Rearguing Transtecter

Well, this is annoying. I'd like to declare George Transtecter a fictive author unrelated to Georg Tannstetter and be done with it, but I keep running through the counter-arguments. So for the sake of fairness, here's the argument that Transtecter is really Tannstetter.

1. It is only to be expected that Tannstetter selected different ruling planets for the year in the Latin and French practica for 1513, and predicted entirely different fortunes for those governed by Mercury, because the Latin practica was calculated for Vienna (48 degrees north), while the French one was calculated for Leuven (51 degrees north). Tannstetter was a university-trained astrologer who would have known how to take the different latitutdes into account, and the astrological elections in question are sensitive to changes in location (see J. D. North's Horoscopes and History).
2. Although Tannstetter was in Vienna, he composed a practica for  Leuven because of an inquiry from there, as the preface to the French practica states: "Car ie suis prest tousiours deu respondre a Louuain ou ailleurs deuant tous maistres qui sentendent a cest faculte." Since he was writing for Leuven rather than Vienna, Tannstetter primarily addressed the fortunes of the Low Countries and neighboring lands, rather than Central Europe.
3. The French edition calls itself a translation from the Latin, and it was printed in Geneva, so it's not surprising that some details (like Tannstetter's name) became deformed somewhere along the way.
4. The French practica calls its author a "docteur en medicine et en astrologie." The Latin practica for the same year refers to Tannstetter, who had only just begun his studies of medicine, only as "astronomie professor." This may not be an error: according to Franz Stuhlhofer's essential article (“Georg Tannstetter,” Jahrbuch des Vereins für Geschichte der Stadt Wien 37 [1981]: 24), Tannstetter advanced to doctor of medicine in May 1513. Midyear is late for the publication of a practica, but if Tannstetter had answered an inquiry after May 11, he could have genuinely given his academic credentials as doctor of both astronomy and medicine. That would make the French practica the earliest printed work to reflect Tannstetter's doctorate in medicine. On the other hand, the French practica includes predictions for the weather beginning in January. There's still something odd about the timeline here.
   
5. In 1523, Tannstetter expressed disdain for Arabic astrologers, preferring instead the Greeks for the foundations of his art. In 1513, however, when the French practica cites Haly and Albumasar, his attitude may not have been so one-sided. His earliest known practica, for 1505, cites as his authority the rules of "Ptholomei Pheludinai, Hali abenragel, Albumasaris, et aliorum in scientia stellarum edoctorum." His practica for 1512 cites Ptolemy, Haly Abenrodan, and Almansor.  Disqualifying the French practica based on its citation of Arabic authorities really is an untenable argument.
6. Both the French and Latin practicas subdivide human fortunes according to the governing planet. The French practica assigns people in the typical manner according to occupational classes, so that the children of Venus, for examples, are defined as "ieunes galans damoiselles pucelles chantres menestriers danceurs et tous ceulx qui ayment musicque et plaisance." Tannstetter's practicas for 1511, 1519, and 1524 rather unusually subdivide people according to their nativity, while the Latin practicas for 1512 and 1513 do not specify the basis of their subdivision. The different approaches raises serious doubts about the authorship of the French practica, and would be more serious still if not for Tannstetter's practica for 1505, which does assign people to planets by occupational class (including the group, for example, of "Puelle, matrone, cantores, Instrumentorum musicalium pulsatores.")
7. What we're left with is a structural argument: Tannstetter's practicas maintain a nearly constant structure from 1505 to 1525, and the French practica does not follow it. The table below compares the organization of the two practicas.

Latin 1513	French 1513
Dedication to Maximilian I
Laudatory verses
1. General configuration of the year	Introduction
2. Governing planets	Governing planets
3. War and peace	General disposition of the year
4. Disease	Winter weather
5. Agriculture	Spring weather
6. Various regions and cities	Summer weather
7. Human fortunes by planet	Autumn weather
8. General disposition of the four seasons	Dispositions of the twelve months
9. Lunar conjunctions by month	Agricultural fertility and price changes
	Disease
	War and peace
	Human fortunes according to ruling planet
	Various regions and cities
	Conclusion
	Tabular almanac

In other words, the French practica places Tannstetter's customary final chapters at the beginning of the practica. It's not impossible that a printer could have done that on their own initiative to follow the local style, but it seems unlikely that Tannstetter himself would have done so.

Now that I've gone through it again, I'm somewhat more inclined to see Transtecter as Tannstetter, but with some significant distortions occurring between Vienna and Geneva, and a few other odd things going on. We still can't be sure that the French practica really is Tannstetter's, but it's moving further into the realm of possibility.

I suspect that Georg Tannstetter and George Transtecter are not the same person

But that doesn't mean that I think George Transtecter is a real person.

This week, e-rara.ch released digital editions of several French prognostic pamphlets printed in Geneva, including translations of the Practica auf Europa of Paracelsus, the practicas for 1533 of Anton Brelochs and for 1523 of Johannes Stabius, a practica for 1508 by "Haly Nyvord," and another for 1513 by "George Transtecter."

Now I don't believe for a minute that "George Transtecter" is supposed to be anything else except the name of Georg Tannstetter, a prominent Viennese astrologer who published practicas for 1505-1525, especially since the name "George Transtecter" (or even just "Transtecter") is found nowhere else. This doesn't appear to be a case of slight variants resulting in two authorial names (see "Separated at birth" I and II), however. The problem is that Tannstetter's practica for 1513, available in facsimile, is already known, and it differs in fundamental ways from Transtecter's. Tannstetter selected Mars and Venus as the ruling planets for the year, while Transtecter chose Saturn and the Sun. Tannstetter refers to the authority of Ptolemy and Hippocrates, while Transtecter also refers to the Arabic astronomers Albumasar and Haly. The arrangement of chapters and topics are entirely different. Tannstetter predicts adverse fortune and terror for those ruled by Mercury, while Transtecter predicts good fortune and luxury for the same people. Tannstetter's prognostication for lands and cities is broadly concerned with central Europe and mentions Vienna by name - where Tannstetter lived and worked - while Transtecter's prognostication is cast for Louvain and included the fortunes of France, England, Scotland, Brabant, and Flanders, and the cities of Louvain, Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent.

What I suspect is going on here is that someone else's prognostication was published under Tannstetter's name, or a name close enough to profit from Tannstetter's renown, and perhaps imitating his style as well. Contemporary astrologers including Lucas Gauricus, Johannes Virdung, and, a decade later, Tannstetter himself complained of their names being falsely attached to others' prognostications. That seems to be the case here as well.

I could be convinced otherwise. The two practicas are not entirely lacking in similarity. Perhaps Tannstetter was asked to write a prognostication for Louvain, and the difference in latitude between Vienna and Louvain led to different predictions for the same groups of people. But for now, I remain very suspicious of "George Transtecter."

A short review: Allyson F. Creasman, Censorship and Civic order in Reformation Germany

Allyson F. Creasman. Censorship and Civic Order in Reformation Germany, 1517-1648: 'Printed Poison and Evil Talk.' St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2012. xi + 282 pp. ISBN 978-1409410010.

When I read secondary literature, especially monographs, I'm almost always in search of specific facts or historical context. Usually I'll use the index to find what I need, or at most skim through to find the interesting parts. Censorship and Civic Order in Reformation Germany was one of those rare exceptions where I found myself carefully reading the whole book because it was not only highly relevant to my own research, but also full of compelling, dramatic stories. These are, moreover, stories that we haven't all heard before, as they are based on extensive archival work, principally in the Augsburg city archives. I wish now that I had been able to read Censorship and Civic Order before finishing the manuscript of "Wilhelm Friess," as I constantly found myself mentally comparing events in Augsburg to affairs in Antwerp.

What I most appreciated about Censorship and Civic Order was how it placed censorship in context - legal, historical, social, and economic. We see not just the laws passed by the Augsburg city council, but also the precarious political situation of an Imperial city during the Reformation that motivated the laws, and also the measures taken by printers and others both to resist and to accommodate censorship, and also the religious and economic concerns that motivated them, and also their revisions of those views when under threat of torture. By examining all sides of the phenomenon of censorship, the author proves her point that "censorship was as much a product of public opinion as a force acting upon it" (227).

For a publication based on archival material, I would have liked to have seen transcriptions of the original text provided in the footnotes in addition to the English translations, although that may have increased the book's length beyond the publisher's limit. I also think that a VD16 number should always be provided for sixteenth-century German printed books, as that identifies an edition unambiguously and makes it easier to find further information about a printed edition. But these are minor quibbles that do not detract from the scholarly accomplishment of Censhorship and Civic Order or from my enjoyment of reading it.