Two Astromagical Manuscripts of Alfonso X the Wise¹

Alejandro García Avilés

Universidad de Murcia

A mis maestros, Cristina Gutiérrez-Cortines y Joaquín Yarza Luaces

In 1911 Aby Warburg had his first sight of Biblioteca Apostólica Vaticana manuscript Reg. lat. 1283, folios 1-36, a richly illustrated astrological codex to which his attention had been drawn by Franz Ehrle and Bartolomeo Nogara.² This proved to be what remains of a book produced under the supervision of Alfonso X, King of Castile (1252-1284). Warburg intended to edit the work in collaboration with his friend Franz Boll, the philologist and historian of astrology, but the project was never completed.³ In the meantime the manuscript was rediscovered independently by a Spanish scholar, Alfonso García Solalinde,⁴ and in 1932 one of his doctoral students at Harvard, George Darby, wrote a dissertation on it.⁵

The manuscript belongs to the final phase of activity of the royal scriptorium of Alfonso X, from 1276 to 1284. This was the period in which the learned monarch devoted his attention to the subjects which most interested him personally,⁶ resulting in the production of three encyclopedic collections of works on astronomy and astral magic.⁷ The first, generally known as the Libros del saber de astronomía,⁸ comprises fifteen treatises on the construction and use of astronomical instruments.⁹ The other two compilations are the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes and the compendium of astral magic brought to light by Warburg and García Solalinde.¹⁰ This latter work, which I shall refer to as the Libro de astromagia,¹¹ is known principally for preserving the only remaining fragment of the Spanish version of the Picatrix.¹² Alfonso d'Agostino, who recently edited the manuscript, pays very little attention to its fortuna; he suggests that it may have been housed in the Royal Chapel of Granada in the late fifteenth century,¹³ but I shall show this to be unlikely. As for Roderic Diman and Lynn Winget, the editors of the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes, they do not go much beyond repeating the conventional wisdom concerning the fortuna of the compilation.¹⁴ The history of these two closely related astromagical manuscripts thus remains to be written.

The Book of the Forms and Images which are in the Heavens' is the most controversial of the three Alfonsine compendia -indeed, one celebrated nineteenth century Spanish scholar came to regard it as spurious.¹⁵ The surviving manuscript of the work, El Escorial, Real Biblioteca ms h-I-16, consists of little more than a synopsis, or tabla, which summarises in some detail the contents of eleven treatises dealing with the influence of heavenly images on human beings and with the magical powers conferred by the stars on certain stones. The magical properties of the stones are described in the tabla, but the discussions of the stones themselves, and of the heavenly images, are lacking. Some chapters can be recovered from other Alfonsine works in which certain of the treatises are also found, particularly the Libro de astromagia, the Liber Razielis and the Lapidario.¹⁶ The content of other chapters can only be guessed at; for example, in the fourth treatise we read that «the fourteenth chapter concerns how to avoid harm from bears and wild beasts, and how to gain power over foolish and evil men» (folio 11v.).

The generic relationship between the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes and the Alfonsine Lapidario (in reality a collection of lapidaries), together with the presence of some of the same texts in both compilations and, in particular, the mention of an unidentified person referred to as «Abolays» in the first treatise of both collections,¹⁷ has for a long time led scholars to believe that the Lapidario was originally part of the Libro de las formas; consequently, they were published together in 1881.¹⁸ Alfonsine scholars have persisted in this opinion, despite the fact that it was questioned by Moritz Steinschneider in 1893.¹⁹ Some have gone even further, claiming not only that the Lapidario is the sole remaining portion of the Libro de las formas, but also that the constituent treatises of the Lapidario are the only items among those listed in the tabla that were actually produced for the compendium. This attitude is summed up by J. H. Nunemaker, who states:

In reality, the only points in common between the tabla and the Lapidario are those noted by Joan Evans as early as 1922: the correspondence between the second and third treatises of the Lapidario, on the one hand, and the fourth and fifth treatises of the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes, on the other.²¹ By contrast, there are compelling factors which point to a separate origin for the two works: above all, the fact that the Lapidario is an early piece, compiled in its entirety when Alfonso was still the Infante of Castile, whereas the prologue to the Libro de las formas indicates that it was begun in 1277 and finished in 1279, five years before his death.

That it was finished has been doubted by the recent editors of the work. According to Diman and Winget: «whether or not these eleven treatises were finished is not known».²² There are, however, firm indications that the compilation was indeed completed. Some of these have been discussed by Anthony Cárdenas in a recent study.²³ First, certain later additions in the margins of the tabla give numerical references from the second treatise onwards; these are most likely indications of the pages on which the corresponding texts begin. Second, indices for Alfonsine works were generally written after the books had been completed, as was common in the Middle Ages. Cárdenas has pointed to the example of the Libros del saber de astronomía, in which the third treatise (the second in the Rico y Sinobas edition) was added once the rest of the compilation had been copied.²⁴ The additional chapter, however, is fully integrated into the index, which shows no sign of having been modified, suggesting that it was written after the treatise had been inserted.²⁵

A third factor is the evidence that the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes was already finished by the time that the Libro de astromagia was compiled.²⁶ We read in the Picatrix, referring to a certain image of Mars: «and, God granting, I will speak about it in the future» («et de ea Deo dante erimus in posterum locuti»).²⁷ This phrase is not found in the Ghāyat al-Hakīm (the Arabic text on which the Picatrix is based),²⁸ but was added in 1256 when the translation was made in the Alfonsine scriptorium. In the Libro de astromagia, however, which was compiled around 1280, it is stated that: «we spoke about this image in our Libro de las imágenes» («fablamos desta ymagen en el nuestro Libro de las imágenes»).²⁹ The reference appears to be to the treatise on talismanic images and the powers conferred on them by the seven planets, by 'Utārid (Mercury-Hermes?),³⁰ which is the seventh part of the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes (ms. h-I-16, folios 12v.-13r.). This would suggest that at least this section had been completed, although the exact correspondence of subject-matter cannot be checked since, as was noted above, the descriptions of the images are not included in the tabla.

The final confirmation that the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes was actually finished is a reference to the existence of a French version of the text, apparently of the complete work. In the 1373 catalogue of the library of Charles V of France, compiled by Gilles Mallet, the following item appears: «Thirty-nine paper quires of the book of the forms, figures and images which are in the heavens, translated from Spanish into French by Pierre Levant... by order of my lord, the Duke of Berry».³¹ The catalogue of the French royal library, commissioned in 1423 by the Duke of Bedford, adds to this entry: «in which the first quire begins "In the name of the Father and of the Son", and these quires are tied together with a parchment cover».³² The considerable size of the French translation -thirty-nine quires (cahiers)- leads one to suppose that the original work must indeed have been complete. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to assume that the separation of the main body of the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes from the tabla had something to do with the movements of the manuscript at the time of its translation into French, through the patronage of the Duke of Berry. The incipit quoted in the Duke of Bedford's catalogue does not come from the tabla, but rather corresponds to the phraseology employed by Alfonso to begin the prologues of several of his treatises.³³ The texts of the treatises which made up the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes might therefore have been sent to France, while the tabla remained in Spain and ended up in the Escorial library. How the book fell into the hands of the Duke of Berry is a question I shall deal with below.

The «Book of Astromagic» must have been planned and begun around 1280, during the last years of the Alfonsine scriptorium, since there are several references in it to «el nuestro Libro de las ymágenes», a work which, as we have seen, was completed in 1279. The Libro de astromagia, moreover, shares some material with the earlier compilation: its first chapter (folios 1r.-8v.) is parallel to the third one in the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes, as can be established from the tabla. It is bound in the Vatican Library with a collection of Latin texts, whose titles -Incerti de templi Ierosolymitani et aliorum Galliae templorum dedicatione, Privilegia universitatis Parisiensis, Processus verbalis visitationis in Domo Dei Parisiis factae, etc.³⁴- clearly point to a French origin. This is confirmed by repeated mentions of the «Ecclesia Fossatensis», the Abbey of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, near Paris.³⁵

The exact route taken by the Libro de astromagia following the death of Alfonso X is unknown. The manuscript can, however, be shown to have been in France by the late fourteenth century. For in the same 1373 catalogue of the library of Charles V which mentioned the French translation of the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes, the following entry is also found: «A book of astronomy, which seems to be of the Ars notoria, written in Spanish, perfectly decorated with figures and with fine colours of Bolognese illumination».³⁶ In the 1411 and 1413 inventories of the library of books on astronomy which Charles V housed in the Louvre, information was added to this entry which confirms that the manuscript referred to is indeed our Alfonsine codex. It is said to be made up of «five quires, of which the first begins with a rubric on the second folio: "estas son las figuras»; and the last with "ocio aniello de mercurio"».³⁷ This description corresponds to the Libro de astromagia in its present form, in which the incipit «estas son las figuras» occurs on the second folio³⁸ and «otro anillo de Mercurio» («another ring of Mercury» -the French scribe misread «otro» as «ocio») on the last (folio 36r.). The original ordering of the compendium, which can be deduced from a paragraph on folio 25r.,³⁹ must have been changed before the manuscript reached the library of Charles V. In that ordering the last section dealt with the moon. The fact that the surviving pages of the Libro de astromagia include a «Libro de la Luna» (folios 11r.-24v.) would indicate that the text part of the compilation was completed, even though some of the illustrations remained unfinished.

We have no knowledge of any other document that bears witness to the fortuna of the manuscript of the Libro de astromagia, or, for that matter, of the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes, between Alfonso's death in 1284 and Gilles Mallet's catalogue in 1373. It is reasonable to assume that the Duke of Berry's interest in Alfonsine works, borne out by his commissioning of the translation of the Libro de las forma, might have extended to the Libro de astromagia; but we have no solid information on how the two manuscripts could have come into the possession of the French royal family. Nevertheless, it is worth noting the close ties between Jean de Berry and Joan I of Aragon, who became brothers-in-law following Joan I's marriage to Violante de Bar.⁴⁰ Correspondence between the French nobleman and the Aragonese monarch reveals a common taste for astrological literature (as well as certain other kinds of literature) and a passion for collecting books, some of which they sent to each other.⁴¹ An example of their shared interest in astrology is a letter from Joan I to Jean de Berry in 1388, asking the duke to grant permission for the master astrologer, Guillem Lunell, to travel from Paris to the court of Aragon.⁴² Charles V is said to have held astrologers in high regard and to have governed his personal life in accordance with their recommendations.⁴³ Likewise, in the court of Joan I, the astrologer was no mere ornamental figure, as is demonstrated by the fact that the Aragonese king refused to fix the date of his marriage to Violante de Bar until he had consulted the astrologer Dalmau Ses Planes: in 1379 the monarch asked him which days and months between February and April would be most propitious for the duchess to enter the principality of Catalonia and to celebrate her wedding.⁴⁴

We do not know whether the close relationship between Joan I and the French monarchy was adversely affected by the famous prophecy attributed to Francesc Eiximenis, that in 1400 there would be only one king ruling the world and that this would be the king of France.⁴⁵ Joan I was so disturbed by this that he sent a messenger to Eiximenis telling him to refrain from making such pronouncements. He implied, however, that the matter would be viewed in a more favourable light if it should prove that the prophecy was founded on sound astronomical observations:

Joan I inherited a noteworthy collection of works on astronomy and astrology from his father, Pere el Cerimoniós, whose interest in those subjects is well known.⁴⁷ Since Sancho IV of Castile, the son of Alfonso X, did not display a particular interest in the astrological work of his father,⁴⁸ it seems possible that the manuscripts produced in the Alfonsine scriptorium may have been dispersed and that some may have reached the neighbouring Aragonese court of Pere el Cerimoniós. This is precisely what happened in the case of 'Alī Abenragel's Libro conplido en los iudizios de las estrellas.⁴⁹ After Joan I came into possession of Pere's library, he could have given certain manuscripts to Jean de Berry, with whom he was connected by both shared interests and personal ties, and other volumes could have been lent to him for the purpose of translation.⁵⁰ Most of the Duke of Berry's books were later transferred to the royal library of the Louvre, where they were inventoried and described. As was mentioned above, only a detailed plan of the Libro de las formas et de las ymágenes has survived. Since the publication of the tabla by Fernández Montaña in 1881, no scholar, to my knowledge, has thrown any light on the whereabouts of the actual work or of the French version commissioned by the Duke of Berry.

Fortunately, however, the subsequent route taken by the Libro de astromagia can be traced with only one significant interruption. There is no entry corresponding to the work in the inventory of books in the Louvre belonging to Charles VI, compiled by Garnier de Saint-Yon in 1423, which seems to indicate that the manuscript was no longer part of the royal collection at the Louvre by this time.⁵¹ In 1425, the astronomy library of the Louvre passed to the Duke of Bedford, who transferred it to England in 1429.⁵² The collection began to be dispersed when the duke died in 1435.

We find the Libro de astromagia again in the second half of the sixteenth century,⁵³ on the shelves of the bibliophile Paul Petau.⁵⁴ Some folios have annotations by the French humanist Pierre Daniel d'Orléans,⁵⁵ from whose collection came several of the manuscripts which now make up the codex containing the Libro de astromagia in the Vatican Library.⁵⁶ Certain sections of this codex were acquired for Petau by Claude Fauchet (whose name appears on folio 112v.).⁵⁷ In common with other humanists of his time,⁵⁸ Petau did not respect the integrity of medieval manuscripts and was in the habit of cutting up those in his collection in order to construct new ones according to his own whim. This would explain the present state of the codex: a collection of manuscripts from various sources, which Petau, for reasons that are no longer apparent, put together as one.

After the death of Paul Petau, his collection passed to his son Alexandre,⁵⁹ who, in 1650, sold some 15,000 books -among them the Libro de astromagia- to Queen Christina of Sweden, through the good services of Isaac Vossius.⁶⁰ The possessions of the queen travelled with her to Rome, where she settled in exile after her abdication and public conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1655.⁶¹ Her collection of manuscripts was incorporated in the Vatican Library after the accession of Pope Alexander VIII (1689-1691).⁶² And it is there that the manuscript of the Libro de astromagia lay unnoticed until its recovery for scholarship by Aby Warburg in 1911.