At the entrance to the El Escorial library we are surprised by a mechanical marvel, the armillary sphere, a representation of the solar system as beautiful as it is incorrect.
The library of the Monastery of El Escorial, founded by Felipe II, houses a rare collection of more than 4,700 manuscripts, many of them illuminated, and 40,000 printed books. It is a monument to knowledge with more than four centuries and deserves a visit to this Royal Site, located just one hour from Madrid.
Upon entering the El Escorial library, the eye can be drawn to the vaulted ceiling, decorated with frescoes by the Italian painter and architect Pellegrino Tibaldi, painted in 1587, which make this library a kind of Sistine Chapel that, instead of focusing on religion, is mainly dedicated to the representations of knowledge and science in the ancient world.
King Philip II himself was involved in all parts of the library’s design process. It was not in vain that he served as a patron of numerous scientific projects in mathematics, geography, cosmography and naval engineering.
Upon entering the library, we are also likely to be hit by the large armillary sphere in the center of the room. A complicated intersecting mechanism of wood and metal rings that immediately makes us think about its function.
the armillary sphere
An armillary sphere is a miniature representation of celestial objects in the sky, represented as a series of rings centered on a globe. Armillary spheres have a long history.
Some sources attribute the invention of the armillary sphere to the Greek philosopher Anaximander of Miletus (611-547 BC), others to the Greek astronomer Hipparchus (190-120 BC), and others to the Chinese, where they first appeared during the Han dynasty (206 BC) . BC-220 CE).
Although the exact origin of the armillary spheres cannot be confirmed, they became very popular during the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance they increased in sophistication.
The armillary sphere in the library of the El Escorial Monastery was built by Antonio Santucci in Florence around 1582, initially for Cardinal Fernando de’ Medici. It was he who sent it as a diplomatic gift to Philip II. Since 1593 it has been part of the library’s furniture.
The geocentric universe
The armillary sphere is a representation of the solar system, but with the Earth at the center. This is Claudius Ptolemy’s idea of the universe, which lasted until Galileo and Copernicus took it upon themselves to dismantle it.
In this representation, everything revolved around the Earth, which is a small ball in the center of the sphere. The moving rings that surround it represent the movement of celestial objects observed from Earth. There is the celestial equator, the ecliptic that the sun travels, the horizon line, and the positions of the zodiac.
The rings are graduated with notches that represent the hours. Inside, a ring shows the constellations and zodiac signs with illustrations on its inner face, exactly as they would be seen from Earth. The outer meridians coincide with the spring and autumn equinoxes and the winter and summer solstices.
The sphere was not used for direct observation of the sky, that’s what astrolabes were for. On the contrary, it was a model for performing calculations and imperfectly explaining the motion of the stars.
Ptolemy’s model was leaking, because some of those lights in the sky, which we now know as Mars, Venus, Jupiter or Saturn, had a bad habit of going forward and then going backwards. It is not for nothing that the ancient Greeks called these lights “planets”, which literally means “wanderers”. These erratic trajectories cannot be explained by an armillary sphere with the Earth at the center, but they become apparent when we discover that all planets, including Earth, revolve around the Sun.
Though none of this prevents us from gazing ecstatically at the armillary sphere in all its golden complexity.
Science of Quo Travel Section sponsored by hyundai