[Johannes des Sacrobosco and the Sphere Tradition in Early Modern Catholic Censorship]

Johannes de Sacrobosco's (c. 1195-c. 1256) On the Sphere, a short introduction into qualitative cosmology written in the thirteenth century, was the most widely used textbook on cosmology in the early-modern period, being reprinted, re-edited or commented over 320 times. While the reception and circulation of this work in the sixteenth and seventeenth century is well known, one fact has so far escaped the notice of scholars: Sphaera textbooks were subject to several acts of ecclesiastical censorship in the early modern period, even though the content of this work promoted a cosmology that opposed the allegedly heretical implications of Copernicanism. This paper investigates for the very first time the dynamics and motives behind Roman and Iberian censorship in relation to this cosmology treatise. Editions and commentaries published by Protestants were generally regarded as suspect, but rarely prohibited across-the-board. Instead, they were usually approved for scientific use after expurgations had removed problematic theological passages. However, the commentary (1550) authored by the Catholic Mauro da Firenze (1493-1556) was prohibited repeatedly and completely because it contained theologically dangerous ideas. The case studies presented in this paper shall shed light on the dynamics of knowledge within the Sphere tradition from a new perspective, that of the Catholic censorship of books. Moreover, a longitudinal study based on a specific genre of books provides insight into the ideology and practices of early modern catholic book censorship, whereby the well-known problematic relationship between science and religion in the pre-modern period is seen in the context of a confessionalisation of science.