What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars

srean

I cannot comment on whether Dantesque awareness of the night sky was common or not, I was, however, quite taken by surprise by Chaucer when and where I least expected it. I only know of Chaucer because of my history classes in secondary school. I knew of him as the author of Canterbury Tales and of that period in history of the end of middle ages where vernacular literature was rising in stature and becoming accessible. So finding a manual for an Astrolabe, when I was digging into the mechanics of an Astrolabe myself, written by Chaucer for his son was an unexpected and delightful surprise. Completely blindsided. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_the_Astrolabe It's written in English for his son affectionately refered to little Lewis could follow along without a need to understand sophisticated Latin. He was to young at that time to have mastered Latin. The manual draws from an 8th-century Latin translation of the Persian-Jewish astronomer. I came to know later that position of stars occur frequently in the poems in Canterburys Tales, where characters use them to tell time. If you have the time I highly recommend toying with an Astrolabe. Understanding them is a delight. They were essentially the high end smartphones of their era and id you were rich enough or you had to sail often enough you had one.