C. Philipp E. Nothaft
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- March 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198799559
- eISBN:
- 9780191839818
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198799559.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History
This chapter offers a bird’s-eye view of the 100 years of debate that followed upon Regiomontanus’s death and culminated in the Gregorian Reform of 1582, focusing in particular on the time of the ...
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This chapter offers a bird’s-eye view of the 100 years of debate that followed upon Regiomontanus’s death and culminated in the Gregorian Reform of 1582, focusing in particular on the time of the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) and the work carried out in the 1570s by a commission of experts convened by Pope Gregory XIII, which came to favour an intricate scheme for an astronomically accurate and freely adjustable calendar. Some attention is paid to the extent to which Copernican heliocentric astronomy may have influenced, or was influenced by, the ongoing discussions surrounding the calendar reform. At the same time, the key argument of this chapter is that the breakthrough achieved in the sixteenth century rested to a very large extent on premises, concepts, and insights first formulated during the preceding medieval centuries.Less
This chapter offers a bird’s-eye view of the 100 years of debate that followed upon Regiomontanus’s death and culminated in the Gregorian Reform of 1582, focusing in particular on the time of the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) and the work carried out in the 1570s by a commission of experts convened by Pope Gregory XIII, which came to favour an intricate scheme for an astronomically accurate and freely adjustable calendar. Some attention is paid to the extent to which Copernican heliocentric astronomy may have influenced, or was influenced by, the ongoing discussions surrounding the calendar reform. At the same time, the key argument of this chapter is that the breakthrough achieved in the sixteenth century rested to a very large extent on premises, concepts, and insights first formulated during the preceding medieval centuries.
