The Astrolabe Finger Ring of Bonetus de Latis: Study, Latin text, and English Translation with Commentary

The subject of this article is the treatise on the astrolabe ring (1492/1493) by Bonetus de Latis (Jacob ben Emanuel Provenzale). The treatise belongs to a four-centuries-old tradition of Jewish treatises on the astrolabe, written mainly in Hebrew and more rarely in Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Spanish, Sp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Medieval encounters
Main Author: Rodríguez-Arribas, Josefina (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2017
In: Medieval encounters
Further subjects:B Bonetus de Latis (Jacob ben Emanuel Provenzale) astrolabe finger ring astrolabe Jewish astrolabes medieval and Renaissance astronomy fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Roman Jews Jewish scientific literature in Latin
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:The subject of this article is the treatise on the astrolabe ring (1492/1493) by Bonetus de Latis (Jacob ben Emanuel Provenzale). The treatise belongs to a four-centuries-old tradition of Jewish treatises on the astrolabe, written mainly in Hebrew and more rarely in Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Spanish, Spanish, and Latin, and produced mostly in southern Europe and Turkey. Bonetus’s text is the second treatise written in Latin by a Jew, following Abraham ibn Ezra’s treatise on the planispheric astrolabe (Rouen 1154). My purpose is to compare it with other contemporary treatises on similar instruments and with a little earlier treatise on the astrolabe in Hebrew (by Eliyahu Cohen of Montalto, fifteenth century) in order to understand the contribution of this instrument and why the treatise was so highly regarded among Bonetus’s contemporaries. The instrument depicted in Bonetus’s booklet can be considered one of the last contributions of Jewish culture to the history of the astrolabe; these contributions stretch back to the first Hebrew writings on the instrument in the twelfth century. The Latin text and the English translation are included at the end of the article together with the Latin text and translation of the longest version of the introduction to the treatise. The contents of the treatises are exactly the same in all editions of Bonetus’s text, but there are two versions of the introduction and one is longer and more complete than the other. I have used both versions in my study, the one in the version printed in 1557 (shorter) and the one in the version printed in 1507 (longer).
ISSN:1570-0674
Contains:In: Medieval encounters
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15700674-12342243