Astrolabium Planum is a Latin astrological handbook by Johannes Angelus, first printed in 1488, whose lasting contribution is a set of images for each of the three hundred and sixty degrees of the zodiac, one to a degree, each with a short verse. Those degree images travelled far beyond the book: they were reprinted, translated and rearranged for centuries and stand behind much of the later Western literature that treats a single degree as carrying its own character. The book presents the images as inherited rather than invented, and attributes them to Pietro d'Abano, though how much of the material is his and where he in turn had it from remains an open question. The rest of the volume is a working manual with tables for the houses and the astrolabe, which is what its title names.
Facts
Disputed
How Its Legacy Is ContestedThe degree images are attributed within the book to Pietro d'Abano rather than claimed by its compiler. How much of the material is his, and where he had it from in turn, is unresolved. 1 The Astrolabium Planum, printed by Erhard Ratdolt in 1488 and carrying an image for each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac, credits the fourteenth century physician and astrologer Pietro d'Abano as the source of its decan and degree imagery. The 1488 printed edition is the primary text cited here. The method available is textual and art-historical comparison: reading the book's own framing language, which presents the images as received and credits d'Abano without specifying which images he originated and which he passed on from an earlier tradition, against what independent evidence survives of d'Abano's own writing and of earlier degree-image traditions circulating before 1488. Because no manuscript or text earlier than the printed book itself has been identified that would show which specific images are d'Abano's own contribution and which he inherited, the book's self-presentation as compiling received material under his name cannot be verified or disproved from the surviving record, and the question of what belongs to him personally stays open. Text
Literary Form Scholarship
First PublishedFirst printed in 1488, one of the earliest astrological works to reach print at all, arriving within decades of the printing press becoming widespread across Europe. 2 TransmissionIts degree images were copied into later astrological handbooks across Europe for centuries, most influentially by later Renaissance emblem writers, so many readers met the images through those secondary borrowings rather than through Angelus's own printed volume. 3 Transmission
Manuscript TraditionIts degree images were copied into later astrological handbooks across Europe for centuries, most influentially by later Renaissance emblem writers, so many readers met the images through those secondary borrowings rather than Angelus's own 1488 printed volume. 3 Origins
Era of Composition Attributed Author / CompilerJohannes Angelus, also written Johann Engel 1 Structure
StructureA working handbook of tables for the houses and the astrolabe, which is what the title names, carrying alongside it the set of three hundred and sixty degree images, one to each degree of the zodiac, each with a short verse. It is the images and not the tables that were reprinted for centuries. 1 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteThis astrological picture book compiled the decan and paranatellon imagery of the Hellenistic and Arabic astrological tradition into a widely copied set of woodcuts, and its illustrations went on to shape the visual vocabulary later borrowed by early tarot decks. 1 Learn More
Three Hundred and Sixty Pictures, One to a Degree
The core of the book is a sequence with no gaps in it. Every degree of the zodiac, from the first of Aries to the last of Pisces, is given an image: a figure, an animal, an object or a small scene, described in a few words of Latin and accompanied by a woodcut. The images are not illustrations of the sign they fall in.
A degree of Cancer may show a man with a bow, a degree of Capricorn a woman at a loom, with nothing tying the picture to the sign's usual attributes. That independence is what made the set useful and what makes its origin hard to trace. A system where each degree carries its own character allows an astrologer to say something about a chart position that the sign, the house and the planet together do not say, which is a genuine addition to the technique. It also means the images cannot be reconstructed from first principles if a copy is corrupt, because there is no rule generating them. The volume around them is a working handbook, with the house tables and the astrolabe instructions its title advertises, the sort of apparatus a fifteenth century astrologer needed at the desk. Those parts were superseded within a generation and forgotten. The degree images were not, and the book is now remembered almost entirely for the section that is least like the rest of it.
Inheritance, Attribution and the Later Degree Systems
The book presents the images as received material and attributes them to Pietro d'Abano, the Paduan physician and philosopher of the early fourteenth century. The attribution is the book's own claim rather than an independent record, and how much of the set is his, and where he had it from, has never been established.
Similar degree material appears in Arabic and earlier Greek sources in forms that are related but not identical, so the question is not whether the images have a prehistory but which one. That gap has consequences for how the later tradition is read. Sets of degree symbols produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are often spoken of as though they were versions of one ancient system. They are better understood as separate creations that share a premise, namely that a single degree can carry meaning, and the atlas keeps them as distinct entries rather than folding them together. What can be said with confidence is that this book is the point at which the degree image became a printed, complete and portable set in Latin Europe. Whatever stood behind it, everything downstream in the Western literature runs through the version it fixed, which is why a fifteenth century handbook with obsolete tables is still worth a page.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
A Latin astrological handbook giving images for each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac.
Authored By
Why this is disputed. The 1488 Augsburg printing appeared under his name. The degree images in it descend from earlier material circulating under the name of Pietro d'Abano, so what he supplied was the edition rather than the scheme.
Related To
Its degree images stand behind much of the later literature that reads a single degree.
Sources
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