I shall speak separately of hydromancy also, because it threatens no one with richer impostures. Iamblichus mentions hydromanteia, or divination by waters, which is said to have been highly valued by the emperor Andronicus. For when he saw himself beset by many hatreds and troubles because of his cruel edict for killing the relatives of conspirators, he turned himself to the worship of harmful spirits in order to know future events.
Nicetas Choniates says: “He gave himself over entirely to those who conjecture future things from waters, as if through darkness, and seek after images of things to come as if from shadows and rays of the sun.” He himself did not wish to be present at the nocturnal rites, out of fear, I think, of disgrace, but entrusted the matter to Hagiochristophorites Stephen. Stephen called in Seth, who had from early youth been devoted to such oracles and had therefore lost his eyes by order of the emperor Manuel. With a certain rite he asked who would be emperor after Andronicus. The evil genius displayed in the waters the first letters of the name Isaac, but in reversed order, “Si” instead of “Is”; and in a second response added that it would happen before the Exaltation of the Cross. And afterward it happened exactly so, within that time, when Andronicus was killed by order of Isaac Angelus.
[margin: Iamblichus’s term hydromancy; Nicetas Choniates, book 2, on Andronicus, Hagiochristophorites Stephen, Seth, and Isaac Angelus]
Nicetas adds that he does not know the mode of that divination, nor does he wish to know it. Yet to avoid superstition, it is not useless to know. I find various species of hydromancy. One was done by a ring suspended from a thread in water, striking the sides of the little vessel by established blows. Another was done by throwing three little stones into still water and observing the circles which, intertwined with one another in threefold fashion, spread around the stones. A third was taken from the varied agitation of the sea; in this way the Sicilians and Euboeans once made observations, and today many sailors do the same.
From this arose the superstition of certain eastern Christians, who every year baptize the sea as if it were animate. A very different matter is the annual act by which the prince of the Venetians, after throwing a ring into the sea, espouses the Adriatic to himself. That is an indication of dominion, not an argument of magic. It is done in memory of the naval victory in which, under Doge Sebastian Ziani, they defeated Otto, son of Frederick Barbarossa, and presented him as captive to Alexander III, the pontiff who had fled to Venice. Then the pontiff offered Ziani a ring taken from his own hand, saying: “Trusting in my authority by this ring, you shall subject the ocean to yourself, and every year, on the day on which you obtained this victory in defense of the Church, you and your descendants shall espouse the sea, so that all may know that dominion of the sea has been granted to you because you faithfully undertook care and zeal for the protection of the Apostolic See. Let this be to you like a pledge of blessing and of favorable fortune hereafter.”
[margin: Villamontius, book 1 of his travel narrative, chapter 34, and Sabellicus, Decade 1, book 7, on the Venetian espousal of the Adriatic, Sebastian Ziani, Otto, and Alexander III]
The fourth mode was taken from the color of water and from images appearing in it. Thus Varro relates that the outcome of the Mithridatic war was foretold in many verses. For this purpose certain particular springs existed in antiquity, whence it was called pegomancy. Macrobius teaches from Xenagoras that the craters of the Palici in Sicily were of this sort. There was such a cistern in Egypt in the temple of Aphaca, concerning which Zosimus records marvels. To omit the marsh of Juno near Lacedaemonian Epidamnus and the oracle of Apollo Thyrxeius near the Cyanean rocks at Lycus, in the spring close to the temple, the superstition of the old Celts, that is, the Germans, seems to be referred here: they entrusted newborn children to the river Rhine, believing that if the children were spurious they would be swallowed up, but if legitimate they would float unharmed. Claudian alludes to it:
And those whom the Rhine tests at birth in its flood.
We have said more on this matter in our commentary on Seneca’s tragedies.
[margin: Macrobius, Saturnalia, book 5, chapter 19, on the Palici craters; Zosimus, in the life of Aurelian, on the Aphaca cistern; Pausanias in Achaia; Claudian on the Rhine testing infants]
Fifth, they placed a cup full of water and, with words muttered over it, observed whether the water would spontaneously boil up and overflow. The sixth mode is the Fezzan mode: there they pour water into a glass dish, mix into it a drop of oil, and thus think that in the water, as in a mirror, they see marvelous things. Clement of Alexandria indicates the seventh mode when he writes that German women were accustomed to observe the sound, whirlpools, and circlings of rivers, and from these to predict future things.
Finally, those who still today in Italy, to detect the authors of thefts, write the names of three suspects on the same number of little balls and throw them into water are not alien to hydromancy. Much more wicked are those who abuse holy water for this purpose.
[margin: John Leo Africanus, Description of Africa, book 3, on Fezzan water-glass divination; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, book 1, on German women reading rivers]
In the time of St. Bernardino of Siena there still survived traces of pegomancy. For the man who composed his life, a writer contemporary with him, left this account about Arezzo: outside the walls of that city there was an ancient spring, already long ago dedicated to impure demons in those times when idolatry reigned. The citizens of Arezzo and other neighbors round about were accustomed to flow to it as to the oracle of Apollo, seeking responses to their hidden questions and cures for their diseases. Bernardino, a true worshiper and lover of the Christian religion, noticed this and rose most vigorously against that worship of demons. First, after holding and completing a sermon to the people, and after strongly confirming everyone’s mind, he urged them to follow him to demolish and utterly abolish the habitation of the most impure demons. Then, seizing an axe or hammer, he went out with the people to the spring; and when he came to the demon’s shrine, he himself first began to strike it, overturned the altar, and completely stopped up the spring with stones.
[margin: Life of St. Bernardino of Siena, chapter 40, on the Arezzo spring and Bernardino’s destruction of the demonic shrine]