Walcher of Malvern

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walcher of Malvern († 1135 ) was an English Benedictine monk and astronomer .

life and work

According to his origin, he was also called Walcher of Lorraine . He arrived in England around 1091. He played a role in the development of Arabic science in the Latin West (without having knowledge of Arabic himself), with which his teacher Petrus Alfonsi made him known. His Sententiae de Dracone is a lecture transcript by Petrus Alfonsi on the date point . From at least 1092 he owned an astrolabe . This emerges from a manuscript with the calculation of eclipses (created 1108 to 1112). On November 30th 1091 he observed a lunar eclipse , but had no possibility of exact time determination and no astrolabe, in contrast to a lunar eclipse on October 18, 1092. This was the first such observation that was recorded in a Latin source. In a second manuscript from around 1120, instead of cumbersome calculations with Roman numbers , he used more elegant calculation methods that he got to know from Petrus Alfonsi.

He became the second prior of the Benedictine Abbey of Great Malvern near Worcester, founded in 1085, in 1120 and remained its prior until his death. On the tombstone preserved in the abbey, he is honored as an astronomer and mathematician.

literature

  • Charles Burnett: Malvern, Walcher of (d. 1135), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  • Philipp Nothaft (ed.): Walcher of Malvern, De lunationibus and De Dracone. Study, Edition, Translation, and Commentary, Brepolis Publ. 2017

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ J. Stohlmann, Petrus Alfonsi, Lexicon of the Middle Ages
  2. ^ Charles Homer Haskins , Studies in History of Medieval Science. , Harvard UP 1924, pp. 113ff
  3. ↑ Inscription on the grave plate: Philosophus dignus bonus Astrologus lotharingus, Vir pius ac humilis, Monachus prior hujus ovilis Hic jacet in cista Geometricus et Abacista, Doctor Walcherus. Flet plebs, dolet undique clerus. Huic lux prima mori Dedit Octobris seniori; Vivat ut in coelis Exoret quisque fidelis. MCXXV.
  4. ^ Website of the Brepolis publishing house on the book
personal data
SURNAME Walcher of Malvern
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English monk and astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH 11th century
DATE OF DEATH 1135