Alexandrian Scientific Tradition in Eastern Rome, Europe and Syria

ongoing

ASTERES aims to understand how astronomical knowledge developed in Alexandria from the works of Claudius Ptolemy has been transmitted during the 6th and 7th centuries in Europe and the Mediterranean World. Through an investigation of documents that had never been edited, the project considers the role of Greek as well as Syriac and Latin-speaking scholars in the circulation and reception of Greek scientific knowledge before the flourishing of sciences in Baghdad and the so-called Carolingian Renaissance. The traditional narrative considers Arab-speaking scholars, after the foundation of the Abbasid califate, to be the first heirs to the Alexandrian scholarship, coming up with Greek science only thanks to the mediation of Syriac translations. It is also widely believed that Latin-speaking intellectual circles in Western Europe would not have been familiar with Greek science before the Latin translations of Arabic texts produced from the 11th century onwards. The 6th and 7th centuries in Western Europe and the Byzantine Empire, have thus been traditionally described as “Dark Ages”. The aim of ASTERES is to write a new history of the forms and paths of transmission and study of the Alexandrian sciences, specifically astronomy, in the Early Middle Ages. It will investigate three sets of documents, including numerical tables, produced during this period. Two astronomical and chronological letters with tables of the Syriac scholar Severus Sebokht will be edited for the first time. Their study will help to understand to which extent Syriac scholars received Greek knowledge to create an original scientific production. The edition of the Latin tables of the Preceptum canonis Ptolomei aims at understanding how astronomical tables were transmitted and received in Western Europe before the 11th century. The study of the astronomical tables produced by the Byzantine scholar Stephanos will show how astronomers in Constantinople cultivated their Alexandrian scientific heritage.