Lectures on the complete Almagest delivered by Johannes Andree Schindel at the University of Prague from 1412 to 1418. These lectures are only partially preserved in the notebook of Johannes Borotin (see C.1.13), where they appear in disorder and interrupted with blank pages, covering altogether Almagest I.13-14, II.1, II.5-7, I.9 and I.12. The beginning (I.13) is dated 28 January 1413 and chapter II.5 was completed on 28 February 1413 (see MS entry). Borotin missed the first lectures presumably because he was unable to attend them (see C.1.13). Further information on Schindel’s lectures can be gleaned from the very copy of the Almagest he used in his teaching, which turns out to be extant as MS Cracow, BJ, 619. Below the colophon of the Almagest in that manuscript (f. 272r), Schindel added a note saying that he had begun lecturing on 11 November 1412 (not 20 November, as in Borotin’s account, see C.1.13) and finished on 10 July 1418. The date 11 November is definitely correct, for Schindel also cast the horoscope of this event (f. Iv), where the positions of the planets and of the ascendant are indeed correct for 11 November 1412 at Noon in Prague. It took Schindel more than five and a half years to read the complete Almagest, which he did on feast days, and he appears to have spent more time on the first books, judging from a note added in the margin of f. 120r, where he says that he completed Book V on 4 March 1417. In the note added below the colophon, Schindel also gives the names of his most zealous students (‘leccionum auditores plus ceteris solliciti’), namely Master Anthonius de Luna, then dean of the faculty of arts, Master Nicolaus de Stoyczin, Master Allexius de Polonia and Stephanus de Sossniessowicz, bachelor of arts and medicine. Johannes Borotin does not feature in this list, but both men were to stay in contact over the years, for, in 1444, Schindel attended Borotin’s lecture on Ptolemy’s Quadripartitum (see MS Cracow, BJ, 593).

Text ‘(Prague, APH, O. I) 1413 5^o kal. Februarii [upper margin, hand of the scribe]. Et postquam premisimus hoc capitulum etc. In hoc capitulo vult Ptolomeus docere… (141r) Incipit secundi libri Almagesti Ptolomei — Ex eo autem ibi est 15^a demonstracio et est quasi conversa precedentis.’

Bibl. P. Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post Universitatem Pragensem conditam illustrans, 2 vols, Wrocław-Warszawa, 1985-1995 [Studia Copernicana, XXV and XXXV], I, 134-135 (no. 363); H. Zepeda, The First Latin Treatise on Ptolemy’s Astronomy: The Almagesti minor (c. 1200), Turnhout, 2018, 103-104. On Johannes Andree Schindel (Jan Šindl), see also D. B. Durand, The Vienna-Klosterneuburg Map Corpus of the Fifteenth Century, Leiden, 1952, 41-44; A. Šolcová, ‘Mistr Jan Šindel – pravděpodobný tvůrce matematického modelu pražského orloje’, Pokroky Matematiky, Fyziky a Astronomie 54 (2009), 307-317.

Modern ed. ---