Dear all,

Thanks so much for the quick thoughts -- and especially for the connection between Sacrobosco and Dante. Perhaps it would help if I clarified what my interest in Buchanan and spheres actually is. I'm working on the aesthetic and ethical dimensions of early world maps and atlases, particularly Mercator's 1595 Atlas and its predecessors (Ortelius, Lafreri, the long tradition of "editions" of Ptolemy's Geography, and other Renaissance cosmographies). One odd and little-commented-upon detail is that Mercator extensively quotes Du Bartas's Sepmaine in his treatise on creation that begins the Atlas. And in the textual description accompanying the world map in the Atlas, there's a long extract from Buchanan's De Sphaera. All this is interesting for many reasons, not least for the interesting relations it suggests between Renaissance poetry, cosmology and cartography. Sacrobosco's De Sphaera, along with Apian's Cosmographia (effectively an annotated version of Ptolemy's Geography) were the two standard manuals of geography for much of the sixteenth century and much-reprinted. Buchanan's poem draws on Sacrobosco's text to make a strong anti-Copernican argument in verse. The few studies of Buchanan that I've looked at (Philip Ford's work in particularly) places him at the the pinnacle of the neoLatin poetic tradition in the Renaissance, and he's been described as having the best Latin style of any modern writer. He was also widely traveled and known across Europe.

So my questions are: (1) what (if anything) is Buchanan's connection to such French writers as Du Bartas, Postel, and Guy Lefevre de la Boderie (all interested in 'scientific poetry'; particularly interesting since the first edition of Buchanan's poem is published in Paris)? (2) what was the reception of De Sphaera (there is one article that suggests it was well known ad studied into the seventeenth century; obviously its audience was not just a small literary coterie, since Mercator cites it)? (3) does anyone know of any translations of it (I have the Latin text and have found the passage Mercator quotes, but of course, it would be nice to read it all quickly). 

Thanks for any thoughts, associations, or advice!
ayesha

Ayesha Ramachandran
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5350
(631) 632-7628
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From: "James C. Nohrnberg" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 07/31/2012 06:31PM
Subject: De sphaera

Sacrobosco lasts into the Renaissance, probably not much
doubt about that.  But his incorporation into "The
Discarded Image" comes earlier.  In "The Love That Moves
the Sun and Other Stars in Inferno XVIII" I once wrote
demonstratively as follows:

... the strophe and antistrophe of the cosmic rotation are
explicitly psychologized and moralized in Chalcidius'
prècis of the Timaeus, in a way suggesting the "mind and
will" and "sun and other stars" of the Comedy's last
tercet.  A textbook case is Sacrabosco, writing before
1250, in De Sphaera:

"Be it understood that the 'first movement' means the
movement of the primum mobile, that is, of the ninth
sphere of last heaven, which movement is from east
 through west back to east again, which is also called
'rational motion' from  resemblance to the rational motion
in the microcosm, that is in man, when thought goes from
the Creator through creatures to the Creator and there
rests.
       The second movement is of the firmament and planets
contrary to this, from west through east back to west
again, which movement is called 'irrational' or 'sensual'
 from resemblance to the movement of the microcosm from
things corruptible to the  Creator and back again to
things corruptible."

These hypostases apply to the two files in the first ditch
[of the eighth circle of Dante's hell], because the
seducers and panders correspond to the love and
contemplation--the ardent seraphim and contemplative
cherubim--that communicate the first motion from the
Primum Mobile and the fixed stars ("the same") to the
seven planetary spheres ("the different").

-- The general idea, going back to Timaeus 36, appears in
Alanus' Complaint of Nature VI prose 3, and in John
Lydgate's rendition of Les Echecs Amoure, Reson and
Sensuallyete, where Nature tells the poet-dreamer that
Reason's road starts in the east, and goes westward around
the world back to the east--Sense's road, in the contrary
mode, starts in the west and goes quite the the other way
(returning to the west).  Humans, unlike beasts, can
follow the first road and know the cosmos, because they
have the intelligence to penetrate earth and heaven and
far beyond the seven stars (= the planets).

Buchanan has his predecessors, I'd suppose it'd be safe
enough to bet.  But I haven't read him.


On Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:44:47 -0400
  Anne Prescott <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thanks, Tim. And by the way, if anybody wants to know
>more about astronomy
> and spheres and orbits and so forth in e.m. Europe,
>Sheila Rabin is just
> wonderful--a member of the RSA, although not a
>literature professor. Anne.
>
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 5:03 PM, Timothy Duffy
><[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Dear Ayesha,
>>
>> Are you looking for a copy of it?  The first edition was
>>published in
>> Paris in 1585, I believe containing only two of the five
>>books, and the
>> second edition in Herborn in 1586. There is a 1609
>>edition of Buchanan's
>> works at the Beinecke at Yale that seems to have at
>>least a portion of the
>> poem. A quick search shows the University of Glasgow has
>>copies of both
>> original editions. It's based on Sacrobosco's Ptolemaic
>>textbook of the
>> same name (it sometimes goes by other, similar titles).
>>Forgive me if I'm
>> delivering old news. Yale also has numerous copies of
>>the Sacrobosco
>> source.
>>
>> Good luck!
>> Tim
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Ayesha Ramachandran <
>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Learned Listers --
>>>
>>> This isn't a Spenser-related question, but it occurred
>>>to me that this
>>> may be the best group to shed light on a somewhat
>>>obscure mid-sixteenth
>>> century poem. Can anyone shed light - or point me to
>>>appropriate sources --
>>> for information on George Buchanan's "De Sphaera"? It
>>>appears to have been
>>> immensely popular and widely cited, but I'd appreciate
>>>any literary or
>>> contextual insight!
>>>
>>> Thanks so much --
>>> Ayesha
>>>
>>> Ayesha Ramachandran
>>> Assistant Professor
>>> Department of English
>>> Stony Brook University
>>> Stony Brook, NY 11794-5350
>>> (631) 632-7628
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Timothy Duffy
>> Ph.D. Candidate
>> Department of English
>> University of Virginia
>>
>> Visiting Instructor
>> Department of English
>> College of the Holy Cross
>>
>>

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James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
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