| This study examines the thirteenth-century astrologer Guido Bonatti's Liber Astronomicus as a case study to investigate one aspect of the many practical applications of astrology in the later Middle Ages. Specifically, it looks at the application of military astrology to analyze Bonatti's use of his source material in relation to his own practice. The dissertation develops a methodology to discern the astrologer's practice from his textual inheritance.;Bonatti was possibly the most important astrologer of the high middle ages. His work was an encyclopedic, yet detailed survey of the entire field of astrological study in the Europe of his day. He acknowledged his Arab sources but was not merely a compiler of their material. Like many of his European contemporaries in other fields such as Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, Bonatti put his own stamp on the field of astrology. Staying within the basic traditions as he inherited them, he systematized and expanded often terse material, and frequently innovated in certain applications of astrology.;By close and detailed examinations of Bonatti's text and comparison with his sources, we can see the changes that reflect his personal experience which in turn caused him to alter and emend the tradition. From this we can distinguish the practitioner from the compiler of astrological materials. This study argues that such close internal textual analysis of the astrological treatises themselves reveals the medieval uses of astrology far better than external narrative sources. Ultimately over the course of this study it also becomes clear that in the area of astrology Bonatti carried out the same kinds of intellectual synthesis and systematization that we see in the works of notable contemporaries in other fields. |
