John Westwyk

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John Westwyk
Bornc.1350
Gorham-Westwick, Hertfordshire, England
Diedc.1400
St Albans?
OccupationMonk, astronomer, instrument-maker, mathematician, crusader

John Westwyk (/wɛstwɪk/; also known as John of Westwick; Latin: Johannes de Westwyke; c.1350-c.1400) was an English astronomer, adventurer, Benedictine monk, and author of the Equatorie of the Planetis.

Biography[]

Little is known of John Westwyk's early life. The name Westwyk is almost certainly a toponym; he presumably came from the hamlet of Gorham-Westwick, two miles west of St Albans.[1] He was a monk of St Albans Abbey by 1380, and was most likely ordained between 1368 and 1379.[2] Like many monks, he was probably the son of a mid-ranking peasant or yeoman.[3]

Westwyk probably received a basic education in the almonry school associated with the Abbey. Like around ten per cent of the St Albans monks, he may have attended the University of Oxford.[4] He certainly studied astronomy within St Albans Abbey, and wrote out or annotated at least two astronomy books while there.[5] Both books contained works by former abbot Richard of Wallingford (r. 1327-36), testament to Wallingford's longstanding influence on the intellectual life of the abbey.[6]

Between 1380 and 1383 Westwyk was a monk at Tynemouth Priory in Northumbria.[7] Tynemouth was a dependent cell of St Albans Abbey, and monks were often sent there from the mother house either as punishment or to prove themselves.[8] While at Tynemouth, Westwyk continued his studies, annotating at least two manuscripts.[9] In 1383 Westwyk joined the Despenser's Crusade, which captured Gravelines and unsuccessfully besieged Ypres. According to the St Albans chronicler Thomas Walsingham, Westwyk returned safely from the failed crusade.[10]

Nothing is known of Westwyk in the years 1383-93. However, in 1393 he drafted a set of tables and produced an instruction manual for a planetary equatorium, now known as the Equatorie of the Planetis.[11] His tables show he was working in London, probably at the Abbot of St Albans's inn on Broad Street.[12] His equatorium drew on earlier designs such as that by , and is somewhat similar to an equatorium that survives in the library of Merton College, Oxford, but was easier to make and more user-friendly than earlier models.[13] He evidently built it himself, albeit not at full scale.[14] His instructions were written out in the Middle English pioneered for astronomy by Geoffrey Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe, and he cites Chaucer by name.[15] In the accompanying tables, he demonstrated painstaking copying and a flair for precise calculation.[16]

Later in life, Westwyk probably returned to St Albans Abbey. He is named as a monk of St Albans on a papal indult dated May 1397, and this may have been an end-of-life one.[17] There is no record of him after this, and it seems likely that he died soon afterwards.

Modern study[]

Westwyk's Equatorie manuscript was in the library of Peterhouse, Cambridge by 1538, and probably by 1472.[18][19] It was discovered there by the historian Derek de Solla Price in December 1951, making headlines worldwide.[20] Price believed the manuscript was authored by, and written in the hand of, Geoffrey Chaucer.[21] This was a controversial claim, and was treated with some scepticism by Chaucer scholars,[22] though it received influential backing from the historian of astronomy John North.[23] The manuscript was shown to be in the hand of John Westwyk by Kari Anne Rand in 2014.[24][25] In 2020 Westwyk was the subject of a full biography by , which revealed new evidence for his life and work.[26]

Sources[]

  • Falk, Seb (2020). The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0241374252.
  • North, J.D. (1988). Chaucer's Universe. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-812668-9.
  • Price, Derek J. (1955). The Equatorie of the Planetis. Cambridge University Press. p. 3. ISBN 9781107404274.
  • Rand, Kari Anne (2015). "The Authorship of The Equatorie of the Planetis Revisited". Studia Neophilologica. 87 (1): 15–35. doi:10.1080/00393274.2014.982355. S2CID 161392650.
  • Rand Schmidt, Kari Anne (1993). The Authorship of the Equatorie of the Planetis. D.S. Brewer. ISBN 0-85991-370-8.

References[]

  1. ^ Rand 2015, p. 19.
  2. ^ Falk 2020, p. 79.
  3. ^ Falk 2020, p. 18.
  4. ^ Clark, James G. (2004). A Monastic Renaissance at St. Albans: Thomas Walsingham and His Circle, c. 1350–1440. Oxford University Press. p. 65.
  5. ^ Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 657, ff. 1v-52v; Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 144, f. 80r.
  6. ^ Falk, Seb (2019). "'I found this written in the other book': Learning Astronomy in Late Medieval Monasteries". Studies in Church History. 55: 129–44, at 134. doi:10.1017/stc.2018.18.
  7. ^ Falk 2020, p. 162.
  8. ^ Rand 2015, pp. 21–23.
  9. ^ Cambridge, Pembroke MS 82, f. 1r; London, British Library Harley MS 4664, f. 125v.
  10. ^ Walsingham, Thomas (1867). Gesta Abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. H. T. Riley. London: Rolls Series. p. II:416.
  11. ^ Cambridge, Peterhouse MS 75.I
  12. ^ Falk 2020, p. 242.
  13. ^ Falk 2020, pp. 273–9.
  14. ^ Falk 2020, p. 269.
  15. ^ Rand Schmidt 1993, pp. 14, 40–6.
  16. ^ Falk, Seb (2016). "Learning Medieval Astronomy through Tables: The Case of the Equatorie of the Planetis". Centaurus. 58 (1–2): 6–25. doi:10.1111/1600-0498.12114.
  17. ^ Rand 2015, p. 25.
  18. ^ Cambridge, Peterhouse MS 75.I
  19. ^ Rand Schmidt 1993, pp. 112–3.
  20. ^ Falk, Seb (2014). "The scholar as craftsman: Derek de Solla Price and the reconstruction of a medieval instrument". Notes and Records of the Royal Society. 68 (2): 111–134. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2013.0062. PMC 4006160. PMID 24921105.
  21. ^ Price 1955, p. 3.
  22. ^ Edwards, A.S.G.; Mooney, Linne R. (1991). "Is the "Equatorie of the Planets" a Chaucer Holograph?". The Chaucer Review. 26 (1): 31–42. JSTOR 25094179.
  23. ^ North 1988, pp. 169–77.
  24. ^ Bridge, Mark (18 June 2020). "'Forgotten' monk paved the way for Copernicus". The Times. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  25. ^ Rand 2015.
  26. ^ Falk 2020.

External links[]

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