I refer to the class of natural conjectation everything that truly rests on natural causes, or at least alleges such causes with no great improbability: the conjectures of farmers, shepherds, sailors, architects, physicians, physiognomists, chiromancers, astrologers, and interpreters of dreams. These must now be discussed one by one.
With respect to conjectation, or judicial mathematics, from the stars, two species can be established: the former lawful, the latter unlawful. The first species is astronomy. It rests on universal, true, and unchangeable principles, and it attains knowledge of the future things that belong to its art, such as the revolutions of years, the courses of the stars, the distinctions of the heavens, likewise the nature of the sun and planets, eclipses, stations, retrogradations, aspects, conjunctions, oppositions, and the like. In this kind some useful works have already appeared, and greater ones are expected from Tycho Brahe, the noble Dane. The other is astrology, as unlike the former as a concubine is unlike a lawful wife. It rests on common and variable principles and predicts the effects of future events, not necessary but contingent, as though they depended by some necessity on the stars.
[margin: Tycho Brahe; distinction between astronomy and astrology]
From that former science, at last, the Chaldeans slipped into this latter one. They were so called at first, on the testimony of Diodorus Siculus, because the Chaldean nation excelled in this kind of thing. Later the usage was received by which simply “Chaldean” meant “astrologer,” just as “Arab” meant robber and “Canaanite” merchant. Daniel uses the word in this way in his prophecy, as do Juvenal and Gellius.
[margin: Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, book 2, on Babylonian priests and Chaldeans; Daniel 2:2, Juvenal, Satire 6, and Gellius, Attic Nights, book 1, chapter 9, on the word “Chaldean” used for astrologer]
Astrology has four parts. The first concerns revolutions and predicts the vicissitudes of the whole year in war and peace, the healthfulness of the air, the price of grain, diseases of animals, and the like. The second contains the mastery of nativities, teaching what will happen to a man individually throughout his whole life. The third is called elections, which teaches what in each matter is to be done deliberately and usefully, what is to be omitted, when one should build, sail, ride, go out or remain at home, and in what places individual things should be done so that they may turn out happily. In this my former teacher in mathematics, Johannes Stadius, used to strut wonderfully; yet for him, if one sets aside the things he sometimes achieved by trickery, everything turned out as badly and as unhappily as possible. The fourth concerns the carving of images, plainly a deceptive magical practice and sufficiently refuted by us elsewhere. Of the other three, none has any certainty at all; and the farther each withdraws from those common canons of astronomy and approaches more nearly to particular and singular events, the farther it withdraws from knowledge and certainty and binds itself more tightly to the lie of vanity.
[margin: Johannes Stadius; four parts of astrology; magical image-making treated elsewhere]
The first conclusion is this: the astronomer, not departing from his own universal, commensurate, and immediate principles, can, according to the canons of his art, predict with certainty those universal events of his art, even many years before they occur, unless either his computation or his instruments deceive him. Hence the ephemerides commonly circulated have arisen. I think no one will deny this conclusion, because as a thing is in being, so is it in being known. Necessary events are certain, and therefore they can be certainly known. In the same way, from the various color of the moon and sun, and from other phenomena, the astronomer can probably predict the occurrence of winds, rains, fair weather, and such changes of weather. The reason is that these things happen for the most part, although sometimes they are hindered by particular causes. To this belong the poems of Aratus, Cicero, Hesiod, Virgil, and Germanicus on the phenomena.
[margin: Aratus, Cicero, Hesiod, Virgil, and Germanicus on astronomical phenomena]
The second conclusion is this: the first species of astrology is not superstitious if it professes only opinion with fear of the contrary; for example, “the stars threaten scarcity of grain; perhaps the harvest will be rather hard; I fear that it may be so.” Nor is the second species superstitious if it professes only suspicion, for example, “there is a suspicion that this boy will be such and such; he will be inclined to this; his horoscope portends such things for him.” Nor, finally, is the third part superstitious if it only says that it estimates that the matter will turn out well, and if it in fact attributes no more in its own mind than it declares in its words. This must be noted in all three. Conrad Wimpina teaches this in his book On Fate and in another work, On Superstition. The reason is that, because similar events have often followed similar positions of the stars, it is lawful for us to estimate, suspect, and fear similar things. No sin lies in the caution of this observation, which is a certain portion of prudence, and therefore in itself good.
[margin: Conrad Wimpina, On Fate, and On Superstition, book 2, chapter 7, on cautious, non-certain astrological opinion]
The third conclusion is this: astrology, if it goes farther in any of these three ways and predicts anything as certainly going to occur, is merely unlawful and superstitious; every divination of this kind is uncertain and vain, and not worthy of the name of art or science.
It must be noted from Cajetan that three mortal sins are commonly incurred here, according to three ways of exceeding the limit. The first occurs when the mysteries of the Christian faith are subjected to the stars and deduced from the influence or position of the stars. Peter of Ailly sinned in this matter when he subjected the Flood of Noah, the nativity of Jesus, changes of religion and faith, and other supernatural secrets of this kind to the discipline of the stars. Firmicus too, Albumasar, Aponeus, Machiavelli, Paul Jovius, and many Italians struck the same rock. Giovanni Pico, count of Mirandola, rightly accused them of faithlessness. This doctrine is refuted because such mysteries depended solely on the free decree of God; and God, as he established the courses of the heavens, so can also change them. Therefore the Christian religion must be judged higher than the heavens, for its confession is above heaven and earth.
[margin: Cajetan, in the Summa under “observation of the stars,” on three mortal sins in astrology; Peter of Ailly, Firmicus, Albumasar, Aponeus, Machiavelli, and Paul Jovius; Giovanni Pico, Against Astrology, book 2, chapter 5, and book 5, chapter 11; Psalm 148]
The second sin occurs when future contingents are thought to be certainly knowable in advance from the stars. For this removes the freedom of the human will. If such things could be certainly foreknown, this would be because those actions depended on the stars and not on the freedom of the will; and so they would cease to be future contingents. Therefore it is contradictory both to predict any such thing with certainty and to say that it is free or contingent.
The third sin occurs when interrogations and elections are subjected to these celestial bodies as to a certain cause and, as it were, the decree of a law, so that a person sets this as rule and norm over his life and actions. This is contrary to the dignity of divine grace, which conquers nature; it is contrary also to the divine law, which forbids such things to be observed in this way; and it is contrary to the dignity of our mind and counsel, by which we are more excellent and more sublime than all corporeal things.
Those who attribute more than is proper to this later astrology fall into these two later sins: the ancient Chaldeans, those called mathematici and planetarii in the books of law, and among more recent writers Julius Gauricus, Leovitius, Cardanus, Bellantius, Johannes Stadius, Junctinus, and Nostradamus. Against them all the preceding third conclusion stands.
[margin: Julius Gauricus, Leovitius, Cardanus, Bellantius, Johannes Stadius, Junctinus, and Nostradamus]
This can be proved by reason and authority. By reason, because since these events do not exist necessarily and certainly, they cannot be certainly and necessarily known in advance. Then, too, these effects are not contained in the power of the stars, to which neither God nor the human will is subject. Many other reasons can be drawn from the bull of Sixtus V against astrologers and from the very learned and extensive work of Giovanni Pico against astrologers.
The proof from authority has its own classes. First, it is proved by testimonies of Sacred Scripture, which teaches that foreknowledge of future things belongs to God alone, and takes it entirely away from man; warns that no one should learn astrology or fear from the stars, and that these are the vain laws of unbelievers; teaches that we are not to follow the vanities of philosophers “according to the elements of the world,” which St. Athanasius understood of astrology; laughs at augurs and shows that the Babylonians and Chaldeans were deceived by their own knowledge, and that their study was useless and harmful. Who will not believe God? Behold, God himself cries out: “I am the Lord, making void the signs of diviners, turning soothsayers into madness, turning wise men backward, and making their knowledge foolish.” From these passages it is clear that John of Salisbury erred when he wrote that this science flourished, and perhaps was allowed to be practiced, until the star from heaven announced God born and led the not-reprobate Magi, the firstfruits of faith, to adore him by a new and unheard-of guidance, but that afterward it was utterly forbidden. Rather, as it was always evil, so it was always forbidden by divine law.
[margin: Scriptural and patristic authorities against astrology: Isaiah 41:23 on foreknowledge belonging to God; Ecclesiastes 8:7; Jeremiah 10:2; Paul to the Colossians 2:8, understood by Athanasius of astrology; Isaiah 47:10 and 47:13 against Babylonian/Chaldean knowledge; Isaiah 44:25 on God making diviners’ signs void; John of Salisbury, Policraticus, book 1, chapter 11, on the supposed earlier toleration of astrology]
Second, councils and the canons of the Fathers condemn it, after setting most grave penalties. It would be long to write out the words; I indicate the places instead: the canons cited under the questions on augury and sortilege, the Index of prohibited books of the Council of Trent, and most fully the bull of Pope Sixtus V against astrologers. I indeed read in Epiphanius that Aquila Ponticus was once expelled from the Church because he would not abstain from these studies.
[margin: Ecclesiastical condemnations of astrology: chapters Illud, Illos, and Sed et illud, 26 question 2; chapter Igitur, 26 question 3; chapter Non liceat, 26 question 5; chapter 2, De sortilegiis; the Tridentine Index of prohibited books; the rule and fuller bull of Pope Sixtus V against astrologers; Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures, on Aquila Ponticus expelled from the Church because he would not abstain from these studies]
Third, the same is condemned by the civil law of the Romans. The art is forbidden, its books are burned, and its users are punished with exile; elsewhere they are even punished with death.
[margin: Roman civil law against mathematici and astrologers: law 2, Code, De maleficis et mathematicis; law Mathematicos, Code, De episcopali audientia, forbidding the art, burning books, and condemning users to exile; law 5, Code, De maleficis et mathematicis, punishing some by death]
Fourth, to omit Origen and Eusebius, the orthodox Fathers commonly condemn it: Basil, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory, and John of Salisbury.
[margin: Patristic and medieval condemnations of astrology: Origen and Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, book 6, chapter 9; Basil, homily 6 on Genesis and sermon on the beginning of Proverbs; Chrysostom on Matthew 2; Ambrose, Hexaemeron, book 4, chapter 4; Augustine, Literal Commentary on Genesis, book 2, chapter 17, On Christian Doctrine, book 2, chapter 21, City of God, book 5 in the opening chapters, and homily on Psalm 61; Gregory, homily on the Epiphany; John of Salisbury, Policraticus, book 2, chapters 19, 24, and 26]
Fifth, theologians commonly condemn it, both the older ones, such as St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, St. Antoninus, Peter of Tarentaise, Richard of Middleton, Gabriel Biel, and William of Paris, and recent ones, such as Giovanni Pico, the phoenix of his age, in his most learned and abundant work, and his nephew defending the books of his uncle against Bellantius; Giovanni Francesco Pico; Julius Sirenius, who nevertheless later seems to attribute somewhat more than is fitting to astrologers; Ciruelo of Daroca, a good theologian, philosopher, and mathematician; Miguel de Medina; and our Benedictus Pererius in his whole book on astrological divination.
[margin: Theologians condemning judicial astrology: Thomas Aquinas, II-II, question 95, article 5; Bonaventure, Centiloquium; Antoninus, part 3, title 12, chapter 1, section 6; Peter of Tarentaise, Richardus Paludanus, and Gabriel Maior on book 4 of the Sentences; William of Paris, treatise On Laws, at length; Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, with his nephew Giovanni Francesco Pico defending his uncle’s books against Bellantius; Giovanni Francesco Pico, On Foreknowledge, book 5; Julius Sirenius, On Fate, book 9, from chapter 29, though later in chapters 36-37 he seems to grant astrologers somewhat more than is fair; Ciruelo of Daroca, theologian, philosopher, and mathematician, On Superstition, part 2, chapter 3; Miguel de Medina, On Right Faith in God, book 2, chapter 2; Benedictus Pererius, an entire book On Astrological Divination]
Sixth, jurists commonly condemn it, both canonists and civilians: Johannes Andreae, the Abbas, Ancaranus, Ananias, Torquemada, Albericus Rosatus, Troilus Malvetius, Baldus, Salicetus, Grillandus, and Peter Leloyer.
[margin: Jurists, both canonists and legists, commonly condemning the art: Johannes Andreae; Abbas; Ancaranus; Ananias on chapter Ex tuarum, De sortilegiis; Turrecremata on the said chapter Illos and in the Summa de Ecclesia; Albericus Rosatus under the entry Sortilegus; Troilus Malvetius, Treatise on Lots, part 1; Baldus, Salicetus, and others writing on Code, De maleficis, laws 2 and 5; Grillandus, De sortilegiis, question 3, number 8, question 9, number 13 and following, and question 11, number 16; Peter Le Loyer, On Specters, book 3, chapter 9]
Seventh, a man skilled in this art, Sixtus ab Hemminga the Frisian, condemns it from the very experience and practice of horoscopes, bringing forward twenty schemes and examples in his recent work Astrology Refuted.
[margin: Sixtus ab Hemminga Frisius, in his recent work Astrology Refuted, condemns the art from horoscope experience and practice, with twenty schemes and examples]
Eighth, philosophers and physicians condemn it. Among the ancients Bardesanes the Syrian and Diogenianus do so excellently, as do many others cited by Stobaeus; among recent writers, George of Trebizond and Francisco Valles. Nor should we omit the prudent saying of a certain Jewish physician. When a certain Jew had promised King Peter of Castile, whose savagery of manners and guiltless bloodshed of wife, brothers, bishops, princes, nobles, and countless common people earned him the name “the Cruel,” new empires and, as they say, mountains of gold from his horoscope, the king afterward, when his affairs were desperate, asked how the prophecy held up. The physician is said to have answered: “Even if the sky is freezing, if a man bathes in a hot bath, he will still sweat,” meaning that studies and habits of life have more force than the stars.
[margin: Philosophers and physicians condemning astrology: Bardesanes the Syrian and Diogenianus in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, book 6, chapters 6-7; others in Stobaeus, Sermon 78; George of Trebizond, Why the Judgments of Astrologers Are for the Most Part False; Francisco Valles, Sacred Philosophy, chapter 31; Mariana, Spanish Affairs, book 17, chapter 14, on Peter of Castile and the Jewish physician’s reply]
Ninth, Henry Cornelius himself, that most devoted follower and leader of all vanities, condemns it when he writes that this art is nothing other than the deceitful conjecture of superstitious men, who from long use have made a science of uncertain things, in which, for the purpose of wringing out money, they deceive the ignorant and are themselves deceived at the same time. Thus he, in a bad book, bears good witness to a bad art.
[margin: Henry Cornelius Agrippa condemns astrology]
Tenth, historians condemn it, such as Tacitus, whose most excellent saying about mathematici stands out: “a kind of men treacherous to those in power, deceptive to those who hope; it will always be forbidden and always retained in our state.”
[margin: Tacitus, book 17, on mathematici as treacherous to rulers and deceptive to those who hope]
Eleventh, poets condemn it, such as the author of the Sibylline Oracles, Juvenal, and Ennius, whose excellent lines are these:
I hold a Marsian augur worth nothing, nor village haruspices, nor astrologers of the circus, nor Isis-collectors, nor interpreters of dreams. They are not divine by art or knowledge, but superstitious seers, shameless chatterers, lazy, mad, or driven by poverty, who for their own gain raise up fabricated opinions. They do not know the path for themselves, yet show the way to another. From those to whom they promise riches, they beg a drachma; from those riches let them deduct the drachma for themselves and return the rest.
In Laertius, Thales is deservedly mocked by an old woman in his household; a witty epigram by Gabrias stands against him, and others jested at astrologers in the Anthology. Above the rest I like the line of Leonidas, who called audacity the mother of astrology and foolishness its midwife. He also laughs at the husband of an adulteress, boasting that he knows he has begotten another man’s shame and his own dishonor, while he does not know it. The martyr Thomas More played on the same subject:
If the stars lay open to you all things in the high ether, and warn all men what future fates will be, yet your wife publishes to all what she is doing; though the stars see everything, none tells you that.
The verses that follow are seasoned with the same salt and charm.
[margin: Poets and satirists condemning astrologers: Sibylline Oracles, book 3; Juvenal, Satire 6; Ennius; Laertius on Thales mocked by an old woman; Gabrias’s epigram against Thales; Greek Anthology, book 2; Leonidas on audacity as astrology’s mother and foolishness as its midwife; Thomas More’s epigram on the astrologer cuckold]
Yet astrologers are not without arguments. First, they object from Genesis: “Let them be for signs, and for seasons, and days and years.” From this some, even among theologians, gather that the stars, even if they are not causes, are still certain signs of all future things. Julius Sirenius attributes this not only to Plotinus and Porphyry, but also to Origen, Eusebius, and Augustine, and he maintains and confirms it from the words of Isaiah, “they shall be rolled together like the book of heaven.” By “heaven” many understand the firmament, and they say that the firmament is called a book because, as in a book, so in heaven, whose stars are its characters, future things are read as written there.
[margin: Astrologers’ first objection from Genesis 1:14; the opinion attributed by Julius Sirenius to Plotinus, Porphyry, Origen, Eusebius, and Augustine; Sirenius on Isaiah 34:4 and the “book of heaven” argument, with related material around chapters 36-37]
I answer that the stars are not certain signs of all future things. That opinion of Origen is indeed reported by Eusebius, but not approved by him; and it is expressly and clearly refuted by St. Augustine at the beginning of the fifth book of The City of God. Nor is Augustine inconsistent with himself or favoring Origen in the second book against the Manichaeans. For in that chapter he understands by celestial bodies not the celestial spheres, but the glorious bodies of the blessed, as the context shows. The passage from Isaiah has nothing to do with the matter. The comparison is drawn from the custom of the Hebrews, who wrote sacred books on a single sheet or oblong parchment and wrapped it around a wooden cylinder or rod, like cloth wrapped around a weaver’s beam. Therefore, by a comparison drawn from that practice, just as when heaven first appeared created it is said to have been stretched out like such a parchment book when it is unrolled and exposed for viewing, so the Prophet, speaking of the end of the world and the dissolution of the heavens, compares it to that book rolled together, or to parchment rolled up. The author of the Orthodox Questions noticed this very well, and Blessed John explained it clearly in the Apocalypse: “the heaven departed like a book rolled up.” In that passage Andreas of Caesarea also observed that Hebrew custom. Since what Arethas of Caesarea writes there was taken almost word for word from Andreas, and since Arethas’s passage is mutilated in the Latin version, anyone who corrects Arethas’s passage from Andreas will take good counsel for himself.
[margin: Augustine against Origen in City of God, book 5, opening chapters, and on the Manichaeans, book 2, chapter 21; Psalm 103:2 on heaven stretched out like a skin; Orthodox Questions, response 90; Apocalypse 6:14; Andreas of Caesarea and Arethas of Caesarea on the Hebrew scroll custom]
To return, then, to the place of Moses in Genesis: I say that signs are treated there in general, or of whatever kind, as the Hebrew word oth indicates: namely astronomical and universal signs denoting the diversities of the year’s seasons, days, and nights; or political and forensic signs; or sometimes miraculous signs. It is not about astrological signs, which are most vain and do not deserve the name of sign. Benedictus Pererius refutes this opinion of Sirenius at greater length.
[margin: The Hebrew word oth for signs in Genesis; Benedictus Pererius refuting Sirenius in the cited work, chapter 4]
Second, they object from the book of Judges: “From heaven they fought against them. The stars remaining in their order and course fought against Sisera.” How, they say, did they fight, unless because that course of the stars and position of the constellations was favorable to the Jews and unfavorable to Sisera? If Sisera perished because of this order of the stars adverse to him, then that very thing could also have been foreseen, feared, and avoided through astrology. I answer from Josephus’ Antiquities that at the time of this conflict a great storm arose, and much water and hail was poured into the eyes of the Canaanites, so that their weapons of war could not be used. Since this help was sent from heaven, Holy Scripture says that there was fighting from heaven. It was sent by the angels who defend the Israelite people, whose prince is Michael. They are said to have been in their order and course in aid of the Israelites because of the order of their army or hierarchy, in which each preserved his own order and station, and also because of the continuous operation and urgency of the guardianship committed to each, in which each angel faithfully persevered. Some, such as Vatablus, Valles, and others, wished the name of stars to be attributed to angels there. They confirm it from the passage of Blessed John where the dragon’s tail drew a third part of the stars. But neither does the Hebrew name set down in Deborah’s song signify anything other than stars or constellations, nor, according to the truer exposition, are angels to be understood by stars in St. John, but holy men, as also in Daniel when he says, “it was magnified even to the strength of heaven, and cast down of the strength and of the stars, and trampled them.”
[margin: Second objection from Judges 5:20 on the stars fighting against Sisera; Josephus, Antiquities, on the storm; Procopius on Judges; Vatablus and Francisco Valles on stars as angels; Apocalypse 12:3 and Daniel 8:10; Gregory, Moralia, book 32, and Andreas of Caesarea on Apocalypse 6:12, on stars understood of holy persons rather than angels]
The better interpretation of Deborah’s song, therefore, is the one I see pleased Cajetan: the air, the other elements, and time itself favored the people of God, so that the stars themselves, which are accustomed to stir up rains, are judged to have fought against Sisera for Israel. Finally, the consequence of the argument does not hold.
[margin: Cajetan on Deborah’s song and the stars fighting against Sisera]
Third, they object from David: “The firmament declares the works of his hands,” that is, they say, it announces beforehand the things God is going to do. I answer that this is not the sense, but this: the beauty of this celestial and visible structure indicates to us the excellence of God’s invisible works and compels us to confess that no other could have been the architect of the firmament. Most of the Fathers expound it so, and the Rabbis and Vatablus do not dissent. As for the Apostles, that is certainly an allegorical interpretation.
[margin: Third objection from Psalm 18:1-2 on the firmament; Jerome, Ambrose, Hexaemeron, book 2, chapter 4, Euthymius, the rabbis, and Vatablus on the firmament declaring God’s works rather than astrological futures]
Fourth, they object from histories that these predictions have often been true. Besides others, there were four: first, that of Theagenes, who from his stock and nativity promised Augustus the empire; second, that of Thrasyllus, who told Tiberius, when he was secretly planning death for him and had communicated the matter to no one, that death was threatening him; third, that of Ascletarion, about whom Suetonius writes in Domitian that the mathematicus, brought forward and not denying the things he had foreseen by his art, was asked by Domitian what end awaited himself, and when he affirmed that he would soon be torn by dogs, Domitian ordered him killed at once, but also buried with the greatest care to prove the rashness of the art. While this was being done, a sudden storm knocked down the funeral pyre and dogs tore apart the half-burned corpse. Fourth, they cite those to whom dignities, empires, or pontificates were predicted beforehand by astrologers: dignity to a certain Allabius, wonderfully cast about by fortune, and to Athenais, who later became the wife of Theodosius the Younger; empire to Rudolf of Habsburg; pontificates to Leo X, Hadrian VI, and Marcellus XI [II].
[margin: Historical examples used by astrologers: Suetonius, Augustus, chapter 94, on Theagenes; Dio on Thrasyllus; Suetonius, Domitian, on Ascletarion; Eunapius, Life of Aedesius, and Zonaras on predicted dignities; Cuspinian on the Caesars on Rudolf of Habsburg; Jovius on Leo X and Hadrian VI; Garimberti and Onuphrius Panvinius on predicted pontificates, including Marcellus XI [II]]
I answer: when astrologers speak the truth, then they must be avoided much more carefully, because this would be a clear enough sign that they had entered a pact with a demon, as St. Augustine says and as Dio indicates concerning Thrasyllus, since he used to affirm only those things whose reports had been brought from distant regions. Therefore jurists, in the heading of the title, join malefici with mathematici, because very often mathematici too are malefici, as Dio explains very well. In that heading and often elsewhere in law, mathematici are used for astrologers alone, or genethliacs; historians also take the word in that sense. Sometimes this name also includes Chaldeans and other soothsayers, as in Juvenal. Yet when that superstition was forbidden, it never included the lawful conjectation of astronomers, nor the art of geometers or arithmeticians, whose knowledge philosophers counted among philosophy.
[margin: Dio, book 49, on astrologers expelled from Rome by Agrippa and on Thrasyllus; Roman legal usage joining malefici with mathematici; Ulpian, On the Office of Proconsul, book 7, as edited by Pithoeus; Collation of Mosaic and Roman Law, title 15; Juvenal, Satires 6 and 14, on mathematici]
Sometimes God permitted, and still permits, even ignorant and unknowing astrologers to predict the truth, as a punishment for those who listen. He also sometimes permitted lots or oracles to be true, and the soothsayer Balaam to prophesy. To this I freely refer Ascletarion’s case, permitted for the punishment and terror of Domitian. This is often permitted because of the excessive curiosity of those who inquire, as St. Augustine testifies. He rightly adds that, because a prediction is true, it is not therefore less superstitious or sacrilegious, nor is it therefore more lawful to give faith to such predictions; rather, that precept of God must always be retained: even if they have spoken to us and it has so occurred, we are not to believe them.
[margin: God sometimes permits true but forbidden predictions: Augustine, Confessions, books 4 and 7; Numbers 23-24 on Balaam; Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, book 2, chapters 22-23; Deuteronomy 13 on not believing diviners even when the sign occurs]
Finally, what Aristotle said about dreams is also most true here: this kind of divination is true only by accident. Just as a man who continually throws dice or knucklebones sometimes throws sixes and sometimes Venus, and finds what he seeks, so when these men lie a hundred times, what wonder is it if they speak truth three times? If their lies were noted, there would be a thousand for one true statement; few are noted, and yet their false sayings are far more numerous than the true. Who does not know that those Jews who predicted some true things to Leo the Isaurian were driven from Arabia because of false predictions, when they had driven Prince Zita into unhappy iconoclasm? Who has not read of Pancratius, that he was the cause both of Emperor Constantine, son of Irene, suffering a very great defeat and of his own death? Who does not know the madness of Constantine Stethatus, who by a foolish prophecy brought ruin on himself and Alexius Branas, although Stethatus was held to be the leading astrologer of his time? Who does not know how vain all the predictions have so far been of those who foretold the day or year of Antichrist’s coming, or of the destruction of the world?
[margin: Failed or harmful astrological predictions: Zonaras, tome 3, on Jews driven from Arabia and Leo the Isaurian; Paul the Deacon, Roman History, book 23, on Pancratius; Nicetas Choniates on Constantine Stethatus; Del Rio’s commentary on Seneca for false Antichrist/world-ending predictions; Cedrenus on Abraham and Egyptian genethliacs; Nicetas Choniates on Manuel Comnenus; Aeneas Silvius on Peter of Monte Ilicino at the Council of Constance]
I pass over the empty trust in this mathematics of Pietro Leoni of Spoleto, a distinguished physician, by which he gave Lorenzo de’ Medici an occasion of death and himself an occasion of plunging into a well. I pass over what Cedrenus narrates about Abraham convicting the genethliacs of vanity before the king of Egypt. I pass over Emperor Manuel Comnenus, for whom too much addiction to this madness stood at a great cost: it deprived him of a very great fleet and left him to posterity as an object of perpetual laughter. I pass over the deed of Gian Galeazzo, duke of Milan. When a certain astrologer plainly predicted an untimely death for the duke but promised himself a long life, the duke laughed at the man’s stupidity and ordered him strangled at once. I pass over the double lie of Peter of Monte Ilicino in the Council of Constance, which Aeneas Silvius narrated.
[margin: Pietro Leoni of Spoleto and Lorenzo de’ Medici; Cedrenus on Abraham refuting the Egyptian genethliacs; Nicetas Choniates on Manuel Comnenus; Gian Galeazzo, duke of Milan, and the astrologer; Aeneas Silvius on Peter of Monte Ilicino at Constance]
I add only the different judgments and manners of two princes. Alfonso, king of Aragon, a lover of true wisdom and wonderfully generous to all learned men, barred only astrologers from his court. He judged prudently that he had no need of their industry, because he thought the stars rule fools, but wise men rule the stars. Cardanus, by contrast, committed to memory that Ludovico Sforza, a prince more crafty than prudent and more treacherous than a lover of fairness and goodness, and wholly unlike Alfonso, kept at great expense a certain astrologer most ignorant of the art, on whom he spent more than one hundred great talents of gold. The astrologer, for so great a fee, prescribed for every action the time when it should be begun, so ridiculously that the prince was forced in the greatest storms to mount his horse and depart with his courtly retinue and attendants through rain, mud, and mire, just as though he were fleeing the hands of enemies. The outcome was so happy that he was stripped of his kingdom by the king of the French, captured, thrown into prison, struck on the face, and died behind an iron grating: a true mockery of the fortune of each.
[margin: Mariana’s words on Alfonso the Wise and the judgment depriving him of the kingdom; Cardanus, prologue to the astrological judgments, book 1, text 14, on Ludovico Sforza and his astrologer]
Pope John XXI, who before had been Peter of Spain, author of the Summulae, a physician, philosopher, and astrologer, promised himself publicly before his household a long life in the pontificate from the situation and position of the stars. In the fourth month thereafter, the eighth of his pontificate, he perished at Viterbo, crushed by the sudden collapse of the vault of a newly built structure, according to Valerius and Stella in their lives of the pontiffs.
[margin: Valerius and Stella, Lives of the Pontiffs, on Pope John XXI, formerly Peter of Spain, and his failed astrological promise of a long pontificate]
But what astrologer will set himself above Alfonso the Wise? That name was given to him by this vanity, but it was a greater and truer disgrace than praise, to use the words of our Mariana. Manuel, his uncle, in his own name and that of other nobles, after a public sentence pronounced in assembly, deprived Alfonso of the kingdom, as worthy of that calamity because he had dared, with remarkable insolence of tongue and confidence of mind, to accuse divine providence and the structure of the human body, as common opinion, handed down from ancient times, has it. God’s voice most justly vindicated his stupidity. The persuasion of vain wisdom had brought him to this foolishness. Perhaps the stars foretold this, as those mindful of the art assert, if it is an art and not rather the empty mockery of mortals, which will always be accused by prudent men, and yet will always have patrons. From this they say he was made suspicious, and from fear, cruel. You see where this vanity drove him, and how it made him, though wise in other matters, go mad throughout the whole course of life and always take counsel most badly for himself.
[margin: Mariana on Alfonso the Wise and the judgment against him]
They say the Egyptians were devoted to this vanity, especially the Alexandrians. Yet what the judgment of the more prudent was we can gather from Suidas. He reports that astrologers at Alexandria used to pay a tax called blakenomion, because only foolish men consulted them, whom the Greeks call blakes, by a metaphor drawn from a useless fish which not even dogs wish to touch.
[margin: Suidas on Alexandrian astrologers and the blakenomion]
The fourth conclusion is this: if those physicians are not superstitious, they are certainly harmful to the sick who judge diseases according to the stations of the moon and other planets in the signs of the Zodiac, for example what illness has happened to someone and how it must be treated; likewise surgeons who observe the same thing in wounds, and consider the day of the wound and the stars presiding over them, which they call Centel, Neus, Dibelgibel, Lachadiel, Sapissa, Elebra, and the like, and from that announce that a wound is lethal or curable. Conrad Wimpina describes all these things at length. Those astrologers also seem to be of this sort who generally announce on what day the body should be purged by medicines, bloodletting, or cupping glasses. All these are deservedly suspect, because the stars do not have such great force over these lower things; and even if they did have some such force, it could and usually would be wholly hindered by the concurrence of other particular causes. Indeed, mere indisposition of the matter can alter the actions of the moon and all the stars, as Galen testifies, with whom Avicenna agrees. Therefore observations and effects of such indicative, provoking, or critical days depend far more on the disposition of matter, on concoction, on the fixed times and symptoms of the disease than on the stars. This is the true opinion of Hippocrates and Celsus. These astrological physicians go farther astray because they attend chiefly to certain imaginary angles, aspects, and configurations of the moon, making little account, or rather despising, the way in which the matter is disposed to receive the influences of heaven or the stars, and what the periods of times, concoctions, and crises of diseases are. Galen therefore rightly despised them greatly, Augustine Niphus laughed at them, Johannes Langius attacked them after uncovering many of their errors, and Marsilio Ficino, who in his youth had defended those things, later admits that he wrote them not to approve them but, with Plotinus, to laugh at the ineptitudes of astrologers.
[margin: Astrological medicine and critical days: Conrad Wimpina describes the wound-stars Centel, Neus, Dibelgibel, Lachadiel, Sapissa, Elebra, and related practices; Galen, On Critical Days, book 2; Avicenna, book 4, fen 2, tractate 2; Hippocrates and Celsus, book 4, chapter 4, on natural crises; Galen, Therapeutics, book 12, and On Critical Days, book 1; Augustine Niphus; Johannes Langius, epistle 35; Marsilio Ficino, On Life, on laughing with Plotinus at astrologers’ ineptitudes]
The fifth conclusion is this: that part of interrogations which investigates hidden things, such as thefts, treasures, virginity, and the like, is plainly forbidden and pernicious by every law. Sacred Scripture forbids it: “Do not turn aside to magi, nor inquire anything from soothsayers, lest you be polluted by them”; and again, “Let there not be found among you anyone who purifies his son or daughter by leading them through fire, or who consults soothsayers, observes dreams and auguries, is a sorcerer or enchanter, consults Pythonic spirits or diviners, or seeks truth from the dead. For the Lord abominates all these things, and because of such crimes he will destroy them at your entry.” It is forbidden by ecclesiastical law in the chapters on sortilege, and by civil law in many rescripts. These people are often tolerated in the commonwealth, but with very bad example and public harm.
[margin: Interrogations about hidden things forbidden by law: Leviticus 19:31; Deuteronomy 18:10-11; canon law, chapters 1 and Ex tuarum, De sortilegiis; civil law, law Item apud Labeonem, section Si quis astrologus, Digest, De iniuriis; laws 2 and Nemo haruspex, Code, De maleficis et mathematicis; law 1, Code, De thesauris, book 10]