Armillary

Armillary (pronounced ahr-muh-ler-ee or ahr-mil-uh-ree)

(1) A shape, object or conception consisting wholly or substantially of hoops or rings.

(2) Something resembling an armlet or bracelet.

(3) Of or relating to bracelets.

1655–1665: From the New Latin armillaris, the construct being the Classical Latin arm (illa) (bracelet; armlet; arm ring; hoop) + -ill(a) (the diminutive suffix) + -ary.  The suffix -illa was an inflection of -illus (nominative/vocative feminine singular & nominative / accusative / vocative neuter plural).  The suffix -illā was the ablative feminine singular of -illus, itself a misinterpretation of the diminutive suffix -lus on such nouns as sigillum (signum + -lus) and used freely, the example set by medieval translators.  It was used to form adjectives from nouns.  The suffix –ary (of or pertaining to) was a back-formation from unary and similar, from the Latin adjectival suffixes -aris and -arius; appended to many words, often nouns, to make an adjective form and use was not restricted to words of Latin origin.  The Latin noun armilla dates from the early eighteenth century and was from armus (shoulder, upper arm) from the primitive Indo-European root ar- (to fit together) and came to be used in many specialized senses in anatomy, engineering etc.  Armillary is an adjective (although informally it has been used as a (non-standard) noun).

The armillary sphere.

Ptolemaic Armillary Sphere of the mid-twentieth century, believed to have been built in Italy or Spain, pasteboard with printed paper on an ebonized wood base.

Armillary spheres seem first to have been constructed by the astronomers of Antiquity and drawings and documents relating to one used by Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria (circa 100-170) who, in the way of the polymaths of the epoch was an astrologer, mathematician, musicologist and cartographer as well as an astronomer.  The devices were mathematical instruments used to demonstrate the movement of the celestial sphere about the unmoving earth which was the centre of all creation.  Although now understood fundamentally to be wrong, in the centuries from Antiquity, throughout the Middle Ages and into the Modern era, the armillary sphere remained the accepted model of orthodox understanding, despite the Ancient Greek mathematician & astronomer Aristarchus of Samos (circa 310-circa 230 BC) having proposed a heliocentric model (placing the Sun at the centre of the universe, the Earth revolving around the Sun once a year and rotating about its axis daily).  His ideas received little support and the geocentric model (with the Earth as the centre of the universe) prevailed, the Church coming to declare that to suggest otherwise was heresy.  It wasn’t until the Renaissance that advances in observational capacity and mathematical techniques that the heliocentric theory became compelling.

Wearing an array (the industry prefers “stacked”) of bracelets is called the “armillary effect”: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates.

However, as a model of a geocentric cosmos, the armillary sphere is a mechanical masterpiece.  At the centre sits static a small, brass sphere representing the Earth and about it rotate a set of rings representing the heavens, one complete revolution being the 24 hour day.  The classic spheres of the late medieval period were mounted at the celestial poles which defined the axis of rotation and they typically included an equatorial ring while parallel to this, two smaller rings representing the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn each midway to the poles sat north & south.  Of especial interest to astrologers (for centuries an respectable academic discipline), touching each of these circles, and crossing the celestial equator at points representing the equinoxes (equal hours of night and day) was placed the “ecliptic circle” or Zodiac ring.  This ring tracked the annual path of the Sun as (independently of the other stars), it made its unique journey through the constellations of the Zodiac.  The signs of the Zodiac were engraved upon the ecliptic ring which, being calibrated with a calendar scale, enabled the device to be used to model the apparent motion of the Sun and the stars at any time of the year and though of course conceptually flawed, it could be use not only to model the movements and relative geometry of the heavens, but accurately to carry out calculations such as the times of sunrise and sunset and the length of a day.  The spheres could be relative simple and build for a single purpose or intricate (some for example including the Moon) and the charm of the design was that it was scalable, only the dimensions ever needing to be increased to incorporate added complexity; the basic design never changed.