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9%OFFMichael A. Ryan - A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon - 9781501713507 - V9781501713507
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A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon

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Description for A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon Paperback. Num Pages: 232 pages. BIC Classification: 1DS; HBJD; HBLC1; VXFA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 229 x 152. .

Astrology in the Middle Ages was considered a branch of the magical arts, one informed by Jewish and Muslim scientific knowledge in Muslim Spain. As such it was deeply troubling to some Church authorities. Using the stars and planets to divine the future ran counter to the orthodox Christian notion that human beings have free will, and some clerical authorities argued that it almost certainly entailed the summoning of spiritual forces considered diabolical. We know that occult beliefs and practices became widespread in the later Middle Ages, but there is much about the phenomenon that we do not understand. For ... Read more

Ryan focuses on the reigns of Pere III (1336–1387) and his sons Joan I (1387–1395) and Martí I (1395–1410). Pere and Joan spent lavish amounts of money on astrological writings, and astrologers held great sway within their courts. When Martí I took the throne, however, he was determined to purge Joan's courtiers and return to religious orthodoxy. As Ryan shows, the appeal of astrology to those in power was clear: predicting the future through divination was a valuable tool for addressing the extraordinary problems—political, religious, demographic—plaguing Europe in the fourteenth century. Meanwhile, the kings' contemporaries within the noble, ecclesiastical, and mercantile elite had their own reasons for wanting to know what the future held, but their engagement with the occult was directly related to the amount of power and authority the monarch exhibited and applied. A Kingdom of Stargazers joins a growing body of scholarship that explores the mixing of religious and magical ideas in the late Middle Ages.

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Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
2017
Publisher
Cornell University Press United States
Number of pages
232
Condition
New
Number of Pages
232
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9781501713507
SKU
V9781501713507
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About Michael A. Ryan
Michael A. Ryan is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. He is the editor of A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse and coeditor of End of Days: Essays on the Apocalypse from Antiquity to Modernity.

Reviews for A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon
In this very entertaining book, Michael A. Ryan focuses on the history of astrological studies in the Crown of Aragon during the late fourteenth century and the influence of this forbidden knowledge on its European neighbors.... It is a brilliant study of one phase of the history of science and magic in the later Middle Ages and a worthy successor ... Read more

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


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