On October 8, 2018, Dr. Brandon Hawk and curator Dot Porter met to talk about these ancient books, and to compare them with manuscripts from the collection of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania. This series is a record of those discussions.

LJS 26 – Algorismus and Tractatum de sphaera, by Joannes de Sacro Bosco

In this video we compare the diagrams in the Star Wars manuscripts to LJS 26, a thirteenth-century astronomical manuscript that contains several diagrams illustrating how medieval people (specifically Sacro Bosco, the author of the texts in this manuscript) conceived of the system of the earth, moon, and sun, and how those celestial bodies related to each other. When we look at the Star Wars manuscript diagrams what we see is a similar attempt to illustrate how those celestial bodies relate to each other, only – we think – across systems instead of within them.

Screenshots from the film and images from The Art of Star Wars are used under the Fair Use doctrine described in Section 107 of the Copyright Act (https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107)