Alfonsine Tables

The Alphonsine Tables were astronomical tables designed to anticipate the positions of planets, lunar phases, setting and rising times of the Sun, eclipses, heavenly conjunctions, and calendrical dates. They come in two different textual traditions, the Castilian Canons (1272 ca.) and the Parisian Tables (1320 ca.). The first printed Latin edition dates 1483. From that moment, Latin Alfonsine Tables rapidly superseded every other competing tabulary system for anticipating the expected planetary positions, so that the entire astronomy of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and the first half of the sixteenth century may be labelled as “Alfonsine Astronomy.” Nonetheless, starting with Regiomontanus’ Tabulae Directionum Profectionumque (1467, first printed in 1485), passing through Erasmus Reinold’s Copernican Tabulae Prutenicae (1551), and ending with Kepler’s Tabulae Rudolphinae (1627), the history of the legacy of the Alfonsine Tables in the Renaissance is largely a story of their slow but progressive dismissal.