8 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. was the first to argue that rainbows arecaused by light refraction

      earlier source:

      Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, ‘On the Rainbow, Robert Grosseteste’s Treatise on Optics’, International Journal of Sciences 2.9 (2013): 108–13 (109).

    2. Grosseteste’s great table – or Tabula

      This introduction to Grosseteste's Tabula seems to be in medias res...

    3. imagined the birth of the universe asan expanding sphere of luminescence, taking science and scriptureand blending them into a kind of Big Bang Theory that still leavesroom for God to start it all off with ‘Let there be light’.

      This blends a tidbit of scientific history regarding Robert Grosseteste's thought with modern science fiction. Surely Grosseteste was NOT prefiguring the Big Bang Theory.

      Curious what the original citation was here.

    4. Only the largepelican, squatting in the trees, can break the connection, a symbol ofbad audience, staring insolently, resolutely offstage. But she is beinggradually struck out, her colours fading as the original red and giltborders reassert themselves reprimandingly from beneath, themanuscript exacting a slow punishment for the sin of inattention.

      Dennis Duncan completely misreads this image of Grosseteste and the Pelican which appears in the Lambeth Palace Library's MS 522 of The Castle of love. (for image see: https://hypothes.is/a/RzHLjsz8Ee6dZLOTV5h65Q)

      Duncan identifies Grosseteste's pose with his hand raised and his index finger extended as "the classic gesture of the storyteller." In fact, the bishop is pointing directly up at the pelican which sits just on top of the frame of the illuminated scene. This pelican is elevated above and just beyond the scene of the image because it represents, as was common in the time period, the suffering of Christ.

      Bestiaries of the age commonly depicted the "pelican in her piety" which was noted by Isidore of Seville in his Etymologies (Book 12, 7:26) from the 7th century, a text which heavily influenced many of these bestiaries. It was also thought at the time that the insatiable and rapacious pelican ate lizards and crocodiles (or lived off of them); as these were associated with snakes and by way of the story of the Garden of Eden the devil, they were also further associated with Christ and driving sin out of the world.

      Thus the image is more appropriately read in its original context as Grosseteste giving a sermon about the suffering of Christ who is represented by a pelican floating above the scene being depicted.

      see: https://hypothes.is/a/QAc8us24Ee6d1kPcrhQPyw

    1. Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (face rubbed), in mitre and red cope, with crosier, seated on left speaks to a seated group of five people, mostly women. Tree on right; large bird with long beak at top.

      image of MS 522 f1r Lambeth Palace Library

      Folio 1 of MS 522 of Château d'amour

      Close up of inset image via link close up of image on folio 1r of Château d'amour

      Book and images mentioned in Chapter 2 of @Duncan2022 Index, A History of the

  2. Feb 2022
    1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-28/index-history-invention-made-simultaneously-800-years-ago/100690782

      The idea of the index was invented twice in roughly 1230.

      Once by Hugh of Saint-Cher in Paris as a concordance of the Bible. The notes towards creating it still exist in a variety of hands. The project, executed by a group of friars at the Dominican Friary of Saint-Jacques, listed 10,000 words and 129,000 locations.

      The second version was invented by Robert Grosseteste in Oxford who used marginal marks to create a "grand table".

      The article doesn't mention florilegium, but the head words from them must have been a likely precursor. The article does mention lectures and sermons being key in their invention.

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Aaron Davis</span> in 📑 Monks, a polymath and an invention made by two people at the same time. It’s all in the history of the index | Read Write Collect (<time class='dt-published'>02/15/2022 21:22:10</time>)</cite></small>