A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 1 (of 2) by Lynn Thorndike

[Sidenote: Their relation to Gerbert and the Arabic.] If we accept this anonymous introduction as the preface to the twenty-one chapters, Gerbert would be the most likely person to ascribe both to, unless we argue that he could not make a translation from the Arabic and that his letter asking to see a translation from the Arabic by Lupitus is a proof of this. If Gerbert is not the author, Lupitus would perhaps be the next most likely person, but the hint contained in Gerbert’s letter is all that points to Lupitus, and indeed the only mention that we have of him. If the translator is some third unknown person, at least he is not later than the eleventh century. If, on the other hand, we regard the introduction of the translator and the twenty-one chapters as by different persons, who perhaps had no connection with each other, and Gerbert’s letter of 984 as having nothing to do with either, we have the more evidence of an early and widespread interest in astronomy and knowledge of Arabic in the western Latin learned world. [Sidenote: Hermann’s _De mensura astrolabii_.] One reason why the treatise on the astrolabe in twenty-one chapters is so seldom found in the manuscripts preceded by the introduction of the translator may be that it is more often found with and preceded by another treatise on the astrolabe, sometimes entitled _De mensura astrolabii_, and attributed to a Hermann who modestly calls himself “the offscouring of Christ’s poor and the butt of mere tyros in philosophy.”[2799] This treatise tells how to construct an astrolabe, thus filling in the deficiency left by the incomplete ending of the treatise in twenty-one chapters, which fails to carry out fully this last item in the plan of the introductory fragment. A note in one manuscript, reproduced in part by Macray in his catalogue of the Digby Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, states that the treatise in twenty-one chapters is by Gerbert and that when a certain Berengarius read it, he found it told how to exercise the art but not to make the instrument and asked Hermann to tell him how to make one. Hermann therefore composed the work in question, dedicated it to Berengarius, and prefixed it to Gerbert’s treatise.[2800] Of late there has been a tendency to identify this Hermann with Hermann of Dalmatia, the twelfth century translator from the Arabic,[2801] rather than with Hermann the Lame, the chronicler, who died in 1054, but if Bubnov is correct in dating two manuscripts[2802] containing Hermann’s treatise on the astrolabe in the eleventh century, they could not be the work of Hermann the translator of the next century.[2803] Moreover, in the thirteenth century the treatise seems to have been regarded as the work of Hermann the Lame.[2804] The author’s self-depreciatory description of himself is also a mark of Hermann the Lame, who in another treatise addressed to his friend Herrandus and discussing the length of a moon calls himself “of Christ’s poor a vile abortion.”[2805] [Sidenote: Attitude towards astrology in the preface.] In the treatise of twenty-one chapters, which simply tells how to use the astrolabe, there is naturally no reference to judicial astrology. But in the introduction of the anonymous writer to his translation from the Arabic of a work on the astrolabe there is mention of the influence of the stars. Their “concord with all mundane creatures in all things” is regarded as established by “secret institution of divinity and by natural law” and testified to by scientists.[2806] Not only is the effect of the moon on tides adduced as usual as an example, but God is believed to have set the seal of His approval upon “this discipline,” when He made miraculous use of the stars and heavens to mark the birth and passion of His Son. The writer, however, stigmatizes as a “frivolous superstition” the doctrine of the Chaldean _genethlialogi_, “who account for the entire life of man by astrological reasons” and “try to explain conceptions and nativities, character, prosperity and adversity from the courses of the stars.” Something nevertheless is to be conceded to them, provided all things are recognized as under divine disposition. But their doctrine is an egg which is not to be sucked unless rid of the bad odors of error.[2807] The translator urges the importance of a knowledge of astronomy in determining the date of church festivals and canonical hours. He cites Josephus concerning Abraham’s instruction of the Egyptians in arithmetic and astronomy, but regards Ptolemy as the most illustrious of all astronomers and the astrolabe as the invention of his “divine mind.” The translator wishes his readers to understand that he is offering them nothing new but only reviving the discoveries of the past, and that he is simply presenting what he finds in the Arabic. [Sidenote: Question of Gerbert’s attitude toward astrology.] If Gerbert could be shown to be the translator who wrote this