A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon

Introduction: Traveling South

Introduction Traveling South Gerbert d’Aurillac (ca. 945–1003) had a well-earned reputation as a first-rate mathematician. During his years as a teacher at the cathedral school of Rheims, he contributed significantly to the development of mathematic and scientific studies in transalpine Europe with his work on the abacus, his encouragement of using Arabic numerals for calculation, and his writings on the operating principles of the astrolabe.1 But Gerbert had gained much of his knowledge of math and science before his days at Rheims. A peripatetic scholar, he traveled far in his quest for knowledge. For three years, from 967 until 970, he had sojourned in Catalonia studying mathematics in Vic, where he encountered Arabic manuscripts from the nearby monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll.2 Gerbert’s encounter with 1. Brian Stock, “Science, Technology, and Economic Progress in the Early Middle Ages,” in Science in the Middle Ages, ed. David C. Lindberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), here 37. 2. Ricard Torrents Bertran, “La peregrinatio accademica de Gerbert d’Orlhac (Silvestre II),” in Actes del Congrés Internacional Gerbert d’Orlhac i el seu temps: Catalunya i Europa a la fi del 2 Introduction these texts fueled a passion for Arabic science that would endure throughout his life. Gerbert did not remain ensconced in the cloistered world of academic study for long. In 999 he ascended to the papal see as Sylvester II, capping a remarkably swift rise to the top of Christendom—a rise that astonished many of his critics. Men such as Adhemar of Chabannes, Orderic Vitalis, Walter Map, and Vincent of Beauvais were deeply skeptical of Gerbert’s affinity for Arabic scientific works. Some, for instance, suggested that he had traveled farther south during his time in Iberia, visiting the cities of Toledo, Córdoba, and Sevilla in the Muslim region of Spain called alAndalus . The early twelfth-century Chronicle of William of Malmesbury painted an especially nefarious picture of Gerbert, suggesting he had left for Spain “fleeing by night . . . chiefly designing to learn astrology and other sciences of that description from the Saracens.”3 To his detractors, Gerbert ’s awe-inspiring scientific knowledge and ascent to the highest levels of influence and power could only have been gained through a pact with the devil, and such a pact must have been forged while he was in Spain. The medieval perception of the Iberian Peninsula as a domain of magic and the occult was widespread and would continue long after Gerbert’s death.4 Some medieval scholars saw the city of Toledo, the historic seat of the Visigothic kings located in the heart of the medieval kingdom of Castile-León, as a famous center of magical and astrological study. Legend had it that the ars notoria (notorious art) was “revealed by God through an angel to [King] Solomon who in a very short time was able to acquire all the liberal and mechanical arts.”5 For the fifteenth-century critic Ir mil·leni, Vic-Ripoll, 10–13 de novembre de 1999, ed. Imma Ollich i Castanyer (Vic, Spain: Eumo Editorial, 1999), 13–16. 3. Oscar G. Darlington, “Gerbert, the Teacher,” American Historical Review 52, no. 3 (1947): 456–76, here 462 n28. Darlington explains how Gerbert acquired magical abilities with which he “got into and out of a series of exciting scrapes.” See also Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 35. 4. This reckoning of Iberia as such continued well into the early modern era, especially in the world of theater. See, among others, Augusta Espantoso Foley, Occult Arts and Doctrine in the Theater of Juan Ruiz de Alarcón (Geneva: Droz, 1972); John S. Mebane, Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age: The Occult Tradition and Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakespeare (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989); and Robert Lima, Stages of Evil: Occultism in Western Theater and Drama (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005). 5. Jan R. Veenstra, trans. and ed., Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France: Text and Context of Laurens Pignon’s “Contre les devineurs” (1411) (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 293 n.239; Traveling South 3 of astrology Laurens Pignon, who also referred to the ars notoria as the “art de Tolede,” the city was a veritable haven for the study of the occult: as a center of learning Toledo had considerable reputation in...