Criticism of trepidation models and advocacy of uniform precession in medieval Latin astronomy (Q2357600)

Medieval astronomy replaced Ptolemy's linear precession with so-called ``models of trepidation'', considered ``necessary to account for divergences between parameters and data transmitted by Ptolemy and those found by later astronomers'' (p.~211). Given that ``the phenomenon [models of trepidation] they were designed to explain was a fictitious one'' (p.~212), the subject received scant attention in the standard histories of medieval astronomy. These standard accounts portray models of trepidation as having ``dominated European astronomy from the twelfth century to the Copernican Revolution, meeting [their] demise only in the last quarter of the sixteenth century thanks to the observational work of Tycho Brahe'' (p.~211). \textit{N. M. Swerdlow} [``Tycho, Longomontanus, and Kepler on Ptolemy's solar observations and theory, precession of the equinoxes, and obliquity of the ecliptic'', in: Ptolemy in perspective: use and criticism of his work from antiquity to the nineteenth century. Dordrecht: Springer. 151--202 (2010; \url{doi:10.1007/978-90-481-2788-7_7})] has corrected this view, by showing that Tycho Brahe ``took Ptolemy's data and the existing evidence for long-term variations in the relevant parameters very seriously indeed and that his assistants Christian Longomontanus and Johannes Kepler maintained this stance in their later writings'' (p.~212). The author of the paper under review goes even further, and shows that ``Latin astronomers of the late Middle Ages expressed criticisms of trepidation models or rejected their validity in favour of linear precession'' (p.~212). The survey of these Latin medieval sources covers: (i) those preceding 1320, in which the Toledan tables and the theory of ``access and recess'' play an important role, (ii) those after 1320, in which the Alfonsine tables take the role of the Toledan tables, and combine a form of trepidation with linear precession, (iii) critical reactions to this combined model in 14th century sources, and (iv) \textit{De motu octavae spherae} (1513) by Agostino Ricci.