Note 2836 — Chapter XXX · GERBERT AND THE INTRODUCTION OF ARABIC ASTROLOGY

BN 17868, fols. 2r-12v. “Incipit liber Alchandrei” (Wickersheimer) or Alchandri (Bubnov) “philosophi. Luna est frigide nature et argentei coloris.” In a passage of Addit. 17808, fol. 86v, where the years from the beginning of the world are being reckoned, the year of writing is apparently given as 1040 A. D., but the existence of the treatise in BN 17868 shows that it was written before 1000. Also there is something wrong with the passage mentioned in Addit. 17808—as is very apt to be the case with such figures in medieval MSS—for the number of years from the beginning of the world to the birth of Christ is given as 4970 and then the sum of the two as 6018 instead of 6010 years, while at fol. 85v other estimates are given of the number of years between the Creation and the Incarnation.