solstices; and
even such a non-geometrical circle as the Milky Way. These circles were described
qualitatively; such quantitative parameters as the obliquity of the ecliptic or the
mathematical relationship of the radius of the circle of the never-setting stars
to the observers latitude are seldom mentioned. These circles were not used as

Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, trans. by J. C. Relihan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001),

III, prose 8. 8 (p. 65).

7

Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, pp. 19496.

Quatre introductions la philosophie au XIIIe sicle, ed. by Claude Lafleur (Montral: Institut
dtudes mdivales, 1988), p. 219.
8

MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

225

guides for observations. Martianus Capella, however, once used descriptions of

the constellations to guide his readers understanding of the circles; describing
the celestial circles by naming the constellations through which they pass.9
Some authors went beyond the abstract geometry of circles to consider the
spherical structure of the universe: the size of the Earth, Moon, and Sun; the distances of Moon and Sun from Earth; and the order and distances of the spheres
carrying the planets. Calcidius, Macrobius, and Pliny had discussed how eclipses
of the Sun and Moon demonstrated that the Sun was larger than Earth and Earth
larger than the Moon, Calcidius providing specific values that the Sun was 1880
times larger than Earth, and Earth twenty-seven times larger than the Moon.10
Ptolemy and his followers had arranged the planets at increasing distance from
Earth in the order Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Plato,
however, had placed the Moon and Sun nearer to Earth, followed by the other
planets. Medieval texts depicted the distances of the planets in various ways, either
using measurements, Pythagorean harmonies (Figure 8), or Platonic numerological principles.11 Martianus Capella added further complications to the matter by
placing the centre of the circles of Mercury and Venus in the Sun, so that their
distances from Earth varied.12 From the ninth century on, medieval commentators
struggled to resolve these inconsistencies.
Attempts to reconcile these interpretations appear in the marginal and interlinear glosses that are part of the oldest commentary tradition on Martianus Capella.
The anonymous commentator presents three different depictions of the motions
of Mercury and Venus, interpreting the text of Martianus in the light of his readings of other sources. He attributes these interpretations variously to the Platonists
(Figure 9, with the paths of Mercury and Venus circling the Sun),13 to Pliny and the
9

Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. by J. Willis (Leipzig: Teubner,

1983), VIII. 827VIII. 836; all citations refer to this edition, cited by book and section number.
10
Calcidius, Commentarius in Timaeus, ed. by R. Klibansky (London: Warburg Institute;
Leiden: Brill, 1962), chaps 8991 (pp. 14144); Macrobius, Ambrosius Theodosius, Commentarii
in somnium scipionis, ed. by J. Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1970), I. 20. 9; Pliny, Historia naturalis,
trans. by H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), II. 8. 51.
11
Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, pp. 10309, McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures, pp.
13637; Pliny, Historia naturalis, II. 1920; Calcidius, Commentarius in Timaeus, 98; Macrobius,
Commentarii, II. 3 (pp. 1415).
12
De nuptiis, III. 857.
13
Later manuscripts attribute this circumsolar configuration to Bede. Bruce S. Eastwood,
Astronomical Images and Planetary Theory in Carolingian Studies of Martianus Capella, Journal
for the History of Astronomy, 31 (2000), 128 (pp. 1217).

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Stephen C. McCluskey

Fig. 8. Harmonious intervals, from Pliny, Historia naturalis, II. 20. 84.
Vienna, sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. 387, fol. 123r (AD 810).

Fig. 9. Mercury, Venus, and the Sun according to the Platonists. Showing Mercury and
Venus circling the Sun. Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. F. 48, fol. 79r (c. 83040).

MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

227

Pythagoreans (Figure 10, with the paths of Mercury and Venus hanging below the
path of the Sun), and to Martianus (Figure 10, with the paths of Mercury and
Venus intersecting so that Mercurys path is closer to the Earth than Venuss).14
The astronomy of the liberal arts investigated the course and figures of all the
heavenly bodies, and the accustomed places of the stars.15 The study of the fixed
stars plays a smaller part in this tradition, yet they are discussed in the more comprehensive works. These commonly note that stars to the south are only visible
for a short time while stars nearer the pole are visible for longer periods of time.
Sometimes northern stars will set after sunset and rise again before dawn so that
they are visible twice each night; stars far to the north will never rise or set.16
These accounts are largely descriptive, naming the constellations, relating their
seasonal appearances and disappearances, and noting how they can be used as a
guide for farmers. There is even less use of mathematical concepts here than elsewhere in the astronomy of the liberal arts; reflecting this, descriptions of the
stars are not found in the work of Calcidius, who provides the most geometrical
account in this tradition.
The simple motions of the Sun are commonly discussed in relation to the
zodiac. Martianus Capella noted that the Suns motion is not strictly uniform, as
it passes through Gemini in 32 days and through Sagittarius in only 28 days.17
Calcidius provided greater mathematical detail in his discussion of the Suns
motion, noting that the Sun passes through the four quarters of the zodiac in different times, ranging from 88c to 94 days. He showed how either an eccentric
circle or an epicycle can be used to explain this fact, as a result of which the Sun
would appear to be slowest at five and a half degrees of Gemini, and fastest at five
and a half degrees of Sagittarius.18 These discussions did not reflect direct observational data but presented the results of ancient geometrical astronomy. However,
nothing remained of the geometrical demonstrations that had produced these
results.
14

Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, pp. 24452.

Cassiodorus Senator, Institutiones, ed. by R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1937), II. 7. 2; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum: Libri XX, ed. by W. M. Lindsay,
2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), III. 24. 1; hereafter Etymologiae.
16
Pliny, Historia naturalis, XVIII. 57. 20774. 321; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, III. 71. 4
16, 2238; De nuptiis, VIII. 83845. I have not considered the specialized literature dealing
specifically with the appearances and mythology of the stars.
17
De nuptiis, VIII. 848.
18
Calcidius, Commentarius, chaps 7782 (pp. 12934).
15

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Stephen C. McCluskey

Fig. 10. Mercury, Venus, and the Sun according to Pliny and the Pythagoreans, and
according to Martianus. Showing circular paths of Mercury and Venus intersecting
below the Sun. Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. F. 48, fol. 79v (c. 83040).

MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

229

Fig. 11. Capellan Explanation of the Length of the Seasons. Showing

the Sun moving faster and slower in different regions of the zodiac.
Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. F. 48, fol. 81r (c. 83040).

Although Martianus described the apparent irregularity of the solar motion

in terms of an eccentric circle, the attempts of Medieval glossators to illustrate this
concept came short of an understanding of the geometric intent. One diagram
(Figure 11) from the same set of anonymous glosses that had addressed the order
of Mercury and Venus, presents an eccentric path of the Sun, and properly labels
it that the Sun would go slower when near Gemini and faster when near Sagittarius, but this diagram arranges the eccentric circle so that if the Sun were moving
uniformly around it, it would appear to go faster near Gemini and slower near
Sagittarius. A later and more symmetric copy abandons the attempt to use eccentricity as an explanatory device, and merely labels the arcs of a concentric circle
where the Sun goes faster and slower.19
19

Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, pp. 33641.

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Stephen C. McCluskey

If these texts did not present medieval readers with a single, clear, consistent
model of the order of the planets, the same could be said of descriptions of their
stationary position and retrograde motion. Pliny described retrograde motion,
related it to the nearness of the planet to the Sun, and explained it physically as
caused by the influence of the Suns rays. Martianus attributed retrograde motion
both to epicycles and to the influence of the Suns rays. Only Calcidius came close
to a geometric explanation of the effect of epicycles, and even his explanation
never went beyond a qualitative description.20
The ambiguity of and inconsistency among such classical accounts were addressed during the Carolingian renaissance which, by making astronomical study
an essential part of clerical education, directed scholarly attention toward those
texts forming the core of the astronomy of the liberal arts. As we have seen, these
commentaries and glosses addressed the nature and function of the solar eccentricity and significantly at least from a post-Copernican perspective how the
epicycles of the inferior planets, Venus and Mercury, were related to the Sun.
Although these diagrams and glosses represent attempts to express the motions
of the planets in geometric terms, they still differ in several important respects
from both contemporary arithmetical computus and the ancient geometrical
astronomy of Ptolemy. Unlike computus and Ptolemaic astronomy, these commentaries and glosses make no attempt at quantitative prediction. Presenting
approximate planetary periods and mathematically harmonious spatial intervals
between the planetary spheres is as far as they go towards expressing the celestial
order in terms of number and measure. Furthermore, they reveal no sign of any
understanding of how geometrical models could lead to quantitative calculations
that accurately represent the positions of the planets.
Such a quantitative predictive model does not appear to have been their goal;
their problems were more concerned with interpreting cosmological texts than
with computing astronomical phenomena. Given the simplifications and ambiguity of these texts, they were susceptible to a number of different interpretations.
In formulating these alternative interpretations, Carolingian commentators developed new cosmological structures, but the criterion for testing these structures
was that of agreement with ancient texts more than their ability to account with
any precision for the motions of the celestial bodies. When at the beginning of the
twelfth century we find Peter Alfonsi, Adelard of Bath, Raymond of Marseille,
and Daniel of Morley criticizing teachers of the liberal arts for their bookishness;
20

Pliny, Historia naturalis, II. 12. 5961; Martianus Capella, De nuptiis, VIII. 85457,
87987; Calcidius, Commentarius, chaps 8586 (pp. 13638).

MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

231

for limiting their knowledge of the heavens to what they had read in ancient
authorities, and for ignoring reason and what they see in the heavens, we can
recognize the limitations of the astronomy of the liberal arts.21 Yet its qualitative
description of astronomical concepts, coupled with an emphasis that mathematics
was a reflection of divine order, formed early medieval understandings of the cosmos.
The distinctive nature of this astronomy is noted in a late medieval guide to
the liberal arts, which distinguished the descriptive astronomy taught by Martianus
from the astronomy of the Almagest, which presented the mathematical causes of
things.22 But although this descriptive astronomy provided a qualitative framework for understanding the orderly motions of the heavens, it did not provide
quantitative tools for computing the times or places of astronomical phenomena. If we are to find these in the early Middle Ages, we must look to the art of
computus.
The art of computus maintained its characteristic religious focus and arithmetical
method from late antiquity through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.
In his Etymologies, Isidore of Seville placed a discussion of the principles underlying the Easter cycle in the middle of a discussion of religious topics in Books VI
and VII, clearly separating it from the discussion of the astronomy of the quadrivium in Book III.23 The seventh-century Irish author of the De ratione conputandi
stressed that computus was an art of calculation based on number, quoting
Boethiuss De arithmetica that the course of all the stars is disposed by number.24
In the thirteenth century Robert Grosseteste clearly distinguished computus from
other astronomical studies, defining it as the science of the numbering and
division of time.25 Although computus became the principal locus for a broader
study of astronomy during its apex between the seventh and ninth centuries and,
as Wesley Stevens has noted, attract[ed] related and sophisticated materials far

21

McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures, pp. 18687.

Anonymous, Compendium circa quadrivium, in Quatre introductions, ed. by Lafleur, ll. 91
97 (p. 363).
23
Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, VI. 17. 132.
24
Cummians letter De controversia paschali and the De ratione conputandi, ed. by Maura
Walsh and Dibh Crinn, 3. 12 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988),
pp. 11718 n. 8, p. 123.
25
Robert Grosseteste, Compotus [] factus ad correctionem communis kalendarii nostri,
in Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, ed. by Robert Steele (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926),
fasc. 6, p. 213.
22

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Stephen C. McCluskey

beyond calendrical requirements,26 the computistical core retained its distinctive

identity. In the Carolingian three-book and seven-book anthologies of computistical and astronomical material, the sections on computus are set apart from
the discussions of other astronomical and cosmological material.27 This distinction continues in many of the extant catalogues of monastic libraries, where works
on computus are listed among liturgical texts, rather than among works on the
liberal arts.28
Computus is first a practical astronomy, concerned with reconciling the
periods of the Sun and Moon. Specifically, computus addresses the practical
problem of establishing a reliable, uniform method for determining the date of
Easter and the other moveable feasts in the Julian calendar. Various scriptural
sources relate Easter to the Sunday after the full Moon of Passover, and hence
to the first full Moon of springtime. Over time, this scriptural tradition became
formalized in the standard definition that Easter falls on the Sunday after the full
Moon after the vernal equinox. The chief technical problem was the computation
of a recurring pattern of Easter dates an Easter cycle that incorporates three
incommensurable astronomical and calendric periods: an astronomical cycle relating the periods of the Sun and the Moon, the calendric cycle whereby a leap
year is inserted in the Julian calendar every four years, and the recurring cycle of
the seven days of the week.
The details and evolution of the various competing Easter cycles have been
dealt with elsewhere and I will comment only briefly here.29 The main astronomical aspect of this problem deals with reconciling the periods of the Sun and
the Moon, for which computists employed either a nineteen-year or an eightyfour-year cycle. The nineteen-year cycle is astronomically more exact and, between
26

Rabanus Maurus, Martyrologium: Liber de computo, ed. by John McCulloh and Wesley
Stevens, CCCM, 44 (1979), p. 167.
27
Vernon H. King, An Investigation of Some Astronomical Excerpts from Plinys Natural
History Found in Manuscripts of the Earlier Middle Ages (unpublished B. Litt. thesis, Oxford
University, 1969), pp. 322, 2845, 5562.
28
Le Catalogue des manuscrits de lAbbaye de Gorze au XIe sicle, ed. by G. Morin, Revue
bndictine, 22 (1905), 114; Paul Lehmann, Die Bibliothek des Klosters Beinwil um 1200,
in Lehmann, Erforschung des Mittelalters: Ausgewhlte Abhandlungen und Aufstze (Stuttgart:
Hiersemann, 1959), pp. 15780.
29
McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures, pp. 7796; Bedae opera de temporibus, ed. by
Charles W. Jones (Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1943), pp. 1517, 97104; Dan
McCarthy, Easter Principles and a Fifth-Century Lunar Cycle Used in the British Isles, Journal
for the History of Astronomy, 24 (1993), 20424.

MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

233

the fifth and seventh centuries, various versions of it became dominant for Easter
computations. The eighty-four-year cycle, which was used in the third and fourth
centuries and survived in Ireland and Britain until the beginning of the eighth
century, is not as exact. However, 84 is divisible by both 7 and 4, producing a comparatively short hence easily computed and copied Easter cycle.
Since this kind of astronomy is concerned with predicting the time of specific
discrete events that is, the equinox of spring and the subsequent full Moon
its primary theoretical development concerned the computation and tabulation
of some simple numerical parameters, which were used to compute the age of the
Moon and the day of the week for any given date.30
The main expansion of the content of computus beyond the arithmetical calculations required to compute the date of Easter arose from a pedagogical desire
to make such calculations intelligible to students of computus. Beginning about
the time of Bede (AD 673735), computistical texts began to add qualitative discussions, drawn from texts of the liberal arts, explaining the causes of the phases
of the Moon, the causes of eclipses, and presenting the structure of the cosmos.
Furthermore, they went beyond the fundamental temporal problem of computus
to deal with the related spatial problem of computing the approximate position
of the Sun and Moon in the zodiac. These supplementary elements were common,
but not essential, elements of computus texts.
The basic principle underlying these computations was the assumption that
the Sun and Moon travelled at a constant speed through the zodiac. Eccentrics
and epicycles had no place in computistical calculations. Thus Bede presented
what became the dominant view that the Sun moves through each sign of the
zodiac in 30 days and 10 hours, beginning at the 15th of the kalends of the
month.31 The basic assumption for the Moon was that since it took 27 days and
8 hours to complete the entire circuit of the zodiac, it took 2 days and 6b hours
to move through each sign; in this case the computation was reckoned from the
day of the new Moon and the position of the Sun on that day, both of which could
be calculated using standard computistical procedures.32 Bede also presented an
30

A mathematical analysis of the main computistical parameters is in Otto Neugebauer, On

the Computus Paschalis of Cassiodorus, Centaurus, 25 (1982), 292302.
31
Bede, De temporum ratione, in Bedae opera de temporibus, ed. by Jones, chap. 16; Bede,
De natura rerum, in Bedae Venerabilis opera, ed. by Charles W. Jones and F. Lipp, CCSL, 123A
(1975), 17. 1720.
32
Bede, De natura rerum, chap. 21. Strictly speaking, the visible crescent new Moon is separated by some distance from the Sun; Bedes concept appears to identify the true conjunction with
the new Moon.

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Stephen C. McCluskey

alternative procedure to compute the place of the Moon reckoned from the position of the Sun on the current day.33
Bedes discussions do not take any account of the non-uniform motion of the
Sun around the zodiac, which was known to medieval scholars.34 This discrepancy
was noted by an anonymous glossator, who remarked that Bedes constant value
that the Sun passed through each sign in 30 days, 10 hours, was only approximate. He presented Martianus Capellas value that the Sun passes through Gemini
in 32 days and through Sagittarius in only 28 days.35
In the tenth century Abbo of Fleury extended the computistical concern
with computing the time of discrete astronomical phenomena by developing a
method that he claimed gave the hour, and even the fraction of an hour, that the
Sun entered each sign of the zodiac.36 He started with the assumption that on a
leap year the Sun entered the sign of Aries on the first hour of the night on the
evening of 15th kalends of April (18 March). Abbo then proposed a method to
compute the day and the time after sunset that the Sun entered any sign, by multiplying the conventional value of 30 days, 10 hours by the number of signs
through which the Sun had passed.37 Although Abbo only worked out five examples,
it is a straightforward exercise to use his principles to compute the time of the
Suns entry into all twelve signs over the four years of a leap-year cycle (see Table 2).
Abbos use of the computists assumption of uniform motion of the Sun ignored its nonuniformity, which Martianus, Calcidius, and their commentators
had discussed and explained in terms of eccentrics or epicycles. Setting aside this
theoretical oversimplification, the average values obtained using his computistical
model conform fairly well with modern computations for the period 1000 to
1004, which place the Suns entry into Aries 69 hours earlier than that computed
by Abbo and its entry into Libra 27 hours later than Abbos result.38

33

Bede, De temporum ratione, chap. 17.

Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, pp. 33350.
35
Bede, De natura rerum, 17. 1720; see also the glosses in De natura rerum, p. 209.
36
Abbo of Fleury, De ratione spere, 1. 12369, in Ron B. Thomson, Two Astronomical Tractates of Abbo of Fleury, in The Light of Nature: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science
Presented to A. C. Crombie, ed. by J. D. North and J. J. Roche (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1985), pp. 113
33 (pp. 13031).
37
In beginning his reckoning at night, Abbo followed the ecclesiastical norm discussed by
Bede for reckoning the time of religious festivals, in which the feast day begins and ends at sunset.
Bede, De temporum ratione, chap. 5.
38
Modern calculations computed using Skymap software in UTC, adjusted for sunset norm.
34

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MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

Table 2. Entry of the Sun into the Signs of the Zodiac

Medieval
Calendar*

Computed after Abbo of Fleury, De ratione spere**

Leap Year

Leap Year + 1

Leap Year + 2

Leap Year + 3

Aries

15 kal Apr.
(18 Mar.)

15 kal Apr.
01:00

15 kal Apr.
07:00

15 kal Apr.
13:00

15 kal Apr.
19:00

Taurus

15 kal May
(17 Apr.)

15 kal May
11:30

15 kal May
17:30

15 kal May
23:30

14 kal May
05:30

Gemini

15 kal June
(18 May)

16 kal June
22:00

15 kal June
04:00

15 kal June
10:00

15 kal June
16:00

Cancer

15 kal July
(14 Jun)

15 kal July
08:30

15 kal July
14:30

15 kal July
20:30

14 kal July
02:30

Leo

15 kal Aug.
(18 July)

16 kal Aug.
19:00

15 kal Aug.
01:00

15 kal Aug.
07:00

15 kal Aug.
13:00

Virgo

15 kal Sept.
(18 Aug.)

16 kal Sept.
05:30

16 kal Sept.
11:30

16 kal Sept.
17:30

16 kal Sept.
23:30

Libra

15 kal Oct.
(17 Sept.)

16 kal Oct.
16:00

16 kal Oct.
22:00

15 kal Oct.
04:00

15 kal Oct.
10:00

Scorpio

15 kal Nov.
(18 Oct.)

16 kal Nov.
02:30

16 kal Nov.
08:30

16 kal Nov.
14:30

16 kal Nov.
20:30

Sagittarius

15 kal Dec.
(17 Nov.)

16 kal Dec.
13:00

16 kal Dec.
19:00

15 kal Dec.
01:00

15 kal Dec.
07:00

Capricorn

15 kal Jan.
(18 Dec.)

17 kal Jan.
23:30

16 kal Jan.
05:30

16 kal Jan.
11:30

16 kal Jan.
17:30

Aquarius

16 kal Feb.
(17 Jan.)

17 kal Feb.
10:00

17 kal Feb.
16:00

17 kal Feb.
22:00

16 kal Feb.
04:00

Pisces

14 kal Mar.
(16 Feb.)

15 kal Mar.
20:30

14 kal Mar.
02:30

14 kal Mar.
08:30

14 kal Mar.
14:30

* Calendar dates are from the Lorscher Protyp, ed. by Arno Borst, in Die karolingische Kalenderreform,
MGH, Schriften, 46 (1998), pp. 25498.
** Computed values tabulated following the ecclesiastical norm in which the day begins at sunset rather
than at midnight; hence 01:00 corresponds to the first hour of the evening, and 13:00 to the first hour
of the day. Shaded values as computed by Abbo; others computed following his principles.

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Stephen C. McCluskey

Shortly after Abbos death in 1004, a scribe inserted a page of diagrams drawn
from Calcidiuss commentary on the Timaeus into a manuscript from Fleury
containing Abbos computus and some of his other works.39 The diagrams were
meant to illustrate an accompanying text, possibly chosen by Abbo himself, that
focused on the question of the non-uniform motion of the Sun through the
zodiac. With the illustrations, this addendum provided an explanation of the
apparent non-uniform motion of the Sun in terms of an eccentric circle.40 The
text and the illustrations fall in the manuscript between the two parts of Abbos
computus so there is some uncertainty about the association of the text, and
especially the diagrams, with Abbo himself. Nonetheless, it is clear that the
Calcidian material associated with a clearly Abbonian text reflects an enquiry at
Fleury into an alternative to the computistical model of solar motion that Abbo
had developed in his De ratio spere. Supporting this idea is the probable production at Fleury around the year 1000 of the oldest surviving manuscript of the
Latin translation of the Preceptum canonis Ptolomei, which included Ptolemys
tables for the motions of the Sun and the Moon.41 One may even suggest that the
inconsistency of Abbos strictly arithmetical model of uniform solar motion with
the nonuniformity asserted by Martianus Capella and Calcidius contributed to
this active investigation of alternate models of solar motion.
A similar extended study of the phases of the Moon takes on a new observational dimension with the arrival of the astrolabe from Islamic Spain. Before
dawn on 18 October 1092, Prior Walcher of Malvern used his astrolabe to determine the exact time of a lunar eclipse: at the third point of the thirteenth equal
hour after sunset. From this datum he computed a new set of lunar tables, reckoning the exact time after sunset of the astronomical new Moon over a period of
seventy-six years, that is for four nineteen-year luni-solar periods. Observations
of subsequent eclipses revealed inadequacies in his tables stemming from the nonuniform motion of the Sun and the Moon. Unlike Abbo and his colleagues at
Fleury, Walcher had access to the new astronomical learning arriving from Spain,
39

A. Van de Vyver, Les uvres indites dAbbon de Fleury, Revue bndictine, 43 (1935),
12569; Bruce S. Eastwood, Calcidiuss Commentary on Platos Timaeus in Latin Astronomy
of the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries, in Between Demonstration and Imagination: Essays in the
History of Science and Philosophy Presented to John D. North, ed. by Lodi Nauta and Arjo Vanderjagt
(Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 171210.
40
Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens, pp. 36269.
41
Preceptum canonis Ptolomei, ed. by David Pingree, Corpus des astronomes byzantins, 8
(Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia Bruylant, 1997), pp. 79. Pingree believes this copy of the Preceptum
was produced either at Fleury or at Winchester from a manuscript brought from Fleury by Abbo.

MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

237

and turned to al-Khwarizmis zij for further understanding of solar and lunar
theory.42
Walchers observation returns us to the practical monastic tradition of reckoning
the time of day by observing the Sun and stars. Given this monastic focus, it is
discussed primarily in religious, rather than scientific texts. In his Institutiones,
Cassiodorus treated the requirement for timekeeping among the practical necessities of the monastery in Book I, On Sacred Letters, setting it apart from his
discussion of the liberal art of astronomy in Book II. Cassiodorus recognized that
his monks at Vivarium needed a proper sundial and water clock just as they
needed adequate lamps, which he discussed in the same passage.43 From John
Cassian in the fourth century to Guiard de Laon in the thirteenth, we find references to keeping time by the stars in monastic rules, in commentaries on them, in
local monastic customaries, and in sermons on the monastic life.44
Near the end of the sixth century Bishop Gregory of Tours described in his
De cursu stellarum how the celestial order could be used to regulate the monastic
order of prayer. He began by discussing the changing length of daylight which
influences the time available for prayer, work, and sleep expressed in monastic
rules.45 He employed a rudimentary kind of calculation also found in the liberal
arts and in later computus texts to determine the length of daylight through the
year. Gregory expressed this change in terms of a simple linear increase or decrease
of one hour per month between a fifteen-hour day in June and a nine-hour day in
December.46
Determining the time to rise for prayer, however, is based strictly on observations of stars, with no express use of astronomical theory. Month by month
Gregory describes how, by watching the rising or setting of a star or its reaching
42

McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures, pp. 198201. The observational use of Western
astrolabes has been questioned by Arianna Borrelli, Aspects of the Astrolabe: Architectonica Ratio
in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century Europe (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2008).
43
Cassiodorus Senator, Institutiones, I. 30. 5.
44
John Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum, ed. by J.-C. Guy, SC, 109 (1965), II. 17; Guiard de
Laon, In vigilia Epiphaniae, in Les Sermons universitaires Parisiens de 12301231, ed. by M.-M.
Davy, tudes de philosophie mdivale, 15 (Paris: Vrin, 1931), pp. 23536.
45
Rule of the Master, ed. by A. de Vog, SC, 10506 (1964), chap. 33, 114, 2742; chap.
50, 171; Regula Benedicti, ed. and trans. by Timothy Fry (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1980),
chap. 8, 1chap. 10, 3; chap. 48, 213.
46
Gregory of Tours, De cursu stellarum ratio, ed. by Bruno Krusch, MGH, SS rer. Merov., 1. 2
(1885), chap. 17.

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Stephen C. McCluskey

the same place that the Sun reaches at a given hour of the day, a monk can determine when to wake his brethren for prayer:47
In October when the sickle rises, he will know it is the middle of the night. From the end
of nocturns until the crow of the cock, you would be able to sing ninety psalms antiphonally. Then watch Rubeola, so that if the sign for matins is given when it reaches the
place of the second hour of the day, you can then sing ten psalms.48

Other texts present different ways to observe particular stars either in relation
to the local horizon or to conveniently located structures. An eleventh-century
pocket-sized volume from a French monastery, apparently intended for a monks
private use, describes how to observe the changing azimuth of stars over the
buildings of the monastic enclosure to determine the time of nocturnal prayers
throughout the year.49 Similarly, a set of instructions written on loose pieces
of slate at the Cistercian abbey of Villers-en-Brabant about 1267 specifies how
the sacristan was to reset the water clock by watching the Sun as it appeared at
various windows.50
The continuing importance of astronomical timekeeping is reflected in the
development of different kinds of horologia within monastic contexts. The most
striking monastic horologium was the star clock described early in the ninth century by Pacificus of Verona, which determined the time by observing a bright star
(Polaris) rotating around the faint star that was then the pole star. This instrument reflected and demonstrated to its user a model of the heavens in which
the stars rotate around the axis of the world and their position at a given hour
changes with the seasons.51 Despite this and later observational instruments, the
texts show that much of monastic timekeeping was still an empirical craft with
little dependence on the kind of theory found either in computus or in the astronomy of the liberal arts.
47

Gregory of Tours, De cursu stellarum ratio, chaps 3547.

Gregory of Tours, De cursu stellarum ratio, chap. 37.
49
Giles Constable, Horologium stellare monasticum (saec. XI), in Constable, Consuetudines
Benedictinae variae (saec. XIsaec. XIV), Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum, 6 (Sieburg: Schmitt,
1975), pp. 118.
50
Albert dHaenens, La clepsydre de Villers (1267), in Klsterliche Sachkultur des Sptmittelalters, sterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, 367 (Vienna: sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1980), pp. 32142.
51
Joachim Wiesenbach, Pacificus von Verona als Erfinder einer Sternenuhr, in Science in
Western and Eastern Civilization in Carolingian Times, ed. by Paul Butzer and Dietrich Lohrmann
(Basel: Birkhuser, 1993), pp. 22950. During that period (8001000) Polaris (now the pole star)
was separated from the pole by 7 to 8 degrees.
48

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239

The astronomical tradition for which our explicit evidence is scantiest also
concerns timekeeping, but this is not timekeeping in the arithmetical sense of
the luni-solar calendar employed in computus, or in the sense of using the daily
motion of the stars or Sun to determine the time of night or day, but in the sense
of using the annual motions of the Sun to mark the turnings of the year. In his
Etymologies Isidore of Seville described the path and effects of the Sun in this way:
[The sun] will set in a different place tomorrow, and [] in a different place yesterday.
[] Wandering further to the south it makes winter, so that the earth grows fertile with
wintry moisture and frost. When it approaches closer to the north, it brings summer back,
so that crops grow firm in ripeness.[]
When the sun runs across the south, it is closer to the earth, but when it is near the north,
it is raised higher in the sky. Thus God made diverse locations and seasons for the suns
course, so that it does not consume everything with its daily heat by always tarrying in the
same place.[]
The sun, when it rises, holds a path through the south. Afterward, it goes to the west and
plunges itself into the Ocean, and it travels unknown paths under the earth, and once
again runs back to the east.52

Early manuscripts illustrate this text by a circular diagram (Figure 12), associating
the rising and setting of the Sun at the winter solstice with the feast of the Birth
of the Lord and the summer solstice with the feast of the Birth of John the
Baptist.53 In his computistical writings Bede rejected the view of those church
teachers who maintained that the equinoxes and solstices fell on 25 March and 25
December, marking the conception and birth of the Lord, and 24 September and
24 June, marking the conception and birth of John the Baptist. Bede maintained
that the vernal equinox falls on 21 March and that the autumn equinox and the
solstices also fall the same number of days before the traditional date.54 An elaborate gloss emphasizing that these dates for the solstices and equinoxes should be
maintained following the authority of all the wise is found in at least five twelfthcentury British manuscripts of Bedes De temporum ratione.55

52

Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. by Stephen A. Barney and
others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), III. 5052 (p. 102).
53
See, for example, Wolfenbttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS Weissenburg 64, fol. 42v
(s. viii); St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 237, p. 63 (s. ix).
54
Bede, De temporum ratione, chap. 30.
55
Oxford, St Johns College, MS 17, fol. 84v. Faith Wallis, The Calendar and the Cloister:
Oxford, St Johns College MS 17, <http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/ms-17/index.htm> [accessed

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Stephen C. McCluskey

Fig. 12. The course of the Sun. Showing the Sun at the sixth hour, at midnight, and rising
and setting at the equinoxes, at the Birth of the Lord, and at the Birth of St John. The
centre is marked with an ornate medium mundi. The place of sunset at the equinoxes is
marked twice; the same duplication appears in Wolfenbttel, Herzog August Bibliothek,
MS Weissenburg 64, fol. 42v (s. viii). From Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, III. 5052,
St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 237, p. 63 (s. ix).

Carolingian calendars and computistical texts (Figure 13), beginning with the
early eighth-century Calendar of St Willibrord, make a similar distinction in their
depiction of the risings and settings through the course of the year. The principle
changes from the diagram in the Etymologies are that they replace the religious
feast days by the solstices (sometimes giving their dates according to the values
used by the computists) and that they add the paths of the Sun through the
southern sky from rising to setting (with the path sometimes continuing under
the Earth from setting to rising).56

September 2009], reports that the same gloss (gl. 67) is found in London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius
E. iv (Winchcombe Computus), fol. 72r; Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter 85 (T. 4. 2),
fol. 55r; Cambridge, St Johns College, MS I. 15, p. 75, and London, BL, MS Egerton 3088, fol. 20r.
56
Barbara Obrist, The Astronomical Sundial in Saint Willibrords Calendar and its Early
Medieval Context, Archives dhistoire doctrinale et littraire du moyen ge, 67 (2000), 71118,
especially Figures 13 and 1114; Cologne, Dombibliothek, cod. 83II, fol. 81v (c. 810).

MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

241

Fig. 13. The course of the Sun. Showing the daily path of the Sun above and below Earth
at the solstices and the equinoxes. Cologne, Dombibliothek, cod. 83II, fol. 81v (c. 798/805).

A twelfth-century English computistical collection provides versions of both

the diagram from Isidores Etymologies, and of that from Willibrords Calendar.
The Willibrord diagram is typical of its type but the Isidorian diagram has been
modified to place the points of rising and setting on the periphery of an O-T
map, clearly illustrating the concern with the changing place of the Sun on the
horizon.57
57

St Johns College, MS 17, fols 5v, 35v (c. 1110). See Faith Wallis, MS Oxford, St. Johns
College 17: A Medieval Manuscript in its Context (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University
of Toronto, 1985).

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The directions, and particularly the direction east, took on a whole range of
additional symbolic meanings in Christian thought. Besides being the place from
which heaven springs, as the rising place of the Sun it symbolized the Resurrection
of Christ, the Sun of Righteousness; by association it became the symbol of the
resurrection of the dead; it was the place of the Christians true home in paradise.58 A frequently quoted passage from Augustine maintained that the believer
should always turn in prayer towards the east, whence heaven springs forth, since
by turning ones body towards heaven, the most perfect material thing, the
worshipper symbolizes the turning of the immaterial soul towards God.59
Consequently it was held that churches should be built facing east, specifically
toward equinoctial east. The early twelfth-century life of St Dunstan reports that
when Dunstan was Archbishop of Canterbury (c. 96088), he arrived to dedicate
a church that he had had built on one of his estates. As he walked around the
church during the dedication ritual, he noticed that it was not facing the equinoctial rising of the Sun. The report says that Dunstan then pushed gently against
the church with his shoulder, and it was miraculously turned to face due east.60
Although we need not take this account at face value, it does indicate that the
equinoctial orientation of churches was taken as the norm in England in the late
tenth or the early twelfth centuries. A recent survey of medieval English village
churches has shown that, in fact, the equinoctial direction, as defined by the astronomical principles of medieval calendars and computus, plays a significant role in
their orientations.61
I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion that our understanding of medieval astronomical traditions has changed in the last decades. Nowhere has that
perception undergone such a rapid change as in the field of medieval astrology.
58

Honorius of Autun, Gemma animae, I. 95, PL, 172 (1854), col. 575. For an extensive
discussion of the origins and early development of orientation in prayer see Franz Joseph Dlger,
Sol Salutis: Gebet und Gesang in christlichen Altertum; Mit besonderer Rcksicht auf die stung in
Gebet und Liturgie, 2nd edn (Mnster: Aschendorf, 1925; repr. 1971).
59
Augustine, De sermone Domini in Monte libros duos, ed. by Almut Mutzenbecher, CCSL,
35 (1967), V. 1718.
60
Eadmer of Canterbury, Vita sancti Dunstani, in Eadmer of Canterbury: Lives and Miracles
of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, ed. and trans. by Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), chap. 48 (pp. 12225).
61
Stephen C. McCluskey, The Medieval Liturgical Calendar, Sacred Space, and the Orientation of Churches, in Time and Astronomy in Past Cultures, ed. by Arkadiusz Soltysiak (Warsaw:
Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, 2006), pp. 13948.

MARTIANUS AND THE TRADITIONS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL ASTRONOMIES

243

There has long been a recognition of medieval interest in and theological

concerns aboutvarious forms of prognostication, but until very recently the
scholarly consensus maintained that before the reception of Ptolemaic astronomy
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the West lacked the astronomical and
mathematical techniques needed to support horoscopic astrology.
David Juste has recently examined several previously neglected computational
texts that are found as early as the ninth century. He has demonstrated that they
provide the needed techniques: a method to compute the sign of the zodiac that
was rising on the horizon at an arbitrary date and time, and several methods to
compute the position of the planets. One of these methods of planetary computation appears in a computistical text by Abbo of Fleury that also discusses
computing the positions of the Sun and the Moon.62 Abbos technique is not
original, but is one example of a technique that Juste calls System A, which shows
traces of Syrian origin and is found in Latin manuscripts as early as the ninth
century.
The planetary computations tell us something significant about early medieval
astrology: the positions of the planets computed by these techniques bear no
relation to the actual positions of the planets in the sky. The planetary periods
were selected on numerological principles and bear no relation to the actual
periods. The initial positions of the planets correspond to the signs in which the
planets were said to have been created and over which they have astrological
dominion. The computations use simple arithmetical techniques, like those we
have seen in computus, and take no account of the planets retrograde motions or
the limited elongation of Venus and Mercury from the Sun.
As early as the tenth century we see a variant of this technique, which Juste has
labelled System B, in three different astronomical compilations. System B shows
signs of Greek origin and the first Latin versions emerge in the tenth century at
the Catalonian monastery of Ripoll. Although the basic principles of uniform
motion are the same, System B uses different initial points and periods for
computing the motion of the planets. System B also abandons System As
numerological planetary periods and adopts more accurate periods closer to
those commonly found in other early medieval discussions of planetary astronomy. Despite this difference, System B does not yield accurate positions of the
62

David Juste, Neither Observations nor Astronomical Tables: An Alternative Way of

Computing the Planetary Longitudes in the Early Western Middle Ages, in Studies in the History
of the Exact Sciences in Honour of David Pingree, ed. by Charles Burnett and others (Leiden: Brill,
2004), pp. 181222. See also Elly Dekker, Carolingian Planetary Observations: The Case of the
Leiden Planetary Configuration, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 39 (2008), 7790.

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Stephen C. McCluskey

planets; one of the compilers was concerned that the method seemed superstitious for Mars and failed to account for Venuss limited elongation from the
Sun.63
Although further research is needed into the origins and subsequent influence
of these astrological methods of planetary computation, these methods are clear
signs of an early medieval interest in the computation of planetary positions
within an astrological context.
I hope this picture of the astronomical traditions of the early Middle Ages has
shed some light on that largely misunderstood period in European history. As I
suggested at the outset, these astronomical practices focused on the interpretation
and elaboration of textual traditions. Since the general framework was textual,
innovations took place much more often when a medieval scholar or a group
of scholars was able to step outside the narrow confines of one astronomical
tradition and challenge its teachings by something drawn from a text from
another tradition, than when he was able to challenge its findings by new astronomical observations.
From the general perspective of the study of glosses on classical texts, this
reminds us of the historical importance of those glosses that draw on alternative
traditions. The identification of such interactions, and of the historical specifics
of person, time, and place where such interactions occurred, is made much easier
by editing projects of this kind, for which we historians of scientific ideas are
profoundly grateful.

63

Juste, Neither Observations nor Astronomical Tables, pp. 20304.