fig 36.

Title

fig 36.

Description

Map shows the zodiac signs in the Southern Arctic Circle, below view of a bay with offshore ships.

ca. 1684

Artist

Mallet (1630-1706)

Alain Manesson Mallet (1630- 1706 ) was a French cartographer and engineer. He started his career as a soldier in the army of Louis XIV, became a Sergeant-Major in the artillery and an Inspector of Fortifications. He also served under the King of Portugal, before returning to France, and his appointment to the court of Louis XIV. His military engineering and mathematical background led to his position teaching mathematics at court. His major publications were Description de L'Univers (1683) in 5 volumes, and Les Travaux de Mars ou l'Art de la Guerre (1684) in 3 volumes. His Description de L'Universe contains a wide variety of information, including star maps, maps of the ancient and modern world, and a synopsis of the customs, religion and government of the many nations included in his text. It has been suggested that his background as a teacher led to his being concerned with entertaining his readers. This concern manifested itself in the charming harbor scenes and rural landscapes that he included beneath his description of astronomical concepts and diagrams. Mallet himself drew most of the figures that were engraved for this book.

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.