The National Library of Argentina: exhibiting astronomy-related rare books during 2009

ALEJANDRO GANGUI

UNESCO, París, Francia

Simposio; International Astronomical Union - Symposium 260: The Rôle of Astronomy in Society and Culture; 2009

International Astronomical Union (IAU)

Astronomical and cosmological knowledge up to the dawn of modern science was profoundly embedded in myth, religion and superstition. Many of these inventions of the human mind remain today stored in different supports: medieval engravings, illuminated manuscripts, and of course also in old and rare books. All these vestiges of the past are well preserved in special reserves of main libraries, and constitute a source of pride of these institutions.Among the many incunabula owned by Argentina´s National Library, a couple of volumes stand out. The Liber Chronicarum cum figuris et ymaginibus, compiled by the humanist Hartmann Schedel and printed by Anton Koberger in 1493 (the famous Nürnberg chronicle) is one of the "must see" of the Library. It includes not only a description of Pliny´s marvelous hominids -headless Libyans endowed with eyes and mouth in their chests, Cyclopes from India and other mirabilia- but also many images with clear cosmological flavor. This original Latin edition includes, among its nearly 1800 engravings, and of most interest to us, a thorough description of the seven ages of the world after Creation, beginning with a biblical heptameron, of which already the forth day shows a nice geocentric Ptolemy´s universe. The Library also owns a Venice 1484 copy of Dante´s Divine Comedy, with comments by Cristoforo Landino, which beautifully illustrates Beatrice guiding the pilgrim across the astronomical and metaphysical spheres of the celestial Paradise.These and dozens of other equally interesting books build up an important part of both literary and pre-scientific culture. However, only a handful of persons (mainly researchers) have access to them. Just as we all know that the feeling of seeing Mars in pictures cannot be compared to the experience of actually seeing it through a telescope, in the case of old books, the project of exhibiting them is much more rewarding than just looking at them through the internet. Partly because of this, we are currently planning an exhibition of rare books with astronomical flavor during 2009.Many other old or rare books are also included in our list: Iacobus Valderus´ Sphaera (1536), Egnatio Danti´s Trattato dell´astrolabio (1569), Clavius´ commentary of Sacro Bosco´s Sphaera (1585), Joanne Voello´s De horologiis (1608), Henrico Hofmanno´s De octantis (1612), Blaev´s Theatrum orbis terrarium (1640), and a long etcetera. Some of these books were presumably brought to the River Plate by the Catholic religious order of the Jesuits during the XVIII century. Hence, these books allow us to reconstruct the kind of science imparted in our country at that time.Among these books, German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher´s thick and numerous volumes, with their gorgeous engravings illustrating all possible areas of knowledge, naturally attract the attention: his Musurgia universalis (1654) depicts cosmic harmony as musical sounds emanating from an organ played by God; his Ars Magna (1671) shows the analogy between micro and macro cosmos, with man placed both at the center of the universe and of the zodiacal signs. In Kircher´s Mundus subterraneus (1678) the frontispiece shows a lady (the allegory of Astronomy) inspecting a celestial globe and taking notes with a plume d’oiseau, while another feminine character looks through a telescope. Inside the book we find a sketch of the Moon as an aqueous body, with spots, mountains and sources, as well as other rough earthy textures scattered on its visible face, and another of the Sun, divided in different regions, including an equatorial torrid zone, quite similar to the one of the Earth at the time, and covered with drawings of smoke and fires as sources of Sun spots.Finally, father Gaspare Schotto´s Iter exstaticum Kircherianum, of 1671, shows in its very frontispiece a peculiar engraving of Kircher himself (as Theodidactus, the disciple of God) when, guided by angel Cosmiel, he travels across the universe, in a clear parallel to Dante´s voyage following his donna-angelo. The universe depicted is neither Ptolemaic nor Copernican, but that of Tycho Brahe, with the Sun orbiting the Earth, while the rest of the planets complete their movements around the Sun; a clear eclectic cosmology agreeing well with the author´s world view.The planned exhibition will collect not only these and other books, but also historical documents, maps and drawings (may be also artifacts). Hopefully, it will offer a timeline of our understanding of old and renaissance astronomy and, with it, part of the imago mundi of the time.