Abstract
This final section of the monograph presents and analyzes the findings of the preliminary Aratean manuscript study and summarizes the various results and conclusions that can be drawn from the vast amount of evidential and scholarly material currently available. The numerous functions of these illustrated astronomical manuscripts are defined, compared, and evaluated for the purpose of exploring the influence of its literary impact and establishing the true significance of this astronomical manuscript tradition through the medieval period and its associated values that assured its millennial-long survival. The great variety of surviving evidence provides an understanding of where Aratus and the Aratean poets belong in the scientific traditions of the medieval Latin West. The considerable variety of functions performed by the constellation illustrations is established by looking at the diverse aspects of the stellar images along with the Latin text that accompanied the pictures. The primary role of the entire oral and literary tradition in the transmission of astronomical knowledge can be demonstrated, yet certainly remains open to argument and supplementation.
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Notes
- 1.
For more information of this survival of ancient mythology see Selznec, Survival of the Pagan Gods and also Weitzmann, Studies in Classical and Byzantine Manuscript Illumination.
- 2.
The establishment of equinoctial and solstice markers existed and has been uncovered in almost every advanced culture. Recent excavations begun in 1996 by Klaus Schmidt in Göbekli Tepe, Turkey have revealed astronomically-aligned stone circles, decorated with animal figures, that date back at least 12,000 years.
- 3.
See Chap. 2 or Dekker’s study of celestial globes, Illustrating the Phaenomena.
- 4.
See Appendices B and C.
- 5.
A doctoral dissertation has been written on this subject, Gwendolyn Trottein, The Children of Venus in Late Medieval and Renaissance Iconography, University of Illinois at Urbana, 1986.
- 6.
Eastwood also discusses this issue in his 2002 book, The Revival of Planetary Astronomy in Carolingian and Post-Carolingian Europe.
- 7.
This eleventh-century manuscript was probably made in the Limoges region. The text and illustrations can be viewed on online at the Library of Wales website.
- 8.
The manuscript is titled, De sphaera, (1450–60) Modena, Biblioteca Estense, Lat. 209, discussed in Treasures from Italy’s Great Libraries, Jupiter, (f. 6v).
- 9.
Line 456, Kidd translation.
- 10.
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm.210.
- 11.
A publication discusses the appearance of the signs of the zodiac in calendars found in Books of Hours and in sculptural form decorating medieval cathedrals, Time in the Medieval World: Occupations of the Months & Signs of the zodiac in the Index of Christian Art, Colum Hourihane ed. Princeton University, 2007. The publication provides an extensive list of manuscript illustrations of the zodiacal signs.
- 12.
I would like to thank Professor Drew Armstrong, University of Pittsburgh, for pointing out the dual identities of Gemini.
- 13.
Reid, Jane D., Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300–1990, Oxford University Press, 1993. Amphion and Zethus were twin brothers abandoned at birth and raised by a shepherd. They have been the subject of numerous paintings, poems, musical scores and even an opera, pp 93–5.
- 14.
According to the Oxford Guide, they are mentioned in the Iliad, Pindar, Euripides, Ovid, and Hyginus. In addition to the Aratea manuscripts, they are illustrated in numerous paintings and remembered in poems. pp 369-73.
- 15.
This manuscript was made in Bologna in the third quarter of the thirteenth century.
- 16.
Only two other manuscripts follow this convention, Cotton Tiberius C. 1 (12th C.) and Göttweig, Stiftsbibliothek Codex 7 Bl. 20 (15th C).
- 17.
Saxl, “Villa Farnesina” in Lectures, 197–98.
- 18.
Dekker also cataloged the National Maritime Museum’s large collection of globes in Greenwich, England.
- 19.
Two studies have been published on the illustrations of Abu Ma’shur, a PhD dissertation by Vicky Clark The Illustrated Abridged Astrological Treatises of Albumasar, University of Pittsburgh, 1979 and a study by Marie-Thérèse Gousset, and J.-P.Verdet, Liber Astrologiae,Georgius Zothoros Zaparus Fendulus, Paris: Editions Herscher, 1989.
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Dolan, M. (2017). Analysis and Conclusions. In: Astronomical Knowledge Transmission Through Illustrated Aratea Manuscripts. Historical & Cultural Astronomy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56784-6_8
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