Stephen Johnston

And because of those history of science mss the exhibition would surely also have to include some medieval meh-thematical instruments - like the least prepossessing and badly engraved astrolabes and quadrants!?

And not a planisphere but apparently "thought to be the earliest known astronomical illustration rendered on a curved surface". Thanks for this reference! Not a site I'd heard of before, though that's because I evidently haven't looked closely enough at Elly Dekker's Illustrating the Phaenomena...

Astrology and the writing of history, addressed in a chunky 512 pages, and with an intriguing cover image too (a celestial planisphere from some sort of architectural setting? Will have to get the book to find out....)

Good to see it get an outing!

It was at that point that I quietly put the cork back in the open bottle of wine.....

As well as the whole series of rather wonderful problemata that come under the more general and abstract titles, and must have spiced up the debate enormously: "Quare, ut refert Plinius, hominibus ebriis apparet, quod sunt sapienciores aliis et omnia sciant? (p. 132).

Plenty of classic science of the stars material, such as "Utrum ad salvandas apparencias, que ex motibus planetarum fiunt in celo, oporteat ponere circulos ecentricos et epiciclos" (p.133). But also much more surprising, technical details - eg discussion of John of Lignieres on sines at p. 138?!

Thanks for posting - looks amazing! Just browsed quickly through the book's catalogue of the MS which preserves this two-week-long debate. (Underlines how little I understand of the structure and terminology of quodlibetal debates, though I can see there is lots of help and context given here.)

I do have a specific (pretty niche) project I want to do - on the changes Paul Ive made in the second edition of his Practise of Fortification, but astronomy and astrology have taken over for now, so it'll be some considerable time before I get back to fortification...

Fortification and mathematics in early-modern England: notes towards a cultural history

Lovely - thanks! Though I'm only discovering him today and actually his fortification text in dialogue form looks somewhat more intriguing, so your blogpost and its bibliography are both helpful. (Admittedly it's many years since I was last working seriously on the subject: doi.org/10.17613/y5r...)

... and diagrams that were assembled and bound separately from a written text that they must have accompanied. But did Rossetti publish such an astronomical work? Not sure. (But his fortification book has images that remind me of fractals and the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelb... !)

Call for papers as part of the Scientific Instrument Commission meeting in Neuchâtel on 7-11 September 2026: “Mathematical Instruments and Medieval Libraries: Manuscript Practices and Material Circulation”. Deadline 25 February and full details at
hcommons.org/members/saje...

Ah - small world! Not actually in Oxford right now but I'll ask Sumner when I'm back (I don't think she's on here?)

And such variety too: there's Italian hours on some of those plates, but the one at top right seems to be a double projection, which I don't quite understand: it can't simply be rotated 180° because there's only one notch to hold the plate in place in the mater. What's on the other side of that one?

Very interesting, and I've just registered - but is it really hybrid? The booking and confirmation pages only give a physical venue (and I'll be in Oxford...)

Monumental Roman Basilica Identified as Long-Lost Work by Vitruvius A 2,000-year-old basilica has found in the center of Fano in Italy has been linked one of ancient Rome’s master builders, Vitruvius.

Monumental Roman Basilica Identified as Long-Lost Work by Vitruvius

news.artnet.com/art-world/ro...

The first page of Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrighty, showing Baker’s secretary hand and the unfinished drawings of Noah’s Ark and of shipbuilders. Reproduced by permission of the Pepys Library, Cambridge.

Unfolding the multiple lives of a shipbuilding manuscript: Our first Artefact of the Month in 2026 is known as 'Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrighty' and reveals the interactions between mathematics and practice in the Scientific Revolution:

uhh.de/csmc-aom-35

Ochre-coloured bound volume standing upright on a desk.

Detail of a printed sale catalogue title page.

Can't resist adding: turns out that the NAL also has a separate copy of the sale catalogue, which is bound with the list of prices and buyers that was printed after the sale. Yes, you even got to see who bought things back in those days! (Though you had to pay for the privilege by subscribing....)

Bound volume of 1957 auction catalogues in front of an (older?) 20th-century light switch

Visiting to see a specific auction catalogue ahead of a #TopSecret mission later this month. So, for now, all I can say is: check out the switch for the reader lamp in the background - maybe it's actually older than this set of all the Sotheby's London sale catalogues from May 1957?!

View of the first reading room of the National Art Library, London with desks and a gallery of books; image from https://www.vam.ac.uk/info/national-art-library

First ever visit to the National Art Library www.vam.ac.uk/info/nationa... at the V&A Museum. Cheapskate tip: register in advance, pick up your reader card and only then go to the cloakroom to hand in your bag - now for free.

Ah. Found corsair.themorgan.org/vwebv/search.... I didn't know Caesius was a cognomen of Blaeu...

Very nice - is that Jan Jansson? 30 years later and with print on pasteboard rather than manuscript on parchment. (I should really have tagged #volvelles and #astrolabes originally.)

Two pairs of large parchment diptychs on a reading room desk.

Timeline cleanse: #OTD 2016 at the British Library to view these extraordinary objects (other reader for scale). I first saw them in 1997 in the old BL MSS Room and finally published '"Preciseness and Pleasure": The Astrological Diptychs of Thomas Hood' in 2018 in doi.org/10.1163/9789...

👏 for teamwork: I only got the @dbellingradt.bsky.social joke/reference when I saw your neat addition of the hat. Clearly it's good to spell things out for this more pedestrian soul at the back (or, more self-charitably, for those on a visual rather than verbal wavelength....)

I recall an acerbic take on the little that is genuinely known about her, by David King - but where did he write this? Must be somewhere in his voluminous publications on davidaking.academia.edu/research. Almost certainly a section of a larger text rather than a dedicated piece. Good luck!

The annotated husband and wife Rantzau tract! ❤️

I loved the image at first sight but couldn't immediately fathom how it was created. Now there is a wonderfully clear thread to explain the kit and process, with the bonus of a hi-res zoomable version at the end. Hmm, could I print out a large version to go on the wall? (Or a backlit transparency?!)

The image shows the hourglass shape of the length of the day and night over the 365 days in 2025. Diagonal bands indicate when the Moon was up in the night sky.

Happy new year! My all sky camera imaged the sky every 15 seconds and this picture shows what happened in the sky in 2025. It shows the length of the night and day with the hourglass shape, the monthly lunar cycle with the diagonal bands, the elevation of the Sun at local noon, and lots of clouds.

Programme of the international conference “Beyond Books: Instruments and Knowledge in Libraries”, 14–15 January 2026 at the Musée d’histoire des sciences, Geneva.

Programme of the international conference “Beyond Books: Instruments and Knowledge in Libraries”, 14–15 January 2026 at the Musée d’histoire des sciences, Geneva.

Just shared by Samuel Gessner @sgessner.bsky.social via the Rete mailing list:
The great programme of the international conference “Beyond Books: Instruments and Knowledge in #Libraries”, 14–15 January 2026 at @mhngeneve.bsky.social.

#histstm #histsci #medievalsky
@stephenaj.bsky.social

Image taken from Alex Boxer's online astrolabe https://alexboxer.com/astrolabe/ showing the sky for 15 November 1577 at the latitude of Antwerp, with the sun having just set, Gemini rising, the Moon visible in Aquarius and Capricorn just past the meridian.

And an interesting skyscape too, which seems plausible when modelled with Alex Boxer's online astrolabe. Does the text give the date when the comet was first seen in Antwerp, or explicitly give a date for its image? (Sunset on 15/11/1577 works well.) And I imagine the comet was then in Capricorn?