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Nom
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Guillaume de Carpentras
Guillaume de Wissekerke
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Date de naissance
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1444
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Lieu de naissance
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Noord Bevelevand, Zeeland
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Couverture temporelle
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2/2 15th century
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Biographie
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Guillaume de Carpentras may be identified by the explicit of his Liber Desideratus… of 1494 (1) with the Zeelander Willem Gilliszoon van Wissekerke who established himself in Carpentras. Medically trained, he was, like many other physicians, adept in astronomy and astrology, and seems also to have been a skilled mechanic. He may have been born on the island of Noord Beveland (2), but in 1458 he was studying in Paris where he copied the Summa of Thomas Aquinas being in his fifteenth year (3). His contemporary, Simon de Phares (c. 1440-1495 or later), described him as a 'subtle and perspicacious man… greatly learned in the theory of the planets' (4)). He carried out work for René of Anjou, king of Sicily (1409-1480), making several sun-dials, clocks, astrolabes and astronomical instruments of which some details are given in René's accounts (5):
9 July 1476, 'for a small sun-dial'
17 August 1476 'for a clock … in the shape of a round apple'.
23 November 1477, 'an astrolabe called 'astrolabium regale …, twoother astrgfolabes showing the XII signs and seven planets, of which one is at Aix, the other was given to my Lord of Bourbon' (6).
Other entries mention 'a square dial made for all latitudes [a tous climatz] gilt in a becoming way'; 'two small portable dials…'; a small square clock with the seven planets and the 12 signs to put in his chamber'; 'two small counter-weighted clocks'; 'a royal astrolabe that the king had him make'. In addition to these Simon de Phares mentions that Guillaume made a sphere for René, another for the Duke of Milan, (in 1488) and a third for Charles VIII of France in 1492. The latter two are mentioned by Guillaume himself (7) and the phrasing of his description of that made for Milan 'in which all seven planets move with their proper motions on a single zodiac by the force of a single motor', implies that this was a mechanised equatorium (8). The instrument made for Charles VIII, which cost 1200 écus, could also have been a mechanised model. It 'contained many useful things, and is made in such a way that all the movements of the planets, at all hours and all the time, night and day, can there, very certainly, be found' (9).
If these two instruments were clockwork driven equatoria - planetaria' in modern terms - the 'royal astrolabes' which also showed planetary movements were probably hand-driven equatoria similar to one surviving example executed in cardboard (10). This corresponds with the instrument described in the Liber Desideratus. Those executed by Guillaume for his princely patrons would, of course, have been made of brass or even of precious metals.
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Notes biographiques
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1 'Ex Carpen[toracte] per Guillermum Egidii de Wissekerke. ex Zelandia.'
2 Struik 14.17 August 1476 'a clock… in the shape of a round apple'
3 This copy is BnF ms Lat 3009. Poulle i 134.
4 Simon de Phares, Recueil des plus celebres astrologues et quelques hommes doctes (ed. E. Wickersheimer), Paris 1929, 269. Also cited in Wickersheimer i, 233.
5 G. Arnaud de Lancel, Les Comptes du Roi René, Paris 1910, iii entries 2408, 3158-3224, summarised in Struik 8-11 and Poulle 225-6.
6 Charles de Bourbon, who received the astrolabe at the time of his being raised to the Cardinalcy. On his fall in 1524 it was further described in the inventory of his seized library 'an astrolabium regale where there are the movements of the Moon, of the sphere and of the seven planets and of the Dragon, all in brass'. Struik 10.
7 Liber Desideratus, sig. a7v
8 Cf . Poulle i 507.
9 Simon de Phares, n. 5.
10. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ms Lat 7276B. It is fully described in Poulle. Cf. Poulle i 136-45.
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Bibliographie
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Liber Desideratus super celestium motuum indagatione sine calculo, [Lyon] 1494.
2nd edition Cremona 1495
3rd edition, revised by Camillo Leonardi, Liber Desideratus canonum equatorii celestium motuum absque calculo,Venice 1496
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Adresse ; enseigne ; période ; source
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Carpentras
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Identifiant
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1360
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ark:/18469/1rbkn