Introduction to "Stars, Kingdoms, Beliefs and Masses"

That a star could be “without consequences” was far from obvious in the period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance; and it was even less so in reference to the great events of history – the same evoked in these verses (time, government, economy): the status and effective value of large-scale forecasts was indeed widely discussed within the three main cultural traditions of the Mediterranean – Arabic, Hebrew and Latin – from multiple, and often surprising, perspectives.