1st Edition

Etudes d'astronomie byzantine

By Anne Tihon Copyright 1994
    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    Byzantine science has been a largely neglected subject: Byzantinists, whether dealing with the history or the literature, have most often been deterred by the technicalities; historians of Greek science have been more attracted to earlier periods. Yet, even if science in the Byzantine world may not have attained the levels of achievement of the Alexandrian period, or of the Islamic world, it is clear that it was the focus of serious scholarship, and this deserves equally serious investigation. Anne Tihon has been in the forefront of those bringing to light the wealth of unpublished texts. Her final study here presents an overview of scientific teaching in Byzantium, while other articles deal specifically with astronomy from the 9th to the 15th century. They look in particular at the relations between Byzantine and Islamic astronomy, and at calculations of the planets and eclipses.

    Contents: Avant-propos; L’astronomie byzantine (du Ve au XVe siècles); Le calcul de la longitude de Vénus d’après un texte anonyme du Vat. gr. 184; Le calcul de la longitude des planètes d’apres un texte anonyme du Vat. gr. 184; Sur l’identité de l’astronome Alim; Les tables astronomiques persanes à Constantinople dans la première moitié du XIV siècle; Tables islamiques à Byzance; Un traité astronomique chypriote du XIVe siècle; Calculs d’éclipses byzantins de la fin du XIVe siècle; Enseignement scientifique à Byzance; Addenda et correnda; Index.
    'it provides the historian of astronomy, not necessarily a specialist in classical studies, with an important set of papers which he might have missed due to the highly specialised character of the journals in which most of them appeared originally...an extremely useful collection of papers...written by a leading specialist in the field' Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences, Vol. 48, No. 140