Recent scholarship on a Byzantine astronomical handbook on how to use a set of astronomical tables stemming from Islamic tradition sheds new light on a transfer of knowledge that occurred in the fourteenth century between the Ilkhanate and Byzantium. As this source was so far unpublished, the present paper gives an outline of the main textual features, then discusses the source in the framework of the cross-cultural contacts between Byzantine and non-Byzantine scholars between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ilkhanate.
In 1533, an excerpt from a disputation on the motion of the Earth, entitled An Terra moveatur an quiescat… disputatio [Disputation on whether the Earth Moves or Rests], was printed in Nuremberg and attributed to none other than the highly respected 15 th -century astronomer Johannes Regiomontanus. It tackled a crucial issue of the event known as the "Astronomical Revolution" or "Copernican Revolution," which was ignited by the publication of the first modern mathematical proposal of a heliocentric astronomy (that is, Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium). 3 However, the connection of the printing of the disputation with Copernicus's planetary theory is not an obvious one. First, the disputation refuted terrestrial motion. Second, Nicolaus Copernicus's geokinetic and heliocentric reform of astronomy had not been completed by 1533. His major work, the aforementioned De revolutionibus orbium coelestium [On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres], would only be printed ten years later (also in Nuremberg, in 1543). Third, this scholastic disputatio does not seem to be the best candidate for a ballon d'essai aimed at preparing the learned community for one of the most controversial issues of Renaissance astronomy and natural philosophy. Its modest profile does not bear comparison to epoch-making disputations that sparked famous philosophical, theological and political polemics such as Pico della Mirandola's 900 theses or Martin Luther's Wittenberg theses. As a matter of fact, the developments in mathematical astronomy ranging from Copernicus to Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler have often been considered external to-if not openly in conflict with-the scholastic philosophy of the universities, of which the disputation was a typical genre. However, if we consider the cultural contexts of Renaissance science, especially the relevance of humanistic networks and university 1 This paper is the outcome of a project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (GA n. 725883 EarlyModernCosmology)
This paper is a preliminary study focused on the astronomical manuscript Marcianus latinus VIII.31 (2614) and its socio‐historical context of use and production, the Venetian colony of Crete in the 15th century. It is a relevant source for the study of scientific interactions in colonial, multilinguistic, and interreligious contexts in the Eastern Mediterranean for at least two reasons: (a) it contains an unpublished translation into Latin of a popular Byzantine handbook on how to use a set of astronomical tables stemming from Islamic sources, namely the so‐called Paradosis of the Persian Tables, a work extensively copied and annotated by very significant Byzantine and Jewish scholars active in Constantinople; and (b) it provides evidence of a Byzantine product being the object of exchange in the interactions between Christians and Jews in the Cretan territory under Venetian rule.
This paper shows how Islamic astronomy played a significant role in the education of one of the most important Christian figures in the history of culture between eastern and western Europe, promoter of a crusade against the Ottoman Turks, namely Cardinal Bessarion (1400/1408–72). While the Byzantine polymath has generally been considered a purist of Ptolemaic astronomy, his interest in Islamic astronomy can be traced back to his youth and persisted throughout his life, as is testified by several sources from his manuscripts collection. It is misleading therefore to consider him a ‘purist’ of Ptolemy. The paper provides a survey of the texts of Islamic astronomy among the manuscripts of Bessarion’s estate. These are compared to Ptolemaic astronomy in order to assess the importance of Islamic astronomy within the framework of Bessarion’s collection. The results shed new light not only on Bessarion’s astronomical interests, but also on the reception of Islamic astronomy in non-Islamicate contexts in the fifteenth century, such as the late Byzantine Empire, Rhodes, Crete, Venice, and European humanism.
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