The sky of Salamanca can be seen this month in the firmament

Salamanca maintains a particular relationship with knowledge, a taste for erudition and an affinity for excellence inherited from generation to generation. If there is a decisive moment in the history and identity of the city, it is the construction of the University, an event that took place under a specific astral configuration. The wise men of the moment, among the most advanced in the world, decided to capture this configuration in a vault in which art, science and pedagogy conspire to form an exalted work. The Sky of Salamanca keeps a secret linked to the soul of this city that manifests itself again this August, in which the Sun will once again be located in the constellation of Leo and Mercury in Virgo, between the 15th and 28th. The design of such astral ordination remains unassailable. For centuries no one wondered why the astrologers of the University of Salamanca chose precisely that configuration to be immortalized by Fernando Gallego, of whose authorship there is no documentary evidence but which has not been discussed either. This chariot pulled by eagles represents Mercury, with the symbols of Virgo and Gemini on its wheels U. DE SALAMANCA The adoption of a vaulted enclosure for the Library, instead of the usual wooden cover in use in the fifteenth century, shows that the promoters of the work had projected an iconographic program prior to its construction, in 1474. Among those professors of the Study of Salamanca, there are names such as Abraham Zacut (1452-1510) and Juan de Salaya, professor of Astrology between 1464 and 1469. The result of the work transcended its pedagogical objective, to provide scholars with a visual encyclopedia of the entire world. astrological knowledge It soon became clear that the result of the work transcended its pedagogical objective, that of providing scholars with a kind of visual encyclopedia of all astrological knowledge compiled up to that time. At the end of the 15th century, the professor at the Salmantino Studio, Lucio Marineo Siculo, already valued these paintings, emphasizing “the greatest taste that may fall on the part of those who look at them.” The vault would have to face throughout history, however, multiple threats. In 1506, due to humidity problems, Juan de Ypres carried out a dubious restoration, rather a repainting, which did not respect Gallego’s techniques, which in addition to tempera used oil. The original stars were raised and he smoothed them out. Thus it survived until, in 1763, the University planned a more fashionable neoclassical renovation. A large group of cloisters claimed the magnificence of the work and Gavilán Tomé, the architect, had to opt for a false vault located five meters below the original, which now looks over the Chapel of San Jerónimo. During this work the headwall was touched and the original vault was destabilized. In July 1763 it was still standing, but in 1764 it was no longer. Of a vault that was 23 meters long by 8.70 wide, a pictorial surface of almost 400 square meters, only one of its ends remained. It is believed that the remains of the collapse could have been used to fill in the headwall, but there is no documentary evidence of what really happened, there are no clues to investigate the disappearance. The Sistine Chapel, made only 30 years later, with 14 meters wide by 40 long, would follow this same structure and model with only a little more surface area. It is well known that Salamanca is nicknamed the ‘little Rome’ and it is not unreasonable to look at the lost vault as a precedent for Michelangelo’s. The preserved part remained hidden and lost for 150 years, a period in which pigeons were the only privileged ones with access and during which they caused further damage, until Professor García Boiza, in 1901, rediscovered it. A long and slow process of recovery begins there. In 1950, the painting was removed from its original location using the ‘strappo’ technique, which consists of applying a layer of glue and a canvas to drag the paint layer, to later be restored in Barcelona. When the German astronomer Ernst Zinner, former director of the Remeis Observatory in Bamberg and a great expert in Renaissance astronomy, visited Salamanca in 1959, he was amazed to see this sky. Zinner first established the astral configuration that he represents: the Sun is in Leo and Mercury, marked by the star on his chest, is in Virgo. He was also the first to underline the intention of pointing to a specific date. “The key to fixing the date represented is that there are not only constellations, which form what the Greeks called the eighth sphere of fixed stars, but there are also two planets”, explains Carlos Tejero, together with José María Martínez Frías, curator of the exhibition that accompanies the repetition of this Sky of Salamanca. The Sun was close to Leo in the second fortnight of 1475, the date on which it is believed that the painter of the original vault looked up at the sky U. SALAMANCA «All that remained was to see that we have a band of zodiacal constellations through which They move the planets around the ecliptic. We have five zodiacal constellations, almost 150 degrees, almost half of the celestial sphere. And we also have what we do not see, none of the other planets that were known at that time are included: there is not the Moon, nor Venus, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn. What we had to look for was that configuration, which we have called the days or years of the Sky of Salamanca », explains Tejero, author of ‘Astronomy at the University of Salamanca at the end of the 15th century’. Tejero is the one who has calculated the date of the astral configuration registered in the vault and who has anticipated that it will be repeated in August, in addition to predicting that it will not do so again until the year 2060. For this he has used the most precise technology in the ephemeris generation: NASA’s JPL Horizons program. “What I did was search around the period in which the Library was built or around significant dates or events for the University. As the Study was founded in 1218, I started from 1200 to 1600, but it does not appear in 1218 or 1254, the date on which the Magna Carta was granted to the University. However, between the construction date, from 1474 to 1479, and the decoration from 1483 to 1486, there is a year with that astral configuration: 1475 », he details. “So the circumstantial evidence leads us to that month of August, between the 15th and the 28th.” Mercury has two astral houses (Virgo and Gemini), but in August 1475 he was close to Virgo, his nocturnal house U. SALAMANCA Nobody can be sure of the reason for choosing that sky. In 1475 Salamanca experienced relevant events: the start of the war of succession to the Castilian crown, the struggle between Enrique IV’s sister, Isabel, and her daughter Juana, known disparagingly as ‘la Beltraneja’. «In March of that same year, the cloister swears fidelity to the Catholic Monarchs and we know that on May 28 Fernando el Católico was in Salamanca, but it is still not the month of August. On the other hand, the construction works begin in 74. Who tells us that it is not the sky of the first anniversary of the works? Perhaps the most reasonable is that hypothesis, but it remains a mystery. And like any work of art, if it contains a mystery, it questions us even more », he suggests. What is clear is that this sky responds to a very high-level cultural, ideological and philosophical context, which supposes a symbolic hinge in the closing of a scientific-spiritual era and the opening of another, propitiated in part by the creation of the first Chair of Astrology, in 1460 and its first occupant, Nicolás Polonio. «One of the most influential characters in this history was Benedict XIII, Pope Luna, who was papal visitor of the University of Salamanca in 1385. On that occasion he made a series of recommendations that were not taken into account, but in 1411, when he was already Pope, he gave the constitutions that would finally set Salamanca on course to become the most important University in Europe: he ordered the construction of its own building, what we know today as the Escuelas Mayores; the construction of a Library, whose vault was the sky of Salamanca; and the institution of a chair of Astrology », points out Tejero. «The usual thing then was to decorate the libraries with the seven liberal arts, the Trivium and the Cuadrivium. But some newcomers to an institution over 200 years old, from a chair that was barely 14 years old, opt for a project without parallel in European university history». At that time there were only two sky maps, this one and the Vienna Circle one. In the Illustrated Circle of Nüremberg, Alberto Durero would print the first map in 1515, 35 years after the one of Salamanca. El Cielo de Salamanca deals with this transition without renouncing tradition and basing itself on ancient sources. He personifies the stars according to the engravings made by Maso Finiguerra in Florence, which in turn drink from Higino’s ‘Poeticon Astronomicon’. It represents the 48 constellations of the Eighth Sphere, compiled by Ptolemy (ca. 100-170 AD) in his great work ‘Mathematike Syntaxis’, a reference for 1,400 years, until Copernicus. INSCRIPTION OF THE ONLY PRESERVED FAJÓN ARCH “I will see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established” Illustrates the Boyero, Hercules, Serpentarius and Serpent, the five zodiacal ones, Hydra, Chair, the Raven, Centaur , Lupus , the Beast and the Corona Austral. And all this without taking our eyes off Faith. The Latin inscription circulates through the only conserved fajón arch ‘VIDEBO CELOS TUOS OPERA DIGITORUM, LUNAM ET STELLAS QUE TU FUNDASTI’ (I will see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars). which you have established), beginning of the eighth psalm of the Vulgate. It is a scientific work, a great textbook, which also proclaimed that the scientific contemplation of the sky should not make us forget that as many wonders as are contemplated in it can only come from God.