Annotation X

”We have seen his star.” — Matthew 2

Whether Christ's nativity could be foreknown from genethliacal [astrological] divinations.

Peter d’Ailly (Petrus Aliacus), cardinal-priest — disputing in his 30th Question on Genesis, and in the book On Laws and Sects, concerning the star seen by the Magi in the East — shows that those Magi, being most skilled in the science of the stars, could from astrological contemplations have foreknown the coming nativity and life of Christ; yet not with that certainty by which they afterward recognized Christ’s birth when the new star pointed it out. For although Christ’s conception and nativity exceed all the powers of the heavens and all the faculties of nature in most respects, yet in some [respects] the virtues of the heavens and stars — like handmaids serving their lord — most abundantly furnished to the newborn Christ the friendly lights and benign influences which they had received from Christ. For that reason it was possible for the Magi, besides this appearance of the recent star, to have foreknown by two other indications that a man distinguished in religion, empire, and glory was to be born:

First, from a certain great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn — which, in the sixth year before our Savior’s birth, came together in the sign of Cancer, all the astronomers of those times predicting that a great change of religions was portended.

Second, from observation of the configuration of the heaven which Christ’s nativity itself had. It fell in the 42nd year of Octavian Augustus, on the eighth of the Kalends of January [25 December], before midnight; and in it the ascendant was the eighth degree of Virgo (which signifies changes of religion); and at the midheaven [was] Saturn, the Sun holding the nadir, and the other planets arranged in that order which the following astronomical diagram represents to you — drawn for the latitude of the city of Jerusalem, distant thirty-six degrees from the Equator.

[Figure] — caption: “The configuration of the planets shining upon the nativity of our Savior Jesus Christ.” A square (diamond-in-square) horoscope chart, centrally titled “FIGURE OF THE HEAVEN AT THE TIME OF THE NATIVITY OF CHRIST.” The twelve houses carry zodiac signs and degrees with planetary symbols — legible among them: Leo 15°, Cancer, Saturn (♄) 15° and Jupiter (♃) near the midheaven, Virgo 8° (ascendant region), Scorpio 8°, Sun (☉) 1°, Aquarius 15°, with the lunar nodes and Mars, Venus, and Mercury distributed around the remaining cusps.

This is d’Ailly’s opinion; which long before, Albert [the Great] — great in his own age — had professed. In the book to which he gave the title Speculum [The Mirror], reporting the description of the sign Virgo handed down by the astronomer Albumasar, he left it written thus: “Albumasar, in his greater Introductorium, treatise six, says: There ascends, in the first face [decan] of that sign [Virgo], a Virgin beautiful and honorable, holding in her hand two ears of grain, and she nurses a boy — and a certain nation calls that boy JESUS; and the star of Virgo ascends with her.” Thus he. But we know that our Lord Jesus Christ was born under the ascendant of that same Virgo — together with this, that the equation of the motion of the eighth sphere at the time of the same [nativity] was eight

degrees and thirty minutes, according to a most certain calculation; and that it was then to be subtracted from the places of the planets found by the canons [tables]. Not because [the Creator] is subject to the motion of the stars, or most desirous of judging the newborn by them — he who had created the stars themselves — but because, when he stretched out the heaven like a skin, forming the book of the universe, he did not wish its lettering to be missing from among these things which, according to his providence, are written in the book of eternity; [nor missing] that most elegant [sign] from nature, that [Christ] should be born of a Virgin — so that assuredly by this it might be signified [that here was] a real and fleshly man who was not being born in the natural way: not that the figure of the heaven was the cause why he should be born, but rather a signification; nay, and more truly, he himself was the cause why the manner of his admirable nativity should be signified through the heaven. Thus far Albert — or someone else under his name; for that book is denied by the learned to be Albert’s.

Augustine disproves this opinion in the fifth book of The City of God, chapter 1. There, after refuting those who say that the stars are efficient causes, in infants’ birth-charts, and distribute to each one being born his lots and fates, he then also confutes those who teach that the positions of the stars at infants’ births are not causes but only signs — signs which signify the future life, character, and fortune of the one being born — writing thus:

“If it be said that the stars rather signify these things than effect them, so that their position is, as it were, a kind of utterance foretelling the future and not producing it (for this was the opinion of no mean men) — as, for example, that Mars so placed signifies a murderer but does not make a murderer — how comes it that the astrologers could never say why, in the life of twins (in their actions, events, professions, arts, honors, and the other things pertaining to human life, and in death itself) there is often so great a diversity that, as far as these matters are concerned, many strangers are more alike to them than the twins are to each other? — twins separated at birth by the tiniest interval of time, yet conceived by one act of intercourse and sown in one and the same moment.”

And below, in the third chapter of the same book, he refutes those who, from the response of Nigidius Figulus, referred that disparity of twins to the whirling of the celestial rotation — which, by the swiftness of both births, would change each infant’s horoscope in a tiny moment of time. He speaks thus:

“In vain is that famous conceit of the potter’s wheel brought forward, which they say Nigidius — disturbed by this question, whence he was called Figulus [the Potter] — gave in answer. For when he had spun a potter’s wheel with all the force he could, he struck it twice with ink, as it ran, as though at one and the same spot, with utmost speed. Then, when the motion had stopped, the marks he had made were found on the rim of that wheel separated by no small interval. So, he says, given the great rapidity of the heavens, even if one twin be born after another with as much speed as I struck the wheel twice, [that interval] amounts to a very great distance in the space of the heavens. Hence come, he says, all those most dissimilar things reported in the characters and fortunes of twins.” — This fabrication is more fragile than the vessels which are shaped by that rotation. For if there is so great a difference in the heaven, which by the constellations is compre-

Suetonius writes that Nigidius, having ascertained the hour of Octavian's birth, foretold that a lord of the world had been born.

From these words of Augustine it is clear that the divination of those who, from the significations of the horoscoping stars, foretell the future outcomes of birth-charts is false and empty — both because there are in the stars no such significations of contingent things, and because, even were they granted to be present, they could be grasped by no human ingenuity. It is likewise plain that the excuses of the recent astrologers are cold and worthless. Of these, some defend their superstition by saying that they ascribe to the stars no efficient force that compels by producing [effects] and imposes necessity, but only a force that inclines; others, consulting for themselves by a more honorable evasion (as they think), say that they deny to the constellations even that very faculty of inclining, and profess in them only a certainty of signifying and forewarning.

Accordingly, the holy Synod of Trent, desiring utterly to overthrow whatever defenses these men make, counted all the judgments of the genethliac art — nay, of the imposture — among the other impieties of sacrilegious divination; and, drawing no distinction between the astromancers who divine either from the efficiency or from the signification of the stars, condemned indiscriminately all their studies and writings, whatever they be, in these words:¹ “All books and writings of geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, onomancy, chiromancy, necromancy — or in which are contained sortileges, sorceries, auguries, auspices, incantations of the magic art — are utterly rejected. And let the bishops diligently see to it that the books, treatises, and indexes of judiciary astrology be not read or kept — [those] which dare to affirm that something will certainly come to pass concerning future contingent outcomes, or fortuitous chances, or those actions which depend on the human will.”

You have what pertains to this argument in book 5, Annotations 15 and 81, and in book 2, under the heading Of Curious Arts.

While I was preparing these things, a certain Saravallius — a theologian not unlearned, but marvelously addicted to the vanity of judiciary [astrology] — fell in with a venal copyist to whom I had given this work to transcribe. And, with that man’s connivance and unbeknownst to me, having read through a great part of the volume at his place, and having read this annotation among the rest, a little later he tore my name to shreds in a company of learned and noble men — clamoring that I was an enemy of the good arts, [I] who affirm that astrology is not an art but a detestable deception and imposture; whereas on the contrary (he said) the divine Thomas — whose very doctrine I profess — approves astrological divinations in many places, and all the learned confess the science of astrology to be most true and excellent; and that it, if rightly understood and handled by those who know it well, presents most useful and admirable predictions of the future. He added

also, from the most approved historians, for the confirmation of his opinion, a long catalogue of astrologers who most certainly foretold [things] concerning the births, life, death, reigns, wars, victories, and the other outcomes — both fortunate and unfortunate — of kings and emperors. Finally, after a lengthy enumeration of examples, he inferred that I, driven by some hidden force of the truth I was assailing, had myself gone over to the astrologers’ opinion — since, in the fourth book of this work, I wrote that certain poets, [gifted] for illustrating Christian poesy and singing sacred poems, were born under a most happy star.²

When certain friends had reported these things to me, and had warned that the accuser’s complaints were not to be neglected (by which even some of those noble men seemed moved), I resolved to meet the adversary’s accusations with words of peace [as far as I could], and to satisfy my friends’ desire.

First, then: when he grieves that astrology is called by me not an art but an imposture and a fraud, I confess — and freely declare — that it is so, provided the word “astrology” signify astromancy, or genesiology, or genethliomancy — that is, the profession of nativity-divination, which from the birth-stars of mortals conjectures the whole course of [a person’s] life. For who, unless he be utterly mad, would dare to call this insane deception an “art,” or reckon it a “science” — one confirmed by no solid reason, resting on no certain experiment, proved by no authority of the wise; but which the philosophers hiss off the schools’ stage as a mockery, the imperial laws condemn, the decrees of the pontiffs and the synodical sanctions forbid, the divine Scripture detests, and the judgments of all theologians reprove?³

But he says: “If the study of such astrologers is vanity and an empty fiction, how comes it that they, from the configuration of the stars shining upon nativities, predict many true things?” Indeed, this is that singular and chief demonstration of the diviners, on which — as on an immovable foundation — they rest the whole edifice of their divination. But how slippery and weak it is, Basil, Chrysostom, Augustine, and other ancient doctors have openly uncovered, in various disputations published against the astrologers; in which they excellently demonstrated that the truth of those predictions is not to be referred to observations of the constellations (which are mere dreams), but to four other, more powerful and more evident causes — namely, to chance, to pacts [with demons], to the prudence of those consulted, and to the folly of those consulting.

First, indeed, the planetary [astrologers] utter most true things not by the art of the inspected stars, but by chance — chance, I say, understood according to the pious definition of the theologians: that is, from the hidden disposition of divine providence. Which (as Augustine says in the fourth and seventh [books] of the Confessions) sometimes so stirs the blind and wicked minds of those consulted, by a certain hidden instinct, that unwittingly they utter what those consulting ought to hear — whether from their own deserts or from the abyss of [God’s] just judgment. So it once befell among the pagans, that while some, from the poems of a poet who was singing and intending something far different, [drew lots and found] [some, consulting] lots, chanced upon verses wonderfully consonant with their present or future affairs — as [befell] Alexander Severus, who, while still a youth and not [yet] hoping for the empire, was searching the Virgilian lots, and verses came out of the sixth [book] of the Aeneid which portended to him the future empire, in these words:

“Thou, O Roman, remember to rule the peoples with [thy] sway (these shall be thine arts), and to impose the custom of peace, to spare the subjected and to war down the proud.”

But if, at the nod of the divine lot, responses have sometimes come forth from songs of this kind as different from the thoughts of their own authors as they were congruous with the outcomes of those consulting — what wonder if, from an astrologer who knows nothing of what he says, true prognostications occasionally fall out? — his tongue being governed by him who drew most true oracles of the future not only from the mouth of Balaam, the soothsayer and false prophet, but even from the mouth of the ass on which that diviner sat.

Secondly, many things said by the astrologers — and, as foretold, coming to pass — [happen] not from the astromantic discipline (which is nothing), but from a fellowship and pacts established between them and the demons; concerning which Augustine, in the fifth book of The City of God, chapter 7, speaks thus: “All these things being considered, it is not without reason believed that, when astrologers give many marvelously true answers, this comes about by the hidden instinct of spirits that are not good — whose care it is to insinuate and confirm in human minds these false and noxious opinions about astral fates; and not [by any] horoscope observed and inspected by some art, which is nothing.” And in the second book On Genesis according to the Letter, chapter 17, explaining the same thing more fully, he says: “It must be admitted that, when true things are told by them, they are told by a certain most hidden instinct which human minds unknowingly undergo. And since this is done to deceive men, it is the operation of seducing spirits — to whom it is permitted to know certain true things about temporal matters: partly by the keenness of a subtler perception, partly because they thrive in subtler bodies, partly by a shrewder experience owing to their great length of life, partly [by information] from the holy angels — since the demons themselves learn from omnipotent God, the angels revealing [it] to them at his command, [God] who distributes human deserts with the sincerity of a most hidden justice. But sometimes those same nefarious spirits also foretell, as if divining, the very things which they themselves are about to do.” Wherefore a good Christian must beware of the astrologers — or of any who impiously divine, especially when they tell true things — lest, by fellowship with demons, they ensnare the deceived soul by a kind of pact of association.

Thirdly, the prognostications of the astromancers are very often fulfilled even without any consideration of the stars, from the mere foresight of moral prudence — to which it belongs not only to recall the past and behold the present, but also to look ahead to the future and to foresee, long beforehand, what is to come. For there are certain men so prudent, both by nature and by practice, that from men’s temperaments, inclinations, virtues, and vices — and from their friendships and enmities, means, affairs, pursuits, and opportunities — they foreknow much that will befall them,

and utter it with such constancy of assertion that they are rarely deceived. Thus Hannibal, a most prudent general — having perceived the rashness and inexperience of Terentius Varro, the Roman consul — predicted with great confidence victory for the Africans and disaster for the Romans; the prediction being confirmed a little later by the outcome of the battle, most disastrous for the Romans fighting at Trasimene. And — that I may not fetch examples from abroad — so, in recent years, when our Sienese republic was ablaze with implacable civil discord, seditions, and internecine wars, there were not lacking very many excellent citizens who, destitute of all knowledge of the stars, foretold the present calamity of the ruined republic and city: and that not from astrological outcomes, but from the judgment of civil prudence, whose most certain canon is this — THAT THE DISCORDS OF SEDITIOUS CITIZENS PORTEND INEVITABLE RUIN TO STATES. By this reasoning, then, it comes about that sometimes the planetary [astrologers], knowledgeable of political affairs, foretell many most true things even against the astrological canons — for example, that a prince raging tyrannically against his citizens will be slain by his own [people]; that a man living by continual theft and robbery will perish by the hanging of the gallows; that a despiser of religion and mocker of the saints will be burned in the flames — because, from a prudence confirmed by very many experiences, they know that such crimes prepare such penalties for those [who commit them].

The fourth and last cause, for which divinations of this kind hit their foreseen marks, is the folly of those consulting — or [their] foolish credulity, by which the inquirers easily believe from their consultants those things which they themselves either most eagerly pursue or flee. For that credulity is wont to inject into the credulous minds of the consulters either the hope of happiness promised by the diviner, or the fear of calamity announced by him. And these two affections frequently bring it about that human affairs attain their foretold ends. For just as hope and confidence boldly undertake difficult tasks and complete them successfully and splendidly, so dread and fear begin things timidly and carry through what is begun basely and unsuccessfully. And hence it sometimes happens that some greedy or ambitious inquirer — believing and hoping that he will easily attain the riches or honors promised by the astromancer — applies a mind steeled with great confidence, and all his powers and pursuits, to attaining that man’s promises. And since it does sometimes happen that what is sought with unremitting labor and utmost diligence is found, it follows too that occasionally the pursuers of riches and honors attain (God permitting) those resources and dignities which the astrologer had foretold them — by a response indeed fortuitous, and produced by no art of the consultant, but so received by the consulter and stored up in his mind as if it were an oracle of most certain authority and undoubted trustworthiness. We have an example of this in the Roman armies: among whom, as Livy writes, when the auguries and auspices — secretly inspected by their keepers — threatened an unlucky and mournful expedition, the augurs, lest they should dismay the soldier setting out to war with a deadly announcement, turning [it] into the con- [turning it] into the contrary interpretation of the auspices, they lied that all things — favorable and triumphal — were shown by the gods. By which lie the soldiers, usefully deceived, fought with such alacrity and courage of spirit that they routed those very enemies to whom the Roman auguries were [in fact] promising victory against the Romans themselves. On the contrary, when an eclipse of the Moon fell on the night on which the fleet of the Athenians was attempting flight from the harbor of Syracuse, its commander Nicias — ignorant that this happens from the entry of the lunar globe into the earth’s shadow — suspected that by that failure of light was signified the shipwreck of the fleet and the drowning of the soldiers, should he sail from there that night. Fallen, therefore, from this false suspicion into a vain trepidation, when he had abstained from the intended voyage (in which there was most certain safety), a little later he fell into the enemy’s power. From these causes, then, it comes about that not a few things are foretold by the judiciary [astrologers] which we often see fulfilled — without any marking of the stars — either by chance, or by pact, or by prudence, or by folly.

But as to what he says — that I, against the principles of St. Thomas (by which I am bound by my scholastic profession), disapprove astrological prognostics — I answer that there are two kinds of divinatory astrology, the physical and the fictitious, which are distinguished from one another by a threefold difference: namely, by observation, by application, and by foreknowledge.

First, by observation: because physical divination observes only the physical influences and impressions of the stars, which subsist not by mere imaginative contrivance but truly, in reality, among the works of nature, and are demonstrated by both sense and physical reason — such as the light and motions of the wandering stars, and especially of the solar star, from whose approach and recession to us the generations and corruptions of things proceed. On the contrary, fictitious divination, neglecting the physical influences, observes certain imaginary and made-up outflowings of the constellations — that is, certain sidereal “breathings” which neither exist anywhere, nor can be detected by any demonstration or certain experiment, but are introduced solely by the vanity of the astromancers and received by the credulity of foolish men. Of these are those peculiar, occult properties which of old the inventors of this madness — out of the dullness of their brains, and as it seemed [good] to each — ascribed to the various stars: to Venus a breath of lust; to Mars an outflow of anger and fury; to the Moon an influx of madness; to Capricorn a force that makes those born under it kings; to Andromeda unlucky irradiations that bring exiles, captivity, and prisons; to Orion rays that produce a hunter; to Canopus beams that engender fishermen; to the star of Medusa a venomous influence that brings unexpected and sudden destruction — and other things like these, feigned and refeigned out of the fictions of the poets.

Secondly, they differ especially in this: that the physical diviners so apply the actions of the sidereal impressions to bodies that they assert the energy and force of the stars to be impressed first, of themselves, directly, and necessarily upon bodies alone, but upon souls by no means — except accidentally, and quite

indirectly and contingently: that is, insofar as human wills, of their own accord, consent to bodily passions [that have been] stirred by the physical outflow of the stars. As when the traveler’s body, drained by the solar rays, drags the mind — neither resisting nor gainsaying — into the vice of tippling and drunkenness. But the fictitious diviners apply the forces of the stars first, of themselves, and necessarily, no less to the soul than to the body; and they drive the whole man at once by these fictitious “breathings,” and from their force decree for him journeys, voyages, wars, imprisonments, slaughter, and other such events, which he must suffer even unwilling and resisting.

Thirdly they differ, because the discipline of physical divination abstains from any certain and determinate prediction of the singular and (especially) contingent events of each individual man, but pronounces about human actions only generally and universally, with no fixed determination of the thing predicted. For example: that when the star of Aries rises, men will be livelier — because then, as the Sun returns to us and brings back the loveliness of spring, all things are made more cheerful; but when the Pleiades rise, men will be sadder — because the Sun, receding from our regions, leaves behind wintry colds, rainy days, and the sad darkness of longer nights. The planetary [astrologers], on the contrary, foretell for each person his particular acts, events, and outcomes — fortunate and unfortunate — with a certain and determinate assertion.

These divinations, then, being thus distinguished, if anyone should ask me what St. Thomas thought of each, in a single word I answer: the physical foreknowings are accepted and approved by him, but the fictitious (such as that querulous astro-theologian peddles to silly little men) are utterly rejected and refuted in many writings of his theology. Let the prudent reader read the first part of his Theological Summa, question 115, article 4; and the Secunda Secundae, question 95, article 1; and the opusculum On the Judgments of the Stars — and he will find that what I say is true. Thus far on behalf of the opinion of St. Thomas, whose sanctity I adore and whose doctrine I embrace with [my] whole heart.

It remains that, at the end of this Annotation, I answer what that astro-theologian added in the last place — that I too assented to the genethliac tenets when I wrote that certain poets were born under happy stars. I confess, indeed, that this was said and written by me — yet not in the sense in which he trifles, but so that, by the common form of speech, I might designate perfect and accomplished poets. For the common run of men is wont to say that those things are done “by favorable auspices” or “under propitious stars” which are on every side happily accomplished; nor do I think it should be counted a fault in me if what the common people have taken up into everyday speech from the vanity of the astrologers, I have applied to Christian poets — since even the divine Scriptures have transferred to the stars of heaven the names of Orion, Arcturus, the Hyades, and the Pleiades, borrowed from the poetic and astrological fables of the pagans. And let these things, said in answer to the astro-theologian’s complaints, be enough.