The Crown and the Cosmos

With his elegant and erudite study, Hayton offers a stellar contribution to the growing literature on astrology and its significance for understanding premodern politics. This wonderful book will undoubtedly be a cornerstone work on the topic for years to come.

A special treat. If you're a student of European history, this well-researched and well-written book will hold your interest.

The Crown and the Cosmos is a thorough study of astrology's functioning as a political tool in early Renaissance courtly contexts. Astrology becomes a high-stakes tool for political praxis and symbolism, and Darin Hayton is particularly good at giving further enhancement to the astrological version of the old figure of the philosopher-king in the fifteenth century. This book is a valuable addition to the literature on Renaissance astrological culture.

Hayton is a skilled linguist, and this book benefits from his smoothly crafted translations or paraphrases of Viennese astrological texts. Readers who are unfamiliar with the pragmatic astrological literature of the early sixteenth century will learn much about how astrology worked or, to be more precise, about what astrology sounded like from Hayton's extensive translations.

Hayton's writing is fluent and engaging, and his content is structured with admirable and accessible clarity. The book should appeal to all Renaissance and early modern historians, crossing as it does between politics, astrology and astronomy. I suggest that historians of astronomy especially should read Hayton's work as it comes as a timely reminder that astronomy was far more than a matter of mathematics, but was absolutely and totally embedded in almost all aspects of culture. Hayton's deep scholarship makes a significant and valuable contribution to our understanding of Renaissance culture in the fullest sense.