[Astronomical Anthology]

Astronomy was often considered the highest of the liberal arts, with intellectual mastery coming from the study of the celestial sphere. Ptolemy’s Almagest, a second-century Greek astronomical text describing the constellations and the movements of the stars and planets, formed the basis of astronomical knowledge through the middle ages until the introduction of revolutionary new theories in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

LJS 57 contains a Hebrew translation of the Almagest, showing the use of this text in a wide range of linguistic and scholarly traditions. It is paired with other texts, including tables predicting solar and lunar eclipses and four short works on astrology. This collection reflects the intermingling of prophetic astrology and scientific astronomy in the middle ages. Pgs. 112 and 113, shown here, illustrate the translation of the Almagest and contain colorful diagrams of the celestial sphere populated with the stars arranged into constellations and images of their imagined forms.

While full texts or fragments of texts by Boethius survive for the other three subjects of the quadrivium, none survives on astronomy. However, there are indications that he did write a text on astronomy, or intended to write such a text, in order to complete his project of producing handbooks for all the mathematical disciplines. Boethius announces his intention to write a text on astronomy in his introduction to De Arithmetica and a monk, Gerard, claims to have seen a copy of a text by Boethius on astronomy in the Italian monastery of Bobbio.