This article presents four detailed case studies of sixteenth-century vernacular translations of Sacrobosco's De sphaera. Previous scholarship has highlighted the important role of Sacrobosco's Sphere in medieval and early modern universities, where it served as an introductory astronomy text. We argue that the Sphere was more than a university teaching text. It was translated many times and was accessible to a wide range of people. The popularity of the Sphere suggests widespread interest in cosmological questions. We suggest that the text was a profitable one for early modern printers, who strove to identify books that would be reliable sellers. We also argue that the Sphere was not a static text. Rather, translators and editors added commentaries and other supplemental material that corrected and updated Sacrobosco's original text and
Throughout the early modern period, the most widely read astronomical textbooks were Johannes de Sacrobosco's De sphaera and the Theorica planetarum, ultimately in the new form introduced by Georg Peurbach. This essay argues that the images in these texts were intended to develop an "intelligent eye." Students were trained to transform representations of specific heavenly phenomena into moving mental images of the structure of the cosmos. Only by learning the techniques of mental visualization and manipulation could the student "see" in the mind's eye the structure and motions of the cosmos. While anyone could look up at the heavens, only those who had acquired the intelligent eye could comprehend the divinely created order of the universe. Further, the essay demonstrates that the visual program of the Sphaera and Theorica texts played a significant and hitherto unrecognized role in later scientific work. Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler all utilized the same types of images in their own texts to explicate their ideas about the cosmos.
This paper analyzes sixteenth-century commentaries on Johannes de Sacrobosco's Sphaera in Portuguese and Spanish. Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were more translations of the Sphaera into Castilian and Portuguese than into all other European vernaculars combined. A major reason for the interest in Sphaera translations in Spain and Portugal was that the basic astronomical and geographical knowledge contained in this text could be used for navigation. Because of their enormous interests in overseas exploration and colonization, Iberian monarchs supported the development of cosmography, a subject that combined mathematics, astronomy, and geography. The astronomical information in the Sphaera was also valued on the Iberian Peninsula for its applications to astrology. Finally, the Sphaera was critical to a Christian education because it taught readers to appreciate the wonders of God's creation. Spanish and Portuguese commentaries on Sacrobosco's Sphaera reflect this mix of practical, political, and spiritual concerns.
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