Carmen de mundo et partibus

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Carmen de mundo et partibus is the title of a theological-physical didactic poem from the 13th century. The work, which has only survived in one manuscript (MS Digby 41 in the Oxford Bodleian Library from the 13th century), has no heading. Rather, the editor Axel Bergmann added this heading to Book XIII of the Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville because the text is an important source and the chapter sequence given there: de mundo , de atomis , de elementis , de caelo , de partibus caeli is taken up. The assumed authorship of the English theologian Robert Grosseteste does not follow from the handwriting, but results from the content analysis.

Structure, content and reference to Robert Grosseteste

The Middle Latin work consists of around 730 elegiac distiches and is divided into student questions and teacher answers. Apocryphal literature from the Old Testament , ancient science and Greco-Arabic astronomy are combined with other intellectual currents

  • Lines 41-66: about the world, as described (inter alia) by Isidore of Seville and the - named - Plato and Martianus Capella .
  • Lines 67–328: via atthomis and elementa .
  • Lines 329–786: about heaven, treats (among other things) regions of heaven (air, fire of the spirit, divine fire), angels , the fall of demons . The editor draws parallels between this text and the apocryphal Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs . This early Christian work was not known in the Latin West until 1242, which Grosseteste had contributed to; there is also a Greek manuscript with handwritten notes by Grossetestes (Cambridge Univ. Ff. i. 24).
  • Lines 793–1226: about astronomy, fixed stars , planets , planet houses, zodiac , solar eclipse , lunar eclipse .
  • Lines 1227-1370: about astronomy ( Computus ). The author deals with difficult questions and inconsistencies in the medieval calendar calculation. Why does the summer solstice move on the calendar? How long does the moon stay in a zodiac sign? Similar to Grosseteste in his writings Compotos , Compotos Minor and Compotus Correctorius , he rejects the saltus lunae (used in the calendar calculation to harmonize the times of the sun and moon), divides the "jump day" into the 235 months of the cycle lunae and calculates the lunar period to 29 d (days), 12 h (hours) - 1 d (day) / 235 = 29 d (days), 11 h (hours), 35 m (moments), 10 u (ounces), 46 a (atoms) .

The idea of improving the calculation of the computus through an exact determination of the synodic month is, however, already carried out in earlier writings, including by Hermann the Lame . However, a different calculation is carried out there and a different result is obtained.

Edition and literature

  • Axel Bergmann: Carmen de mundo et partibus , edited by Professor Dr. Alf Önnerfors in the series Latin Language and Literature of the Middle Ages , Frankfurt-Bern-New York-Paris, 1991

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Axel Bergmann: Carmen de mundo et partibus , p. 15f
  2. ↑ Axel Bergmann: Carmen de mundo et partibus , p. 19
  3. ↑ Axel Bergmann: Carmen de mundo et partibus , p. 24f
  4. ↑ line 1303f: quod punctum solsticiale Mouet
  5. ↑ Line 1315f: Luna dies sub signa duos expendit, et horas sex, et ...
  6. ^ AC Crombie: Grosseteste's Position in the History of Science , in Robert Grosseteste , ed. DA Callus, London 1955
  7. ↑ Axel Bergmann: Carmen de mundo et partibus , pp. 53–57
  8. ^ Nadja Germann: De Temporum Ratione. Quadrivium and knowledge of God using the example of Abbos von Fleury and Hermanns von Reichenau , Leiden / Boston 2006