JHAJournal for the History of Astronomy0021-82861753-8556SAGE PublicationsSage UK: London, England10.1177/0021828621102621010.1177_00218286211026210Articles‘El Capri Kylex’: A Franciscan astronomical mnemonicFalkSebUniversity of Cambridge, UKSeb Falk, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, CB2 3RH, UK. Email: sldf2@cam.ac.uk1082021523267288© The Author(s) 20212021SAGE Publicationshttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

This article examines the role of memory techniques in medieval astronomy. Using a mnemonic written by a Franciscan friar c. 1330 as a case study, it shows how astronomers and astrologers simplified the sky for practical purposes, using verses and codes to make their science memorable. The article decodes the mnemonic and its underlying astronomical data, assessing its usefulness, memorability and adaptability alongside some other popular astronomical and calendrical mnemonics of the later Middle Ages. It argues that astronomical learning could be a creative, playful activity. And it situates the astrological practices of this particular friar, who made wide-ranging annotations in a 13th-century astronomical compendium, within the scientific and educational traditions of his order.

AstrologyeducationFranciscansmedieval astronomymemorymnemonicstypesetterts1