Pedro Sánchez Ciruelo. A Commentary on Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera with a Defense of Astrology

Abstract

This paper focuses on the figure of the Spanish scholar Pedro Sánchez Ciruelo (ca. 1470-1548), who published a commentary on Johannes de Sacrobosco's Sphaera in 1498. The aim of this study is to analyze the defense of astrology that Ciruelo prepared for the preface of his commentary in order to show that this praise of astrology represents a significant part of the scholar's intellectual interests, which remained constant throughout his career. It is possible to get a richer understanding of Ciruelo's defenses of astrology in several of his works by placing them in their own specific context: the first one in the context of the prohibition of Simon de Phares's activities in Paris in 1494, and the second one in Europe in the first decades of the sixteenth century, during which those interested in astrology were mainly concerned with Pico della Mirandola's Disputationes and its consequences for the discipline.