Second paragraph of third chapter (on the Hereford Mappamundi): [Archbishop of Canterbury John] Pecham was particularly concerned about bringing the Welsh clergy into line on the issue of pluralism. This was as much a political as a religious matter. Throughout the 1270s and 1280s King Edward [I] was involved in a long and bitter conflict with ( Read more... )

Long, long ago, in 1991, I was researching the medieval textbook Liber de arte astronomice iudicandi by the late twelfth-century English astrologer Roger of Hereford, which survives only in a dozen or so manuscripts. Various indications led me to try and compare his text with the earlier twelfth-century translation by Hermann of Carinthia of the ( Read more... )

“De pentagono Salomonis, Ars loquendi et intelligendi in lingua hebraica, De rebus metallicis by Roger of Hereford, Algebra by Al-Kuwarizmi, translated into Latin by Robertus Anglicus, the Punica of Silius Italicus, the Gesta francorum, De laudibus sanctae crucis by Rabanus Maurus, and Flavii Claudii Giordani de aetate mundi et bominis reservatis ( Read more... )

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  Russia Today reports.
  (tags: )
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• 
  niamh_sage: Via a friend on Fusebox, this is amazing
  The Antikythera mechanism
  (tags: hos)

This was a recommendation from some time ago by nickbarnes, and is indeed a fascinating read. Ifrah has catalogued the totality of archæological and other knowledge about counting systems since the dawn of humanity, and put it all into a single book, with lavish illustrations (black and white line drawings) of how ancient cultures counted ( Read more... )

46) Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel
47) Fatal Attraction: Magnetic Mysteries of the Enlightenment, by Patricia Fara ( Read more... )

11) Latin Palaeography: Antiquity & the Middle Ages, by Bernhard Bischoff, translated by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín & David Ganz

My Christmas present from my wife (I got her the lives of early saints). I dabbled in this subject during my medieval astrology phase, and had some dealings with co-translator Ó Cróinín at one point; this book is not a popular ( Read more... )

16) The Discovery of the Germ, by John Waller

About the period between 1880 and 1900 in which it became generally accepted that germs were responsible for disease. Competently done but not very exciting.

Yes, the interview meme is going round again. I owe a few of you questions from about a year ago; I've completely forgotten who you are ( Read more... )