JHA, xii (1981) Copyright © 1981 by Olaf Pedersen

THE ORIGINS OF THE "THEORICA PLANETARUM"

OLAF PEDERSEN, University of Aarhus

Introduction
In medieval universities astronomy was taught in two different contexts. In
some places the Faculty of Medicine provided its students with the elements
of medical astrology and its astronomical presuppositions to enable them to
co-operate with the influence of the stars and determine the auspicious dates
for the medical treatment of diseases, or for performing phlebotomy and other
hygienic routines. But although this medical interest in astronomy and astrology
was responsible for much of the astronomical literature of the Middle Ages, it
was neither the original nor the most important stimulus to the study or
teaching of astronomy. For before a student was qualified to enter the Faculty
of Medicine or any other higher faculty he had to pass through the Faculty
of Arts, where astronomy was taught in its own right as one of the four disci-
plines of the quadrivium and in the wider educational framework of the liberal
arts. This was already the case when the first universities grew out of the great
schools of the twelfth century under the pressure of a veritable explosion of
knowledge in all fields caused by the great wave of translations of scientific
texts from the Arabic, and to some extent also from the Greek.
Unfortunately we do not know a great deal about this first teaching of
astronomy within the universities. The earliest extant statutes of the Faculty
of Arts are not specific on this point, with the result that we have to make
inferences from other sources of information. Among these the most important
are the treatises whose character reveals them to have been textbooks used for
the teaching of astronomy in an introductory and elementary way.

The Astronomical Curriculum

Some of these manuals were translations as, for example, the widely used
treatise by al-Farghani (the Alfraganus of the Latins) known by various titles
such as the Compilatio astronomica, the Liber 30 dijferentiarum, or the Rudimenta
astronomica. It was translated in the twelfth century by John of Seville (Johannes
Hispalensis) who worked in Toledo around A.D. 1135-53. 1 It gave a brief sketch
in very general terms of some of the principal features of the Ptolemaic theories
of the motions of the planets and would serve as an elementary introduction
to Ptolemaic astronomy for students who had not yet acquired the mathematical
competence necessary for a study of the Almagest itself. Other textbooks were
original works by Latin scholars who soon were able to offer a rich variety of
manuals of both spherical astronomy and planetary theory. Here it is sufficient
to mention the interesting Theorica planetarum attributed to Roger of Hereford
who worked in the second half of the twelfth century, and the better known
Tractatus de sphaera by Robert Grosseteste which without doubt reflects the
teaching of astronomy in the first half of the thirteenth century in the University
of Oxford.
The relative popularity and use of the various competing texts can still be
ascertained by using the number of extant manuscripts as an indicator. In this

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114 Olaf Pedersen
way it clearly appears that from about the middle of the thirteenth century
the English astronomer John of Sacrobosco was rapidly gaining the field with a
whole series of manuals which summarized his teaching in the University of
Paris. The first was usually called the Algorismus, being a purely mathematical
text explaining the basic arithmetical operations, including root extraction,
using Hindu ('Arabic') numerals." Next came the Compotus which was a fairly
detailed exposition of the principles of time-reckoning." Finally the Tractatus
de sphaera gave a general introduction to spherical astronomy and astronomical
geography, ending with a few pages on the motion of the planets, in particular
the Sun and the Moon, and the cause of eclipses.' Taken as a whole the three
treatises of Sacrobosco would provide students with some indispensable
mathematical, calendaric, and astronomical prerequisites for the study of
astronomy. In medieval codices the three works are often found together, either
written in the same hand or, if written in different hands, bound together in
the same volume. However, to the best of my knowledge, we have only one
codex containing precisely these three treatises and nothing more; from the
very beginning they seem to have been supplemented by other treatises which
would be useful even at the elementary stage.
An early example of such a collection is the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge
MS McClean 166 which contains the following five texts:
Johannes Anglicus Quadrans vetus
Johannes Sacrobosco Algorismus
Johannes Sacrobosco Sphaera
Johannes Sacrobosco Compotus
Robert Grosseteste Calendar
Here Sacrobosco's works are supplemented by two other treatises of which
the Quadrans vetus text would show the student how to make a simple astro-
nomical instrument and use it for observations, while the calendar would make
it possible to date them, at the same time providing useful supplementary
material for the teaching of the compotus. This tendency to add other texts
to Sacrobosco's manuals instead of replacing them by more complete expositions
is evident in numerous other codices and shows the emergence of a standard
"corpus astronomicum" containing a collection of treatises or manuals which
increased with the growing demand for a more complete and precise basis of
the astronomical teaching." Another typical, early example is the MS Egerton
844 of the British Museum in which we find the following collection of works:
Sacrobosco Algorismus
Sacrobosco Sphaera
Sacrobosco Compotus
Johannes Anglicus Quadrans vetus
Messahalla De astrolabio
Anon. Theorica planetarum
Comparing this codex with McClean 166 we see that the calendar has been
omitted, which is not usually the case; in return we have two additions, the
first of which is a very common treatise on the astrolabe as one of the most
popular instruments of the Middle Ages. The second is an exposition of
planetary theory according to Ptolemaic principles, and it would seem that it

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 The Theorica Planetarum 115

was inserted here in order to remedy the few and unsatisfactory remarks on
planetary motions which concluded the Sphaera of Sacrobosco. We notice that
the compilator of the collection knew the names of the authors of all the other
treatises but that he was unaware of the author of the Theorica.

The Theorica planetarum

The further development of the Corpus astronomicum need not detain us
here. Instead we shall concentrate on the Theorica planetarum and some of the
many problems connected with this text, which shared its title with numerous
other treatises so that it is best identified by its incipit: Circulus eccentricus vel
egresse cuspidis vel egredientis centri dicitur qui non habet centrum suum cum
centro mundi. There is no doubt that this particular Theorica surpassed all
others in popularity. It is also often found outside the Corpus, and copies
continued to be made until well into the sixteenth century. My check list of
the manuscripts has at present (January 1981) more than 210 entries. Only
the Sphaera itself can compete with it with respect to the number of extant
copies. Everything points to the fact that it rapidly became universally preferred
as the standard elementary introduction to theoretical astronomy and that it
retained this status for centuries to come. Another proof of its widespread use
is the many commentaries to which it gave rise, and there are no doubt many
more still unidentified." Also several revised versions are known." Early in the
second half of the fifteenth century the Vienna astronomer Georg Peurbach
tried to replace the Theorica planetarum antiqua (as it was now called) by his
own more elaborate Novae theoricae planetarum which was the outcome of a
course of lectures given in A.D. 1454. This work was given much publicity by
Regiomontanus who shortly before his death in A.D. 1476 published a highly
polemical pamphlet called Disputationes contra Cremonensia in planetarum
theoricas delyramenta, containing a furious attack on the old Theorica," How-
ever, this did not prevent the Theorica from being revived by the first printers,
who rightly thought that a time-honoured and popular textbook would sell. 9
In most manuscripts the text is divided into eight chapters with the following
(or very similar) headings :10
1. De theorica solis
2. De theorica lune
3. De theorica capitis et caude draconis
4. De theorica saturni, jouis et martis
5. De theorica veneris et mercurii
6. De retrogradatione et directione planetarum
7. De latitudinibus sex planetarum et declinatione solis
8. De planetarum aspectuum inventione
The first five chapters are all concerned with the motion in longitude. Chap. 1
gives a brief exposition of the solar theory of Hipparchus, while chap. 2 contains
the lunar theory of Ptolemy, complete with the particular method of interpo-
lation for determining the equation of argument (the Ptolemaic prostaphairesis-
angle) for any given configuration of the model." Chap. 3 describes the inclined
orbit of the Moon, and the retrograde motion of the ascending and descending

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116 Olaf Pedersen

node. There follows the Ptolemaic theories of the superior (chap. 4) and the
inferior (chap. 5) planets.
These chapters are all written according to the same general plan. A geo-
metrical description of the various circles and lines of each model is followed
by a series of definitions of the variables used in the theory, a statement of
the relations between them, and a discription of interpolation methods enabling
the reader to use a set of astronomical tables. The author reveals a competent
knowledge of Ptolemaic astronomy, although he never refers to the Almagest
itself. He also successfully tries to overcome the terminological ambiguity in
Ptolemy by introducing separate Latin terms for separate concepts, for instance
by creating a variety of terms for all the variables that are called 'anomaly' in
the Almagest. This is not to say that he knew Greek, or even a Latin translation
of the Almagest, but only that he was aware of the need for a consistent and
unequivocal vocabulary in planetary theory. There are very few Arabisms left,
and among these the term aux for the apogee of an orbit has become a com-
pletely Latinized word (aux, augis, f.) while the occasional genzahar for the
Dragon must be considered a slip of the pen since it is usually translated by
dracoP Historically speaking there is no doubt that these five chapters were
instrumental in acquainting students with the principal features of the various
kinematical models of the Almagest, and thus in strengthening the position of
Ptolemaic astronomy against attacks from teachers who, following al-Bitruji,
tried to introduce other models. But they had even more far reaching conse-
quences in so far as the vocabulary of the Theorica became the unchallenged
linguistic vehicle for theoretical astronomy, not only through the late Middle
Ages," but to a certain extent even until the present day.
The remaining three chapters make a less satisfactory impression. As the
title indicates, chap. 6 opens with an account of the retrograde motions and
stationary points of the planets, supplemented by an explanation of why the
Moon is never retrograde. Here there is nothing wrong with the text as such,
but in all the manuscripts the accompanying figure reveals the fact that the
stationary points are determined by tangents drawn from the centre of the
Earth to the epicycle. The author may not have been aware of the correct
procedure" (in which case he cannot have been personally acquainted with the
Almagest), or he may have deemed this procedure too difficult for an elementary
introduction and replaced it by a simpler, but approximative method. In any
case, the result was that the tangential approximation crept into most of the
later commentaries." The error was partially overcome by Peurbach'" and
much commented upon by Regiomontanus." However, chap. 6 contains more
than it promised in the title. It continues with rules for computing mean
longitudes by means of astronomical tables leading up to the determination
of conjunctions of the Sun and the Moon and the definition of a number of
concepts concerned with eclipses. Here the treatment is in general much more
superficial than in the first five chapters.
In some manuscripts the long and confused chap. 7 is broken up into four
different chapters in an attempt to bring some order and method into this
strange variety of remarks: on planetary latitudes and how to calculate them
by means of tables; on the motion of the nodes and apogees of the planets;
on how to adapt tables to a different geographical locality; on precession, of

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 The Theorica Planetarum 117

which three different accounts are offered; and on the determination of the
eccentricity of the solar orbit and the motion of its apogee. The whole treatment
shows that here the author is some way out of his depth, or that he abbreviates
the exposition to an extent that makes the chapter very hard reading and
unsuitable for a textbook. Nevertheless, this chapter is interesting for several
reasons. Firstly, it is the only chapter that refers to astronomical observations,
made by an astrolabe and attributed to al-Battani. Secondly, it reveals that
the author is familiar with several types of astronomical tables some of which
presuppose a non-Ptolemaic procedure for calculating latitudes, possibly of
Hindu origin. And finally, this is the only chapter in which the author refers
to astronomical authorities by name, such as Nembroth (sic !), Hermes,
Ycominus (Hyginus ?), Ptolomeus, Albategni, Albumasar and Algorismus
(al-Khwarizmi), who are said to have composed astronomical tables, whereas
Thebit, Albategni and Alfraganus are said to have determined planetary
apogees with different results.
All the preceding chapters have features in common. They all deal with
celestial motions in a purely kinematical way, avoiding all questions about the
forces which keep these motions going. Also, the kinematical models are
geometrically described in terms of circles and lines without reference to the
solid 'spheres' which the Middle Ages inherited from Aristotle and from the
Hypothesis of Ptolemy, and which playa dominant role in Peurbach's book
along with the abstract models. Finally, a general feature is the absence of
most of the numerical parameters characterizing the individual models. There
are a few values of mean motions of the Sun, the Moon and the nodes, but
this is about all. In particular, there are no precise values for the length of the
year or the month, or the various periods of the planets. However, this defect
could be remedied if a set of tables were included in the Corpus astronomicum,
and this was what in fact happened about A.D. 1300, or even before. Another
and more serious imperfection is the complete lack of geometrical parameters.
Neither epicycle radii nor other circular dimensions relative to the deferents
are given.
So far the Theorica has appeared as a purely astronomical text, without any
astrological material apart from a stray remark on the 'operations' of the
planets towards the end of chap. 6. This situation changes abruptly in the final
chap. 8 which very briefly describes the various 'aspects' of the planets, that is,
0 0 0
the situations in which they have mutual distances of 60 90 120 and 180 , ,
0
, •

These concepts play an important role in astrology; although this role is not
explicit, the chapter has, therefore, a strong astrological flavour.
Everything considered, one has to admit that as a textbook the Theorica
deteriorates towards the end, particularly in chap. 7 where a great number of
important topics are touched upon but not dealt with in sufficient detail. In
particular it is worth noticing that the author presents three different and
mutually incompatible theories of precession without making up his mind as
to which he wishes to support. But here again the shortcomings of the Theorica
were repaired in the same characteristic way that had led to its own incorpora-
tion into the Corpus: the text was not rewritten, or discarded in favour of
another, but supplementary texts were added so that the obscure points of the
Theorica could be dealt with in a more satisfactory manner. In the later versions

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118 Olaf Pedersen
of the Corpus the Theorica is, therefore, usually followed by the four brief
treatises attributed to Thabit Ben Qurra, among which the De mota octave
spere gave an advanced theory of precession (in terms of 'trepidation') while
important numerical parameters could be found in the other three. This reveals
again the mechanism behind the growth of the Corpus astronomicum at the
same time as it explains how the Theorica planetarum could retain its position
unchallenged as an element of an ever increasing equipment of educational
material.

The Origins of the Theorica planetarum

The problem now is when, where, and by whom the Theorica planetarum
was written. These questions are so intertwined that they cannot be dealt with
separately. Only one thing is certain: the text itself is completely silent about
its origin since, as we shall see, the few medieval attributions of the Theorica
to one author or another are of no great significance and may well all be wrong.
That Gerard of Cremona is taken to be the author in numerous modern
works is without doubt due to the tradition from the old printed editions. The
editio princeps with the title Magistri Gerardi Cremonensis viri clarissimi
Theorica planetarum appeared in A.D. 1472 from the press of Andreas Gallus
at Ferrara. The other printed editions also present the Theorica as a work of
Gerard of Cremona, except for the Giunti edition which appeared in Venice
in A.D. 1518 and attributed the treatise to an otherwise unknown Johannes
Cremonensis. The result was that for three centuries the Theorica was unhesi-
tatingly ascribed to the famous twelfth-century translator Gerard of Cremona,
who worked at Toledo and died in A.D. 1187. The reason why the first printers
made this choice may well be that Gerard had already been credited with the
book by no less an authority than Regiomontanus, who had published his
attack on it in the form of a diatribe against Delyramenta cremonensia. But
perhaps he was not too sure himself, since later in the same work he referred
to the Theoricas planetarum Gerardo Cremonensi, utfertur, editasP This utfertur
("as it is reported") reveals a certain hesitation on the part of Regiomontanus.
Unfortunately later writers were less circumspect, with the result that catalogues
stilI abound in unqualified but nevertheless dubious attributions.
The first modern scholar to challenge Gerard of Cremona's right to the
Theorica was the nineteenth-century librarian B. Boncompagni, who had found
a copy of a list of Gerard's translations prepared by his disciples and collabor-
ators shortly after his death.P This list did not include the Theorica, and
Boncompagni concluded that this treatise was not a work of Gerard of
Cremona-overlooking the fact that the list mentions translations only, but
not original works. He then drew attention to the fact that several earlier
bibliographers such as Antonio Campi and Bernardino Baldi in the sixteenth
and Johann Albert Fabricius in the eighteenth century had attributed the text
to the astrologer Gerard of Sabbionetta (a small town in the neighbourhood
of Cremona) who flourished about the middle of the thirteenth century. This
Gerard was a committed astrologer who is best known for a treatise on
geomancy which later went through several printed editions, and for a collection
of prognostications for the years 1255-58 made at the request of Uberto Marchio
Pellavicini.P' Considering that the Theorica is relatively untainted by astrology,

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 The Theorica Planetarum 119

it would seem that Boncompagni's hypothesis was weak. It is also without

any support whatever in the manuscript material, which Boncompagni did not
examine.
Nevertheless, this attribution met with no serious opposition until 1915 when
Pierre Duhem tried to give the Theorica back to Gerard of Cremona for two
different reasons.v The first was based on the term egresse cuspis used in the
incipit of the text to denote the centre of the eccentric orbit of the Sun. The
same term was found in John of Seville's translation of al-Farghani's Compilatio
astronomica and also in the poem Anticlaudianus written about A.D. 1183 by
Alanus de Insulis. Duhem took this as sufficient proof that Alanus knew the
Theorica which, accordingly, must have been written before Gerard of Cremona
died so that there was no reason to disbelieve the traditional attribution to him.
Duhem's second argument for an early date of the Theorica was that this
treatise must have been known to the author of a text found in a manuscript
which he dated to A.D. 1232 and took to be a part of the preface to the London
Tables. Here Duhem was led astray by his ignorance of the manuscript material
and his reliance upon a faulty printed version of the Theorica. His argument
was strongly criticized by C. A. Nallino who in 1932 drew attention to the
fact that there are no manuscripts of the Theorica earlier than the second half
of the thirteenth century, and that it is not mentioned in the Speculum astrono-
miae which he took to be a genuine work by Albertus Magnus, dating from
about A.D. 1260.22 Finally Duhem's argument was thrown out of court in 1949
when L. Thorndike published the text in question, showing that it had nothing
to do with the London Tables and giving convincing reasons for considering
it a work of the Genoese astronomer Andale di Negro who flourished in the
beginning of the fourteenth century. 23

The Testimony of the Manuscripts

So far the search for the author and date of the Theorica had been conducted
on a rather fragile basis. All the scholars mentioned above relied either upon the
old printed editions, or upon a few manuscripts which they had come across
at random. The fact that no indubitable answer had resulted from their efforts
made it clear that the only way out of the impasse must begin with a survey
of as much of the manuscript material as possible. A preliminary examination
of 168 manuscripts made in 1962 showed that the great majority were anonymous.
Only twenty-eight copies attributed the text to one author or another out of a
total of nine different Arabic or Latin astronorners.P This survey has recently
been repeated on a broader basis, extending the number of manuscripts to
212, but discarding all attributions due to later hands, or to cataloguers and
librarians. What remained was the following.

Century XIII XIV XV XVI

Alfonsus of Castille 1
Gerard of Cremona 5 4
Grosseteste 2
John of Seville 2
Sacrobosco

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 120 Olaf Pedersen
The only possible conclusion is that since only sixteen out of 212 are attributed
to a particular author, the Middle Ages simply did not know who the author
of the Theorica was. It is also seen that the attributions increase in number
towards the end of the Middle Ages, that is, as we move away from the time
when the text was composed; this underlines their hypothetical character.
Among the attributions the most common suggestion is indeed Gerard of
Cremona whose name appears for the first time in the commentary of Thadeo
de Parma dating from A.D. 1318. Listing the four Aristotelian 'causes' of the
treatise, Thadeo wrote Causa efficiens fuit magister Gherardus Cremonensis, or,
"The efficient cause [i.e. the author] was master Gerard of Cremona't.w The
relative popularity of this long and excellent commentary in Italy may well be
the reason why all the first editions printed in Italy ascribed the Theorica to
Gerard, although this surmise was not supported by "the majority of the
manuscripts" as maintained by Nallino. Furthermore, it was categorically
contradicted by the scribe of another manuscript dating from the same period
who added a gloss stating that Causa efficiens ignoratur, "The author is
unknown't.s" It is this statement which agrees with practically all the manu-
scripts known at present. Considering that the earliest manuscripts appear in
the second half of the thirteenth century, and that the text was added to the
Corpus astronomicum in order to supplement the scanty remarks on planetary
theory in Book IV of the Sphere of Sacrobosco, the most probable conclusion
is that the Theorica is the work of an unknown teacher of astronomy who
worked about or shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century in a place
where Sacrobosco's three small manuals had already established themselves as
the kernel of the astronomical curriculum.
This suggests two further lines of research. Firstly, one needs to explain why
the name of Gerard of Cremona looms so large among the small number of
actual attributions. Here an interesting idea is suggested by a fifteenth-century
manuscript which ends in a very particular way." Chap. 7 of the text is followed
by the words Explicit theorica planetarum. Incipit Theorica Gerardi Cremonensi,
after which follows chap. 8 of the usual treatise. We have already noticed the
astrological flavour of this final chapter on the aspects of the planets which,
moreover, is missing from a certain number of the manuscripts. This might
indicate that originally the Theorica contained only chaps 1-7, and that chap. 8
is a slightly later addition of an item of astrological lore attributed-rightly or
wrongly-to Gerard of Cremona. Whether this idea will hold water must
depend on the locating of the text of chap. 8 among Gerard's genuine or
spurious works.
Secondly, we need to search the astronomical literature of the twelfth and
early thirteenth centuries in order to discover possible sources of the first
seven chapters of the Theorica. This would involve, among other things, a
careful analysis of the vocabulary and phraseology of the treatise and must,
therefore, await the establishing of a critical version of the text. But so much
can be said already at present, that it will be necessary to investigate a long,
anonymous treatise on theoretical astronomy (with the incipit Circulus solis
dicitur esse eccentricus) found in Cambridge University Library." This unique
manuscript seems to have originated in England and was in A.D. 1238 in the
possession of the Cathedral Library of Winchester. Several phrases in the text

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 The Theorica Planetarum 121

FIG. 1. Codex F.8 of the Library of the Leningrad Academy of Science, f. 13r (part).

show a remarkable linguistic agreement with corresponding phrases in the

Theorica, and a direct connection between the two texts is clearly a possibility.
On the other hand, there are also a number of phrases in the Theorica which
seem to derive from the Sphere of Sacrobosco. The idea that the author of the
Theorica was an Englishman working with Sacrobosco, or at least acquainted
with his writings, is a tempting hypothesis; however, at the present stage of
research it certainly is no more than that.
Recently the assumption of a thirteenth-century date of the Theorica has
been disputed by Professor Richard Lemay of New York City University in
his critical survey of the works of Gerard of Cremona.s" In August 1974 he
examined a codex in the Library of the Leningrad Academy of Science con-
taining a version of the Theorica which, in his own words, "apparently dates
from the late twelfth century", or "is definitely of the late twelfth century".
The codex is described in the catalogue by L. I. Kiselevaw and appears to be a
large collection of astronomical, astrological and medical tracts. The first 77
leaves are in the same hand which the catalogue considers a "rounded, gothic
b?~k-hand with all the characteristics of a script from the thirteenth century",
grving further references to the Russian scholar M. A. Sangin who dated the
hand to the thirteenth or fourteenth century.

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122 Olaf Pedersen
One of Professor Lemay's reasons for dating the manuscript to the end of
the twelfth century is that on f. 77 the codex contains a world horoscope dated
13 March 1178. This argument is wholly unconvincing, however, since the first
part of the codex ends here and therefore this horoscope must at one time
have been placed at the very end of an already complete compilation. It is well
known that small, blank spaces at the end of codices, or of single treatises,
were often filled out with notes, nativities, etc., having nothing to do with the
rest of the material found in the book. There is certainly nothing impossible,
or even surprising, in the assumption that such a blank space was filled by a
thirteenth-century scribe with a horoscope for A.D. 1178 which he had come
across elsewhere and wanted to preserve.
This leads us to the palaeographic evidence. Having obtained a microfilm
of the text" and examined the script I see no reason whatever to quarrel with
L. 1. Kiseleva's assignment of the manuscript to the thirteenth century, whereas
it seems impossible to sustain the claim that it is a twelfth-century hand." The
reproduction of a part of the text in Figure 1 will enable the reader to verify
this conclusion for himself. In consequence, Professor Lemay's conjecture that
the Theorica planetarum "may have originated with John of Seville, whose
style it matches perfectly, and was reworked in some fashion by Gerard of
Cremona" cannot be supported by palaeographic arguments." Everything
considered, no sufficient reason has emerged strong enough to invalidate the
hypothesis that the Theorica and its place within the Latin tradition of astro-
nomical manuals are best understood on the assumption that it originated from
the hand of a thirteenth-century author. Who this author was is still a matter
of further research.
REFERENCES
1. There is no reason here to give specific references to well-known translations. The reader
will find ample information in such standard works as F. J. Carmody, Arabic astronomical
and astrological sciences in Latin translation (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1956), sup-
plemented by G. Sarton's Introduction to the history ofscience, i-iii (Baltimore, 1927-48),
and L. Thorndike and P. Kibre, Catalogue 0/ incipits 0/ mediaeval scientific writings in
Latin (2nd ed., London, 1963).
2. Edited in M. Curtze, Petri Philomeni de Dacia in Algorismum vulgarem Johannis de
Sacrobosco Commentarius una cum Algorismo ipso (sumptibus Soc. Reg. Scientiarum,
Hauniae (Copenhagen), 1897).
3. There is no modern edition of the Compotus. It was first published by Melanchthon at
Wittenberg, 1545.
4. L. Thorndike, The Sphere 0/ Sacrobosco and its commentators (Chicago, 1949).
5. The development of the Corpus is described in greater detail in O. Pedersen, "The Corpus
astronomicum and the traditions of medieval latin astronomy", Studia Copernicana, xiii
(Warsaw, 1975), 57-96.
6. The most complete and important among the commentaries was written in A.D. 1318 by
Thadeo de Parma. It seems to have been a set book in the Medical Faculty at Bologna
during the fourteenth century.
7. Among the revised versions must be mentioned the Theorica by the fourteenth-century
Oxford astronomer Walter Brytte, which shows some influence from the Merton School
of mathematics. It is often confused with the original text because of its similar incipit:
Circulus eccentricus et egresse cuspidis et egredientis centri idem sunt, Among the MSS
are Egerton 847 and 889, Bod!. 300, Digby 15, 48, 93 and 98, and Wood D.8.
8. For this episode and its bearing upon the question of the Humanist influence on Renais-
sance astronomy, see O. Pedersen, "The decline and fall of the Theorica planetarum",
Studia Copernicana, xvi (Warsaw, 1978), 157-85.
9. The Theorica was printed at Ferrara, 1472; at Bologna, 1477, 1480; and at Venice, 1478
(twice), 1518 (twice) and 1531.

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 The Theorica Planetarum 123
10. These headings are taken from the MS Paris, Bibl, Nat. Lat. f. 222r; it has a separate
table of contents beginning Theorica planetarum habet octo capitula. The purely astro-
nomical aspects of the text can be studied in the English translation in E. Grant (ed.),
A source book in medieval science (Cambridge, Mass., 1974),451-64.
11. This method was first correctly described by Viggo M. Petersen, "The three lunar models
of Ptolemy", Centaurus, xiv (1969),142-71.
12. On the history of the term aux see C. A. Nallino, Raccolti di Seritti, v (Rome, 1944),307,
n. 1; on genzahar see W. Hartner in Oriens-occidens (Hildesheim, 1968), 264.
13. See O. Pedersen, "A fifteenth century glossary of astronomical terms", Classica et
mediae valia, Dissertationes IX (F. Blatt dedicata) (Copenhagen, 1973), 584-94, which
contains an edition of the astronomical dictionary found in the MS 155, ff. 41r-42r, in
St John's College, Cambridge.
14. See O. Pedersen, A survey of the Almagest (Odense, 1974), 343f.
15. An exception was Walter Brytte who clearly stated the correct condition for a stationary
point.
16. See the Novae theoricae planetarum (Augsburg (RatdoIt), 1482), ff. 88r seq., in particular
the figure on f. 88v.
17. See the Augsburg edition of the Disputationes, ff. 65v seq., printed with the edition of
Novae theoricae planetarum cited in ref. 16.
18. Ibid., f. 60v.
19. B. Boncompagni, "Della vita e delle opere di Gherardo da Sabbionetta", Atti
del/'Accademia Ponti/icia de'Nuovi Lincei, iv, 1850-51 (Rome, 1852), 449-93. The list
in question was edited by K. Sudhoff, "Die kurze 'Vita' und das Verzeichnis der Arbeiten
Gerhards von Cremona", Archiv fur Geschichte der Medizin, viii (1914), 73-82.
20. Sarton, Introduction, ii, 987; the prognostications are found in the MSS Vat. Lat. 4083,
ff. 3r-37r, and Vienna VIN 4997, ff. lr-85r.
21. P. Duhem, Le systeme du monde, iii (Paris, 1915), 319 seq.
22. See Nallino, Raccolti di Scritti, v, 304 seq.
23. Thorndike, The Sphere of Sacrobosco, 35 seq. and 463-75.
24. O. Pedersen, "The Theorica planetarum-literature of the Middle Ages", Classica et
mediaevalia, xxiii (1962), 225-32.
25. Quoted from the Florence MS Plut. 29,7, f. 110v.
26. University Library Basel, MS FJII.25, f. 18v.
27. University Library Utrecht, MS 1.M.1, f. 31r.
28. Cambridge University Library, MS Kk.l.1, ff. 192r-210v.
29. R. Lemay, "Gerard of Cremona", Dictionary ofscientific biography, xv (New York, 1978),
173-92, in particular p. 189.
30. L. I. Kiseleva, Latinskie Rukopisi Biblioteki Akademii Nauk USSR (Leningrad, 1978),
117-21. Here the manuscript of the Theorica is described as two separate treatises, viz.
a Theorica planetarum on ff. 13v-15v of the codex F.8 and a De latitudinibus planetarum
on ff. 16v-17r. Chap. 8 is missing. I am indebted to Mr S. Balle for a translation of the
relevant pages of the catalogue.
31. I wish to express my gratitude to Professor A. Grigorian of the Moscow Academy of
Science for his assistance in obtaining this microfilm.
32. This conclusion has been confirmed by the expert opinions of Dr Marie-Therese d' Alverny
in Paris and Professor Dr Bernhard Bischoff in Munich, for whose personal communi-
cations I am deeply grateful.
33. Here one must remember that the Theorica was not ascribed to John of Seville until the
fifteenth century, and that one should "not put too much faith in attributions of texts
to John of Seville by copyists of the fifteenth century or by their modern cataloguers",
to quote L. Thorndike, "John of Seville", Speculum, xxxiv (1959), 20-38.

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