Abstract
This book is centred on the images of celestial constellations in the c. 830 manuscript Madrid, Biblioteca nacional 3307. According to Arno Borst, who published groundbreaking research on computistic manuscripts executed under the Carolingian rulers Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, this manuscript is a copy of the putative archetype of a compilation on time-reckoning that had been put together following the Aachen Synod of 809 (Libri computi, ed. Borst, Hannover, 2006). The goal had been to provide guidelines for establishing the ecclesiastical calendar as well as some minimal astronomical notions excerpted, above all, from Pliny, Macrobius, and Martianus Capella. The book also considers several “sister” manuscripts of Madrid 3307, viz., Vatican Library, Reg. lat. 309, Vat. Lat. 645, as well as Monza, Bibl. Capit., cod. f-9/176. The Aachen 809 compilation – Ramírez-Weaver fortunately avoids Arno Borst’s inappropriate designation “encyclopaedia” – does not appear to have been extensively provided with pictures of constellations. However, the Madrid manuscript, made for Drogo (801–855), one of Charlemagne’s illegitimate sons who was appointed abbot of Luxeuil in 820 and bishop of Metz in 823, is “truly a princely book” (p. 11). As a luxury copy, it is lavishly illuminated, unlike most computistic, practice-oriented handbooks with their countless rules for calculating calendrical data.
Chapter 1 gives a detailed account of the 809 handbook, aiming to explain what time-reckoning was. Chapter 2 focuses on the Drogo manuscript, which, according to the author, indirectly helped fulfill the soteriological mandates of the early medieval Christian church that called for sacred study of the liberal art of astronomy. Drogo’s personal copy was thus an ephemeral portal, bound for destruction within the Apocalyptic flames of penitence, that nevertheless opened the mind and spirit to the eternal mysteries of the heavens. (p. 69)
Chapter 3 discusses more specifically stylistic issues. Chapter 4 deals with the “spiritual benefits that resulted from the study of liberal arts,” with Alcuin and Remigius of Auxerre being presented as prominent examples for the “belief in spiritual renewal” through this type of study. (p. 211).
Images of constellations depended on a venerable Hellenistic and Roman pictorial tradition that was related to Aratos of Soli’s widely read poem Phaenomena and the corpus of Aratean writings that derived from it. In this book, meant to be a cultural history that transcends art history, Ramírez-Weaver carefully discusses medieval textual adaptations by following, among others, Le Bourdellès’ research on the so-called “Aratus latinus.” As a general rule, authors of secondary literature receive respectful, lengthy treatment in the book (beginning with the authoritative art historians who dealt with star images, such as Warburg, Saxl, and Panofsky), so much so that the practice of time-reckoning and the study of astronomy in the Carolingian era are rather dimly perceived by the reader through the prism of secondary literature. However, mosaics of relevant statements and observations are given a specific orientation, as indicated by the title of the book, A Saving Science. The level of Carolingian astronomy was certainly a rather primitive one, as texts of Alcuin, a major expert in the field, immediately make clear. But from this it does not necessarily follow that the sutdy of astronomy, including the viewing of pictures of constellations, was understood as spiritual exercises that lead to salvation. As repeated over and over, in mantra-like fashion in Ramírez-Weaver’s work, this type of study was supposed to lead to spiritual renewal and thence, to salvation. Viewing images of constellations led to “individual spiritual reform,” to “individual salvation.” In short “throughout the Carolingian empire, astronomy truly became a saving science” (c.f. pp. 18b, 19a).
Thus, “pictures of constellations were subjected to a ‘novel Christian presentation’” (p. 19b), the general presupposition being that in Christian society – or recently more or less forcibly converted societies – non-Christian concepts and representations were automatically infused with a transcendent meaning. Arno Borst, in Das Buch der Naturgeschichte (1994) used the dichotomy “pagan-Christian” as a rhetorical device, one which unfortunately gives the fallacious impression that there was an opposition between pagan and Christian views of the universe. Here, this dichotomy is given a specific twist, namely, anything perceived as non-Christian by the modern interpreter has to have a more or less hidden “Christian” agenda and Carolingian scholars are presented as having successfully established a “normative Christian presentation of cosmology” (p. 14b). But where, unless one takes Ramírez-Weaver’s work to be merely a pious meditation, is the evidence for a Christianized pictorial series of constellations (and other pictures), not to mention the corresponding texts?