Alfonsine Astronomy

Expanding the Scenes

Image coming soon

Extent: 650 pages

Publisher: Wiley-VCH

Subjects: Earth & Life Sciences 

Series: Alfonsine Astronomy

Language: English, Latin

Hardback (Forthcoming)

(January 2027)

ISBN: 9782503623085

Price: $157.00

This volume re-evaluates Alfonsine astronomy, moving beyond the ‘origin‘ question to focus on material and computational practice.


This volume offers a fundamental re-evaluation of Alfonsine astronomy, moving beyond traditional narratives focused on origins to reveal a tradition far more dynamic and complex than previously understood. The contributions explore the Alfonsine corpus not as a fixed set of texts, but as a living enterprise deeply embedded in the material and computational practices of its users. These studies examine how astronomers and scribes created customized manuscript ‘toolboxes’ from the Parisian Alfonsine Tables, how core texts were reshaped by the transition to print, and how the entire tradition was localized for new audiences in contexts as diverse as Byzantine scriptoria, the courts of France, and the humanist circles of Bohemia. Uncovering the constant negotiations between theory and practice, the chapters analyze everything from the management of error by Parisian masters and the creation of novel instruments in German universities to the development of new mathematical tools driven by the demands of astrology. This collection provides a rich, practice-oriented account of how astronomical knowledge was produced, circulated, and transformed across late medieval and early modern Europe. A concluding (digital) census of sources provides an invaluable resource for future inquiry, laying the groundwork for researchers to expand upon the new perspectives presented in this volume.