The Heavens

In 1364, only about 60 years after Europe’s very first mechanical clocks, a professor of medicine in Padua completed (after 16 years’ work) one of the technological marvels of the Middle Ages: a clock with seven faces showing the movements of the sun, the moon, and the five planets of the Ptolemaic system, together with the legal, religious, and civil calendars of the day. Why should a medical doctor be so fascinated with stars, planets, and time-keeping? Such questions open up a whole world of connections between ancient, medieval and Renaissance conceptions of health and the heavens.