A Thirteenth-Century Latin List of Ptolemaic Coordinates

Abstract

This article makes the argument that a Latin table of geographic coordinates, copied in Italy in the second half of the thirteenth century (MS Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnham 211, fol. 260r), is derived from a list excerpted from a Greek manuscript of the Κανὼν πόλεων ἐπισήμων (« Table of important cities ») in Ptolemy’s Handy Tables. Other sources that appear to bear witness to a thirteenth-century dissemination in Italy of geographic data from the Κανὼν include the Summa de astris of Gerard of Feltre (1264/65) and some later coordinate lists contained in fourteenth-century manuscripts.