Augury either depends on nature, as that of sailors, farmers, and others, about which later, for it is worthy of commendation since it is natural conjecture; or it is instituted by human effort and artifice, serving to conjecture future things which are not necessary but voluntary. This is the augury which we now discuss. Cicero himself condemned it for vanity and foolishness, far more prudently in this matter than Plato in the Phaedrus or Xenophon in the Cyropaedia.
As for Aristotle’s mention of augury, either he speaks from common opinion, or else he called by the name of augury the natural fore-feeling of birds by which, through song, flight, or cry, they indicate to us coming rains and storms. For us Christians there can be no doubt that the whole discipline of augurs is uncertain and unlawful. Even a soothsayer praises the people of God because they abstain from it. All know that it was condemned by Moses and the prophets, and by the authors of canon law, by whom various penalties are also imposed; they know that it is condemned by Blessed Augustine as a pact with a demon; they know that it is very alien to right philosophy.
[margin: Cicero, On Divination, book 2; Plato, Phaedrus; Xenophon, Cyropaedia; Aristotle, History of Animals, book 9, chapter 31, and elsewhere; Numbers 23:23; Leviticus 19:26; Deuteronomy 18:10; Ecclesiasticus 34:5; canon law on auguries, including cause 26 material; Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, book 2, chapter 24; Cicero and Franciscus Picus, On Foreknowledge, book 6, chapter 4, on divination]
I now extend the word auspice or augury so that it includes all these things, just as the Greeks used ornitheia, oionistike, oionomanteia, and ornioskopia for the observation of all things suddenly, unexpectedly, and unusually happening, instituted for knowledge of future or hidden things. Taken in this way, it can be reduced to five species: first, from the sky; second, from the flight or cry of birds; third, from the feeding-dance of chickens; fourth, from quadrupeds; fifth, from dire signs and portents. The common division of all these is that some are offered signs, which are not sought, and some commanded signs, which come when desired and sought.
The first kind, from the sky, waited for an auspice after the prospect had been watched by the augurs and a region of the sky marked out, which they called a templum. This auspice was thunder or lightning or a flash. Some signs were brute, resting on no reason of nature and wholly vain; others were fatidical; and these again were either pestiferous, advisory, auxiliary, and other such most trifling things, about which Pliny and Seneca say many things, and which Wimpina indeed refutes learnedly.
[margin: Peter Sanflorius; Varro on Latin terminology; Pliny and Seneca on sky signs; Franciscus Picus and Conrad Wimpina on lightning, thunder, and divinatory sky-observation]
The second was sought from birds, whence augury was named, as if from auigerium, “bird-bearing.” Some birds were oscines, those thought to predict by song or cry; others were praepetes, those thought to predict by flight. Of these, again, there were various differences: funereal, clivia, arcula, volsora, remora, inebra, and many others. This folly is well refuted by the same Wimpina.
The third was taken from the feeding-dance of chickens. Two chickens were kept by the keepers of sacred chickens in a cage. At first light, after silence had been duly commanded, grain-paste or crumbs were thrown to the chickens when the cage was opened. If they neglected the food, it was a sinister auspice. If they devoured it greedily so that something fell from the beak and struck the ground, this was called a “solistimum tripudium” and was held to be favorable. To the ancients, pavire meant the same as “to strike.” From this came first terripavium, then terripudium, and finally tripudium. The same was also called sonivium from the sound which the grain-paste made in falling. This was certainly a most trifling invention, yet the Romans attributed to neglect of it the defeats of Publius Claudius and Lucius Junius in the First Punic War, and of Flaminius in the Second Punic War.
[margin: Festus and Gellius on oscines and related terms; Pliny, Polybius, Valerius Maximus, and Livy on chicken auspices, tripudium, and Roman military disasters]
The fourth, taken from quadrupeds, Sextus Pompeius testifies they called pedestrian auspices; for example, among the Germans, from the neighing of horses. Tacitus says: “It is peculiar to that nation also to try the presages and warnings of horses. They are publicly maintained, white, in the same groves and sacred woods, and contaminated by no mortal work. The priest, and the king or chief of the state, accompany them when they are yoked to the sacred chariot, and they observe their neighings and snortings. No auspice is given greater faith.” Lipsius, in his commentary, warns from Ditmar that this superstition endured there afterward, although in a somewhat different form, among the Lusatians. Pliny and others hand down very many things, wholly contradictory, about wolf auspices; you have them carefully noted by Tiraqueau. Alexander reports auspices from the goat, ass, lion, fox, dog, weasel, ram, and others, though he did not confirm them with any authorities; Tiraqueau, a man of more than ordinary diligence, carefully confirmed them.
[margin: Sextus Pompeius on pedestrian auspices; Tacitus, Germania; Lipsius and Ditmar on Lusatian horse auspices; Pliny, Tiraqueau, and Alexander ab Alexandro on wolf and other animal auspices]
Fifth are omens, and Claudian alone shows that these belong to auguries in the following verses:
No day fails to threaten sad augury. How often do the yellow garlands of my hair fall of themselves? How often does blood sweat from my breast, or rivers break forth freely from my unwilling face, and hands, struck of themselves, beat my astonished breast? If I strike boxwood or funeral bronze, the drums give back lamentation to me. I fear lest the omens portend something true.
Here Ceres both gives examples of omens or dire signs, and what she first called augury she afterward calls omens. These are also commonly called prodigies. Valerius Maximus writes: “A marvelous prodigy occurred during dinner. The wine poured into his cup, not once but a second and third time, was turned into blood. The magi, consulted about it, warned him to desist from what he had begun.”
[margin: Claudian on Ceres’ ominous signs; Valerius Maximus on Xerxes’ wine/blood prodigy]
But we have said more about omens in book 3, where we treated vain observance. To this must be reduced all prodigies, signs, and monsters, insofar as someone institutes from them a certain vain divination which the ancients called teratoscopy. The Christian observation of certain marvelous warnings which God grants to certain people is alien to this. I shall report two examples: one in 1, chapter 3, question 2, and elsewhere another concerning Blessed Beatrice of the Este family in Scardeone. Such is also what Ditmar narrates about the spring of Glomucenz: when a happy year of peace and grain supply is going to follow, it shows itself full of wheat, oats, and acorns; when plague threatens, it is full of ashes; when war threatens, it flows full of blood. Erasmus Stella and Peter Albinus likewise bring this forward in the Chronicle of Meissen.
Elsewhere in Germany there is a spring called Hungerbrunn. When it decreases, it portends dear grain; when it dries up, dire famine. In monasteries it not rarely happens that religious men about to die are seen without heads in the churches where they have their seats. In certain noble families too a certain thing has been noted which gives very sure indications of the death of their members: if a certain spring, by nature very clear, is disturbed by some unknown worm; for another family, the sign is if a certain earth near their castle sinks into a chasm. In Bohemia a female specter in mourning dress is accustomed to appear in a certain castle of an illustrious family before one of the wives of those lords departs this life. Philip Camerarius reports this as certain from others.
Monsters are sportings of nature when she has wandered far from her usual rule in producing living beings. Signs and prodigies we call various terrible and unusual appearances and sounds or effects in the air or other elements, such as rains of blood, battle lines seen in the sky, and the like; the books of Julius Obsequens and Lycosthenes are full of these, as is Josephus in book 7 of the War, chapter 44, and Wimpina very excellently in his book On Signs. Their certain interpretation depends on divine revelation, as was granted to Daniel. It is not lawful to observe them curiously for certainly predicting fortuitous events. Nevertheless preachers rightly announce from them the impending vengeance of God, or deter human beings by them from imminent crime and wickedness of life, and exhort them to repentance. For truly it is for this reason that such things are usually shown by God. Seek more on these matters from St. Augustine, City of God, book 21, chapter 28, and from Picus, Wimpina, Medina, and Sirenius, who excellently refute these observers of portents.
[margin: Christian observation of warnings and portents: Scardeone on Blessed Beatrice d’Este; Ditmar, Erasmus Stella, and Peter Albinus in the Meissen chronicle on the Glomucenz spring; Philip Camerarius, Leisure Hours, chapter 73, on noble-family death signs; Julius Obsequens and Lycosthenes on prodigies; Josephus, Jewish War, book 7, chapter 44; Conrad Wimpina, On Signs; Daniel’s divine interpretation; Augustine, City of God, book 21, chapter 28; Francesco Pico, On Foreknowledge, book 6, chapter 6; Medina, On Right Faith in God, book 2, chapter 2; Sirenius, On Fate, book 9, chapters 19-20]
Finally, there is the military auspice from spear-points, which Cicero and Arnobius mention. Some refer it to signs, with Caelius Calcagnini; others to geomancy; others, with Turnebus, make it not unlike axinomancy. What sort of thing it was, I have nothing certain. Read Antonius Valtrinus, Commentary on Military Affairs, if you please.
[margin: Cicero, Arnobius, Caelius Calcagnini, Turnebus, and Antonius Valtrinus on the military spear-point auspice]