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Vol 5 no 1. Spring/Summer 2001
Demetra George
Manuel
I Komnenos and Michael Glykas: A Twelfth-Century Defence and Refutation of
Astrology: Part 1. History and Background
Abstract
Manuel Komnenos I,
Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, composed a defence of astrology to the Church
Fathers, in which he asserted that this discipline was compatible with Christian
doctrine. Theologian Michael Glykas, possibly imprisoned and blinded by Manuel
for political sedition, refuted this defence, claiming that the astrological art
was heretical. This is the first time that this exchange of treatises has been
translated into any language since their composition in the twelfth-century. The
introduction sets these works into their historical framework, a time when the
belief in the validity of astrology was held by some of the best scholars of
this century as a result of the flood of Arabic astrological translations coming
into the Latin West and Greek East. The writings of these two antagonists
precipitated anew in mediaeval thought the problem of the correct relationship
between man, the celestial bodies and God who dwelled in Heaven.
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