Du Meridien et de l’Equateur

Title

Du Meridien et de l’Equateur

Description

Illustration of the celestial sphere with the meridians, the equator, the northern and southern tropics, the Antarctic and Arctic polar circles. Furthermore, the corresponding description on the left and right.

ca. 1793

Artist

Desnos (1725-1805)

Louis-Charles Desnos (1725 - 1805) was both a globe maker and publisher of maps. In the former capacity he was appointed globe maker to the King of Denmark but spent most of his life working in Paris. Louis Charles Desnos and Claude Buy de Mornas worked together in the same establishments and issued together "La Manniere de Reconnoitre les Principales Etoiles dans le Ciel" (The Manner of Recognizing the Principal Stars in the Sky) in 1761.

Historical Description

The history of western astrology can be traced back to pre-Christian times in Babylonia or Mesopotamia and Egypt. Its basic principles of interpretation and calculation, which are still recognizable today, were learned by astrology in the Hellenistic Greek-Egyptian city of Alexandria. Astronomy emerged from it as meaningless observation and mathematical recording of the starry sky, and it remained associated with it for a long time as an auxiliary science. Astrology had an eventful history in Europe. After the elevation of Christianity to the state religion in the Roman Empire, it was partly fought, partly adapted to Christianity and temporarily pushed aside. In the course of the early Middle Ages, astrology, especially the learned astronomy-astrology, revived in the Byzantine Empire from around the late 8th century, as also somewhat later in the Muslim Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula. From the later High Middle Ages and especially in the Renaissance to the 17th century, it was widely regarded as a science in Europe, always combined with astronomy in the quadrivium of the seven liberal arts that had been taught at universities. In the course of the Enlightenment, however, it lost its plausibility in educated circles.