On this page you can learn more about the various manuscripts in our western post-1500 collection that relate to astronomy and astrology. You may also be interested in the Astronomy and Astrology section of our western medieval manuscript collection.
MS 37
MS 37 is a copy of In Claudii Ptolemaei Quadripartitum commentarius by Valentin Naboth (d.1593). It contains Naboth’s own horoscope, and a note on his prediction of his own death.
MS 284
MS 284 contains an eighteenth-century Latin poem on the workings of the orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system. This manuscript was written as a Founder’s Exercise by John Hubbock (1712-1781, matriculated St John’s 1730).
MS 337
MS 337 comprises two treatises and some loose sheets from c.1740 relating to the use of globes produced by John Senex (1678-1740, publisher and map-maker). This manuscript was apparently donated at roughly the same time as the Senex globes in the Old Library, but the relation between MS 337 and the globes is unclear.