De sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco in the Early Modern Period

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Prolegomena to the Study of Early Modern Commentators on Johannes de Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera

   • Matteo Valleriani

   Pages 1-23Open Access

3. A Lathe and the Material Sphaera: Astronomical Technique at the Origins of the Cosmographical Handbook

   • Richard J. Oosterhoff

   Pages 25-52Open Access

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

   • Tayra M. C. Lanuza Navarro

   Pages 53-89Open Access

5. Francesco Capuano di Manfredonia

   • Elio Nenci

   Pages 91-110Open Access

6. Conrad Tockler’s Research Agenda

   • Matteo Valleriani, Nana Citron

   Pages 111-136Open Access

7. John of Glogów

   • Peter Barker

   Pages 137-160Open Access

8. Sacrobosco’s Sphaera in Spain and Portugal

   • Kathleen M. Crowther

   Pages 161-184Open Access

9. Oronce Fine and Sacrobosco: From the Edition of the Tractatus de sphaera (1516) to the Cosmographia (1532)

   • Angela Axworthy

   Pages 185-264Open Access

10. Borrowers and Innovators in the History of Printing Sacrobosco: The Case of the In-Octavo Tradition

    • Isabelle Pantin

    Pages 265-312Open Access

11. André do Avelar and the Teaching of Sacrobosco’s Sphaera at the University of Coimbra

    • Roberto de Andrade Martins

    Pages 313-358Open Access

12. Fashioning Cosmology: Franco Burgersdijk as the Author of the Dutch Tractatus de sphaera

    • Marius Buning

    Pages 359-389Open Access

13. Back Matter

    Pages 391-396

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This open access book explores commentaries on an influential text of pre-Copernican astronomy in Europe. It features essays that take a close look at key intellectuals and how they engaged with the main ideas of this qualitative introduction to geocentric cosmology.

Johannes de Sacrobosco compiled his Tractatus de sphaera during the thirteenth century in the frame of his teaching activities at the then recently founded University of Paris. It soon became a mandatory text all over Europe. As a result, a tradition of commentaries to the text was soon established and flourished until the second half of the 17th century. Here, readers will find an informative overview of these commentaries complete with a rich context. The essays explore the educational and social backgrounds of the writers. They also detail how their careers developed after the publication of their commentaries, the institutions and patrons they were affiliated with, what their agenda was, and whether and how they actually accomplished it.

The editor of this collection considers these scientific commentaries as genuine scientific works. The contributors investigate them here not only in reference to the work on which it comments but also, and especially, as independent scientific contributions that are socially, institutionally, and intellectually contextualized around their authors.

• Astrology and Astronomy
• Astronomy and Medicine
• Early Modern Cosmology
• Geocentric Worldview
• Johannes de Sacrobosco
• Scientific Commentaries
• Pre-Copernican Astronomy
• Sacrobosco’s Sphere
• Tractatus de Sphaera
• scientific identity in Europe
• pre-Copernican astronomy
• Open Access

“The volume offers an excellent overview of authors and geographical regions whose contribution considerably, and in different ways, enlarged the content of this medieval booklet as well as the initiation to astronomy that it offered to European students and the general public. … The reader of this excellent book can now follow this path, choosing his or her own itinerary thanks to the synergy it allows through the digital reproductions of the editions of the Sphaera … .” (Miguel Ángel Granada, Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. 52 (3), August, 2021)

• Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany

  Matteo Valleriani

• Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

  Matteo Valleriani

• University of Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel

  Matteo Valleriani

Prof. Dr. Matteo Valleriani is research group leader of Department I at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and Honorary Professor at the Technische Universität of Berlin. He investigates the relation between diffusion processes of scientific knowledge, practical and technological knowledge as well as their economic and political preconditions. In particular, his research focuses on the Hellenistic period, the late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times. Among his principal research endeavors, Matteo Valleriani, leads the project “The Sphere. Knowledge System Evolution and the Shared Scientific Identity of Europe” (https://sphaera.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de), which investigates the formation and evolution of the shared scientific identity in Europe between the 13^th and the 17^th century.

Among his publications, Matteo Valleriani is author of the book Galileo Engineer (Springer Dordrecht 2010) and Editor of The Structures of Practical Knowledge (Springer Dordrecht 2017).