Feb 26, 2025
A Practitioner’s Bond to His 'Theorica': Conrad Heingarter’s Intellectual Journey in the Margins of His Manuscripts of the 'Theorica Planetarum'
- 11:00 to 13:00
- Eleonora Andriani

Source: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 7432, f. 160r.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) preserves eleven manuscripts related to Conrad Heingarter, a Swiss astrologer and physician active in the latter half of the fifteenth century. These manuscripts provide a unique insight into Heingarter’s intellectual journey within the astral sciences, tracing his progression from a student to a proficient practitioner and, ultimately, a teacher. The Theorica planetarum, attributed to Gerard of Cremona, occupies a pivotal position in the development of Heingarter’s career, as reflected in three key manuscripts preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In Paris, BnF, lat. 7197, the Theorica, preceded by John of Sacrobosco’s De sphaera and extensively annotated by Heingarter, provides evidence of his university education in the astral sciences. The detailed commentary in BnF, lat. 7333, found in a somewhat abbreviated version in a manuscript once owned by his student Wilhelm Copp (Vatican, Reg. Lat. 1241), highlights Heingarter’s role as a teacher. Finally, in BnF, lat. 7432, the margins of the final two chapters of the Theorica, housing Heingarter’s treatise on planetary latitude (explicitly written for students, addressed to a university member and framed in the ‘Era of the Illustrious John, duke of Bourbon and Auvergne’) reflects Heingarter’s teaching commitment across both courtly and university contexts, as well as his ability to integrate and synthesize sources from diverse traditions. Far from serving merely as a convenient spot in his manuscript copies, the margins surrounding the Theorica planetarum acted as a conceptual space in which Heingarter’s intellectual journey can be traced in great detail. In this paper, Eleonora Andriani will demonstrate this by analyzing Heingarter’s engagement with the Theorica across these three manuscript copies, shedding light on its impact at different stages of Heingarter’s career and within the diverse institutional and professional contexts in which he operated.
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For more information, please contact Matteo Valleriani (valleriani@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de)