#medieval clocks

[theseimmortalcoils]

More on Prague's medieval Astronomical Clock;

First image is from this travel blog

Second from Steve Collis on Flickr

and the last one is from this travel blog.

This article from My Modern Met talks a little about it's history and explains how to read the different dials.

[medievalhistory]

For much of late Antiquity, the 'mechanical arts' was seen as an activity beneath the attention of the learned. But this view on (what we would today call) technology changed by the late Middle Ages. One symptom of this was the positive correlation between technology and temperance, as exemplified by this sketch from the fifteenth century which shows a woman, representing Temperance, surrounded by technologies: she is sitting on a windmill, she has spurs on her feet, a bridle is in her mouth, she holds eyeglasses in her right hand, and there is a clock on top of her head. All of these juxtapositions would seem to suggest that mechanical instruments were seen as congruous with religious virtue or moderation. The accompanying text reads: "He who is mindful of the clock / Is punctual in all his acts... / He who puts glasses to his eyes / See better what's around him... / The mill which sustains our bodies / Never is immoderate."

Which naturally raises the following questions for us modern people: Does technology make us more moral? Does increased morality make us more open to technology?

Source: Allegory of Temperantia. From De quattuor vertutibus cardinalibus by Pseudo-Seneca. Dresden, Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Ms. Oc. 79, fol. 68 v. Deutsche Fotothek.