LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

408 VIcTOR GODEAnU
in 1716 in paris with a dedication to the prince nikolaou Mavrokordatos,
summarizing his understanding of the scientific knowledge of his time.
Chrysanthos the scientist – astronomer, geographer and cartographer
We have to realize that Chrysanthos lived an epoch very much close
to the changes that Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), Johannes Kepler (1571–
1630) and his own illustrious contemporary Sir Isaac newton (1642–
1727) brought to the classical science by their researches in Astronomy,
Mathematics and physics. Modern scientific knowledge at the end of the
17 th and beginning of the 18 th century was just reaching its blooming stage.
At the university of padua, where Chrysanthos accomplished his studies
eighty years later, Galileo held the chair of Mathematics for 18 th years
(1592–1610), made his research on motion experimenting on falling bodies
and wrote most of his work. When Chrysanthos visited Cassini in paris,
he had the opportunity to observe with his own eyes Jupiter’ satellites,
discovered by Galileo just few decades earlier, and probably the Moon
surface. nevertheless, by any means, the general scientific knowledge of
the epoch was not adequately constituted. Chrysanthos parisian mentor in
science, Jean Cassini, was rather conservative in his theories, although he
made very important observations and research – he considered the earth
perfectly spherical, and elaborated an astronomical geocentric system.
Although very opened to the new science, Chrysanthos notaras
expressed the conservative line of Greek orthodoxy anchored in the old
testament. In this respect, his vision about the cosmos was declaratively
ptolemaic. In his portrait shown on the opening pages of his scientific
book Introduction on Geographical and Spherical, Chrysanthos, wearing
monastic clothing and the customary headdress, is resting his left hand on
the sphere of the earth, while holding in the right hand a pair of compasses.
the symbolic meaning of this formal depiction is a statement endorsing his
support for the ancient idea of earth being in the centre of the universe.
on the front page of the same book, we find two images side-by-side, one
showing the earth surrounded by the geographical coordinates of longitude
and latitude, and the other showing the earth in the very middle of the
zodiac. A similar representation can be found on the lower part of the
globe map (dated padua, 1700) that precedes the text. In fact, the very
content of his book about the science of Geography and the Spheres is
founded on the ptolemaic system, which he explicitly consider to be the
premise of the correct understanding of what a spherical system is: “… but