Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe

Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe PDF Author: Stephen C. McCluskey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521778527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This book provides an overview of the astronomical practices that continued through the so-called "Dark Ages." Like the astronomies of traditional societies, early medieval astronomies established a religious framework of sacred time and ritual calender; here Christian feasts tied to a pre-Christian ritual solar calender, the date of Easter tied to the Hebrew lunar calender; and the timing of monastic prayers in terms of the course of the stars. Coupled with the remnants of ancient geometrical astronomy, these provided the framework for the rebirth of astronomy with the rise of the medieval universities.

Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe

Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe PDF Author: Stephen C. McCluskey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521778527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book

Book Description
This book provides an overview of the astronomical practices that continued through the so-called "Dark Ages." Like the astronomies of traditional societies, early medieval astronomies established a religious framework of sacred time and ritual calender; here Christian feasts tied to a pre-Christian ritual solar calender, the date of Easter tied to the Hebrew lunar calender; and the timing of monastic prayers in terms of the course of the stars. Coupled with the remnants of ancient geometrical astronomy, these provided the framework for the rebirth of astronomy with the rise of the medieval universities.

Scandalous Error

Scandalous Error PDF Author: C. Philipp E. Nothaft
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192520199
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
The Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, which provided the basis for the civil and Western ecclesiastical calendars still in use today, has often been seen as a triumph of early modern scientific culture or an expression of papal ambition in the wake of the Counter-Reformation. Much less attention has been paid to reform's intellectual roots in the European Middle Ages, when the reckoning of time by means of calendrical cycles was a topic of central importance to learned culture, as impressively documented by the survival of relevant texts and tables in thousands of manuscripts copied before 1500. For centuries prior to the Gregorian reform, astronomers, mathematicians, theologians, and even Church councils had been debating the necessity of improving or emending the existing ecclesiastical calendar, which throughout the Middle Ages kept losing touch with the astronomical phenomena at an alarming pace. Scandalous Error is the first comprehensive study of the medieval literature devoted to the calendar problem and its cultural and scientific contexts. It examines how the importance of ordering liturgical time by means of a calendar that comprised both solar and lunar components posed a technical-astronomical problem to medieval society and details the often sophisticated ways in which computists and churchmen reacted to this challenge. By drawing attention to the numerous connecting paths that existed between calendars and mathematical astronomy between the Fall of Rome and the end of the fifteenth century, the volume offers substantial new insights on the place of exact science in medieval culture.

Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art

Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art PDF Author: Benjamin Anderson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300219164
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
In the rapidly changing world of the early Middle Ages, depictions of the cosmos represented a consistent point of reference across the three dominant states--the Frankish, Byzantine, and Islamic Empires. As these empires diverged from their Greco-Roman roots between 700 and 1000 A.D. and established distinctive medieval artistic traditions, cosmic imagery created a web of visual continuity, though local meanings of these images varied greatly. Benjamin Anderson uses thrones, tables, mantles, frescoes, and manuscripts to show how cosmological motifs informed relationships between individuals, especially the ruling elite, and communities, demonstrating how domestic and global politics informed the production and reception of these depictions. The first book to consider such imagery across the dramatically diverse cultures of Western Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic Middle East, Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art illuminates the distinctions between the cosmological art of these three cultural spheres, and reasserts the centrality of astronomical imagery to the study of art history.

Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, Ca. 800-1500

Planetary Diagrams for Roman Astronomy in Medieval Europe, Ca. 800-1500 PDF Author: Bruce Eastwood
Publisher: American Philosophical Society
ISBN: 9780871699435
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Early medieval astronomy, esp. in the era of Charlemagne & his successors, consisted of texts that went far beyond the boundaries of computus, which modern scholars have long believed to be the only significant context for astronomical studies of that time. The texts contained innovative diagrams where no other sign of divergence from the text could be seen. Such diagrams were found to provide an indication of understandings of the texts -- which were different from those of modern scholars. Contents: Astronomy & Its Teaching in Carolingian Europe; Functions & Locations of Planetary Diagrams; Sources & Topics of Planetary Diagrams; Plinian Diagrams; Macrobian Diagrams; Calcidian Diagrams; & Capellan Diagrams. Illus. This is a print on demand publication.

Astrolabes from Medieval Europe

Astrolabes from Medieval Europe PDF Author: David A. King
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9781409425939
Category : Astrolabes
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This is the fourth set of studies in the Variorum series by David King, a leading authority on the history of Islamic astronomy and on medieval astronomical instruments. The first of the studies collected here deals with medieval instruments as historical sources. The following papers focus on individual astrolabes from the European Middle Ages and early Renaissance that are of singular historical importance and look at the origins of the simple universal horary quadrant and the complicated universal horary dial (navicula). The collection concludes with a list of all known medieval European astrolabes.

The Revival of Planetary Astronomy in Carolingian and Post-Carolingian Europe

The Revival of Planetary Astronomy in Carolingian and Post-Carolingian Europe PDF Author: Bruce S. Eastwood
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351744186
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This title was first published in 2002: Before the introduction of Greco-Arabic mathematical astronomy in the 12th century, what astronomy was there in the medieval West? While we know of developments in computus, which calculated with solar and lunar cycles to create Christian calendars, and in monastic time-telling by the stars, was anything known of the five planets? Using glosses, commentaries, and diagrams to the early manuscripts of four classical Latin authors - Pliny, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, and Calcidius - Bruce Eastwood provides evidence for the extensive development of the sixth liberal art, astronomy, from the time of Charlemagne forward, with a particular focus on the diagrams used and invented by Carolingian and later scholars. Learning to understand the motions of planets in terms of spatial, or geometrical, arrangement, they mined these Roman writings for astronomical and cosmological doctrines, in the process not only absorbing but also creating models of planetary motions. What they accomplished over three centuries was to establish a basic set of models that showed the reasoned order of the planets in the heavens.

Advancing Cultural Astronomy

Advancing Cultural Astronomy PDF Author: Efrosyni Boutsikas
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030646068
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
This collection of essays on cultural astronomy celebrates the life and work of Clive Ruggles, Emeritus Professor of Archaeoastronomy at Leicester University. Taking their lead from Ruggles’ work, the papers present new research focused on three core themes in cultural astronomy: methodology, case studies, and heritage. Through this framework, they show how the study of cultural astronomy has evolved over time and share new ideas to continue advancing the field. Ruggles’ work in these areas has had a profound impact on the way that scholars approach evidence of the role of sky in both ancient and modern cultures. While the papers span many time periods and regions, they are closely connected by these three major themes, presenting methodological investigations of how we can approach archaeological, textual, and ethnographic evidence; describing detailed archaeoastronomical case studies; or stressing the importance of global heritage management. This work will appeal to researchers and scholars interested in the history and development of cultural astronomy.

Handbook of Medieval Culture. Volume 1

Handbook of Medieval Culture. Volume 1 PDF Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110267306
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 706

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Book Description
A follow-up publication to the Handbook of Medieval Studies, this new reference work turns to a different focus: medieval culture. Medieval research has grown tremendously in depth and breadth over the last decades. Particularly our understanding of medieval culture, of the basic living conditions, and the specific value system prevalent at that time has considerably expanded, to a point where we are in danger of no longer seeing the proverbial forest for the trees. The present, innovative handbook offers compact articles on essential topics, ideals, specific knowledge, and concepts defining the medieval world as comprehensively as possible. The topics covered in this new handbook pertain to issues such as love and marriage, belief in God, hell, and the devil, education, lordship and servitude, Christianity versus Judaism and Islam, health, medicine, the rural world, the rise of the urban class, travel, roads and bridges, entertainment, games, and sport activities, numbers, measuring, the education system, the papacy, saints, the senses, death, and money.

Astronomy

Astronomy PDF Author:
Publisher: PediaPress
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description


Observations and Predictions of Eclipse Times by Early Astronomers

Observations and Predictions of Eclipse Times by Early Astronomers PDF Author: J.M. Steele
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401595283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Eclipses have long been seen as important celestial phenomena, whether as omens affecting the future of kingdoms, or as useful astronomical events to help in deriving essential parameters for theories of the motion of the moon and sun. This is the first book to collect together all presently known records of timed eclipse observations and predictions from antiquity to the time of the invention of the telescope. In addition to cataloguing and assessing the accuracy of the various records, which come from regions as diverse as Ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Europe, the sources in which they are found are described in detail. Related questions such as what type of clocks were used to time the observations, how the eclipse predictions were made, and how these prediction schemes were derived from the available observations are also considered. The results of this investigation have important consequences for how we understand the relationship between observation and theory in early science and the role of astronomy in early cultures, and will be of interest to historians of science, astronomers, and ancient and medieval historians.