St. Albert the Great and Robert Grosseteste on the nature and causes of comets

Crozier, William

doi:10.1177/00218286231170596

St. Albert the Great and Robert Grosseteste on the nature and causes of comets

Crozier, William

Authors

Dr. William Crozier william.e.crozier@durham.ac.uk
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Abstract

Addressing a subject which has received very little attention, this article explores the interpretations of comets offered by St. Albert the Great (c. 1190–1280) and Robert Grosseteste (1168–1253). It shows how, despite prima facie convergences between the two 13th-century bishops concerning the nature and causation of comets, there are nonetheless several previously unobserved subtle differences between them. For Grosseteste the celestial bodies (i.e. the stars and the planets) are the primary, and indeed sole, efficient causes of cometary phenomena, serving to draw up rarefied matter to the upper atmosphere whereupon it is inflamed as it is assimilated to the celestial nature itself. For Albert, by contrast, while the celestial bodies may help to stir up combustible vapours within the atmosphere, and at times precipitate their ascension to the heavenly vault by means of their motion and conjunction, it is not always the case that a comet arises as a result of the direct efficient causality of the celestial bodies.

Citation

Crozier, W. (2023). St. Albert the Great and Robert Grosseteste on the nature and causes of comets. Journal for the History of Astronomy, 54(2), https://doi.org/10.1177/00218286231170596

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Apr 2, 2023
Online Publication Date	May 6, 2023
Publication Date	2023
Deposit Date	May 16, 2023
Publicly Available Date	May 16, 2023
Journal	Journal for the History of Astronomy
Print ISSN	0021-8286
Electronic ISSN	1753-8556
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	54
Issue	2
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/00218286231170596

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).