Un glosario de astronomía escondido en las páginas de un manual traducido en el siglo XVII

Abstract

De Sphaera Mundi, an Astronomy textbook written in Latin by Johannes de Sacrobosco in the 13th century, enjoyed such popularity in universities of Western Europe that it was edited in many occassions, with and without commentaries, in Latin and other languages , such as Spanish, well into the 17th century. Some of these translations and new editions introduced additional explanations, always within the geocentric theory of the universe, so the amount of contents gradually increased with a clear didactic purpose.

This paper studies the translation composed by Luis de Miranda in 1629 entitled Exposición de la esfera de Juan de Sacrobosco, doctor parisiense, traduzida de latín en lengua vulgar, augmentada y enriquecida con lo que d’ella dixeron Francisco Juntino, Elías Veneto, Cristóforo Clavio y otros sus expositores y comentadores [BUSAL 36987]. It has been chosen for it offers definitions of those specialized terms considered difficult by the translator / author; these definitions are introduced to help understand the concepts that those words represent. Thus it includes a glossary of terms pertaining to the area of knowledge of the science of the heavens (but also to other related areas) hidden in the pages of this Astronomy book. Moreover, with a strong didactic purpose, it includes, in the last pages, a table of contents, “Tabla de las cosas contenidas en este tratado, de la exposición de la Esfera de Juan de Sacrobosco”. The type of information given by both, this table and the definitions of the specialized words, will be discussed in this paper.