Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe

Abstract

After the fall of the Greek and Roman Empires, scientific learning in Europe went into a period of decline. By the latter half of the first millennium, the works of Ptolemy and other Greek astronomers had more or less been lost in Western Europe, fortunately to survive either in the original Greek or in Arabic translation in the Near East. But that is not to say that astronomy had no place in Medieval Europe. Instead, a new form of “practical” astronomy developed whose goals were to assist in solving some of the problems, such as determining the date of Easter and the times of prayers in monasteries, of religious and civil life.1 By the twelfth century AD, however, European interest in science had been rekindled and there began a search to recover ancient scientific texts. This led to the many scientific achievements of the European Renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD.KeywordsSolar EclipseAstronomical ObservationEUROPEAN HistoryLunar EclipseEclipse ObservationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.