Prolegomena to the study of early modern commentators on Johannes de Sacrobosco's tractatus de sphaera

Abstract

By way of introduction to the present volume, a corpus of 359 treatises is described that was used in early modern educational institutions for introductory classes on cosmology and that is referenced by the following contributions. Following a taxonomy of early modern commentaries, central characteristics are analyzed in detail such as the rate of production of the treatises, the places where they were produced, and their various languages and formats. The focus then turns to the balance between the temporal dynamics of production of the treatises and the lifespans of their commentators. This reveals how the early modern textbooks first amplified medieval scientific knowledge and only slowly began to support and spread the echoes of scientific debate among contemporary scholars. The institutional and intellectual profiles of the commentary authors are then described on the basis of the results presented in the contributions to this volume. The commentators are described by referring on one hand to their relations to the universities, religious orders, and commercial institutions, and on the other to their engagement with disciplines both inside and outside the conceptual framework of the quadrivium. Finally, a quantitative summary of the results achieved by this volume is presented along with outlines for future research endeavors that will focus, consequently, on the role of the printers and publishers of the same commentaries.