Book Review: Raymond of Marseilles: Raymond de Marseille, Opera omnia, i: Traité de l'astrolabe. Liber cursuum planetarum

Abstract

RAYMOND OF MARSEILLES Raymond de Marseille, Opera omnia, i: Traite de l'astrolabe. Uber cursuum planetarum. Critical edition and translation by Marie-Therese d'Alverny, Charles Burnett and Emmanuel Poulie (CNRS Editions, Paris, 2009). Pp. 397. euro75. ISBN 978-2-271-06747-0.During the twelfth century three major sets of astronomical tables were transmitted to the Latin world: Abelard of Bath translated al-Khwârizmi's tables in 1 126, Raymond de Marseille in 1 141 provided a Christian adaptation of the Toledan Tables in the Liber cursuum planetarum, and Plato of Tivoli translated al-Battanfs tables no later than 1145. Although Arabic astronomy had been partially known in Latin at least since the tenth century, the second quarter of the twelfth century is a pivotal moment in the history of astronomy. In this period, Raymond de Marseille is central at least for two reasons: he happened to work on the set of tables that was to become dominant in Latin astronomy over the next century, and of the three authors mentioned above, only he produced exclusively astronomical and astrological texts.The texts of Raymond were first rediscovered by Pierre Duhem, but he was not able to identify their author. In the 1920s, Lynn Thorndike and C. H. Haskins would identify Raymond from an Oxford manuscript. Emmanuel Poulie in 1954 then discovered another manuscript containing Raymond de Marseille's treatise on the astrolabe, and he published an edition of it in 1964. Finally, in 1972 Marie-Therese d'Alverny discovered copies of Raymond's large astrological opus, the Liber judiciorum, and a project was conceived to edit and publish together the three works. Readers will thus welcome this first volume of the long-awaited edition of Raymond's Opera omnia, which presents his work on the astrolabe and his adaptation of the Toledan tables to the Christian calendar and the meridian of Marseille. The Liber judiciorum will be edited in a later volume.A general introduction opens this volume, followed by a concise description of the manuscripts used. The main sections then present the edition and French translation of the Traite de I 'astrolabe and the Liber cursuum, each with a separate introduction. The volume concludes with two exhaustive indices verborum, one for each text. The high competence of the editors in matters philological, palaeographical, codicological, as well as astronomical are obvious, as a few examples will illustrate.Raymond's technical terms are very peculiar, since they come very early in the history of Latin astronomy. For instance, we learn that (p. 1 14) the Liber cursuum is probably one of the earliest texts to attribute a feminine gender to the word planeta. Or in the biographical notes, while discussing the date of the Liber cursuum, the editors explain how Duhem, and before him some medieval copyists, were led to misread 1111 for 1 141 by the use of a special enriched and seldom used 'roman' notation for numerals both in the text and the table of BnF lat. …