What would a fifteenth-century scholar know? What was taught in the Universities of the time? What was taken for granted? Or never dreamt of? What do we have in common with such a man, for this hypothetical scholar would certainly be male? What can learning these things tell us about the world-view of this man and his compatriots? And about our own world-views?
Here find compiled the resources and information and archaic skills I've learned while learning what this scholar would know. To focus my researches, he has a name - Palmerin da Castello - and a firm grounding in time and place - University of Bologna in 1485. His well-off merchant family sent him to learn double-entry bookkeeping and other skills useful in the family business, but Palmerin would rather study astrology, a much more glamorous discipline. Astrology, though, is complex, requiring much study and tedious mathematical discipline.Lately Palmerin has learned a bit about geomancy, a system of divination that doesn't require so much calculation.
All horoscopes here were calculated and interpreted in a medieval manner, based on Introduction to Astrology by Alcabitius and Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, both texts which would have been available to a medieval scholar, and could have been used by Palmerin.
