Chapter 3

Medical and Astrological Plates: Their Roles in

Medieval and Renaissance Knowledge

Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas

This chapter concerns two plates in metal and two in paper, each made in
Germany in the sixteenth century and used in two contexts, astrology and
medicine. Its purpose is to describe the plates in order to understand how
they might have been used and to find out more about the practitioners (astro­
logers or physicians) who might have been interested in producing, owning,
and using these objects.*

Astrological and Astrological-medical Plates in Metal

The existence of medieval astrolabes with astrological engravings in several

languages (Arabic, Latin, Hebrew, English, etc.) provides evidence for the in-
volvement of astrologers with instruments in this period. The astrological in-
formation these instruments display includes the divisions of the houses on
the plates, and diagrams and tables usually engraved on the backs of the as-
trolabes with the triplicities, aspects, terms, decans, symbols of the planetary
rulers of some of these divisions, and the lunar mansions.1 Some retes (the
component showing the ecliptic and the positions of the fixed stars) also in-
dicate the nature of some of the fixed stars, with engravings of the symbols of
one or two planets that characterize the nature and influence of the specific
star. One of the systems of house division is often represented on the latitude

* I wish to thank Thomas Eser, Roland Schewe and Anna-Lena Krämer of the Germanisches
Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg for making the instruments and engravings available for
study and for kindly sharing their knowledge and experience. I also thank Darrel Rutkin for
his reading. This article was made possible by a Fellowship of the International Consortium
for Research in the Humanities, “Fate, Freedom and Prognostication, Strategies of Coping
with the Future in East Asia and Europe” (supported by the Federal Ministry of Education
and Research) at the Friedrich Alexander Universität, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.
1  Silke Ackermann, “Astrological Scales on the National Maritime Museum Astrolabes”,
in Koenraad Van Cleempoel, Astrolabes at Greenwich: A Catalogue of the Astrolabes in the
National Maritime Museum, Oxford, Oxford University Press/National Maritime Museum,
2006, pp. 73–90.

© Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004381438_005

Medical and Astrological Plates 43

plates of planispheric astrolabes, while two other systems are easily calculated
using the divisions of the seasonal hours that are often engraved on astrolabes.
Astrolabes are not, however, the only instruments that display information
related to astrology or astrological medicine. The first part of this chapter dis-
cusses two metal plates that are not astrolabes and do not display the same
astronomical complexity, but are designed for use in astrology and medicine.2
Although both were made in the sixteenth century, they represent practices
and theories that were mainstream by the Middle Ages.3
The most complex of the two plates (Fig. 3.1) is anonymous but dated.4 It is
an astrological plate probably made in Nuremberg, the free imperial city that
became the main centre for astrolabe production in the fifteenth century. The
instrument consists of three brass components that are interconnected: a flat
plate below, a counterchanged rule in the middle, and a simplified rete on the
top. The instrument also has a small and plain suspension ring, which must
have been added later. The back is blank, other than the date 1516 engraved in
Hindu-Arabic numbers.
The front of the plate is graduated with the three circles that are standard
on astrolabes: the circles of Capricorn, the equator and Cancer. Similarly, it has
a meridian line and east-west line (or straight horizon), which are perpendicu-
lar to each other and intersect at the centre of the plate. The outer border of
the plate has scales of the hours and the houses. The hour scale has 24 equal

2  They are described (one quite briefly) in the catalogue of the collection published by the
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, see Gerhard Bott (ed.), Focus Behaim Globus, Nuremberg,
Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 1992, 2 vols.; v. 2, pp. 592 (no. WI 22), and 624–
625 (no. WI 1808); see also the bibliography for the two instruments.
3  See any handbook of medieval astrology, for instance, Charles Burnett and Keiji Yamamoto,
Abu Mashar, The Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology: Together With the Medieval
Latin Translation of Adelard of Bath, London, Brill, 1994; and Charles Burnett, Keiji
Yamamoto, and Michio Yano, Al-Qabisi (Alcabitius): The Introduction to Astrology, London,
Warburg Insitute, 2004. For astrology in medicine, see, for instance: Hiro Hirai, “The New
Astral Medicine”, in Brendan Dooley (ed.), A Companion to Astrology in the Renaissance,
London-Leiden, Brill, 2014, pp. 267–286; Roger Kenneth French, “Foretelling the Future:
Arabic Astrology and English Medicine in the Late Twelfth Century”, Isis 87, 3 (1996), pp.
453–480; and R.K. French, “Astrology in Medical Practice”, in Ancients and Moderns in the
Medical Sciences: From Hippocrates to Harvey, Aldershot, Ashgate Variorum, 2000, pp. 30–59;
Cornelius O’Boyle, Medieval Prognosis and Astrology: A Working Edition of the Aggregationes
de crisi et creticis diebus: With Introduction and English Summary, Cambridge, Welcome
Unit for the History of Medicine, 1991; and Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance
Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, Chicago-London, University of Chicago
Press, 1990.
4  Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, WI 22; overall diameter 166–167 mm, thickness
1–1.5 mm; rete: diameter 105 mm, thickness 1 mm.