Principal Question Five of Chapter Nine
On the divinatory practice of future effects from the stars and from images, or from congregations of stars in heaven
Under this principal question three little questions will be resolved.
Little Question One of Principal Question Five
Whether God placed in the firmament images of animals and of the species of the inferior world
It is asked whether God, from the beginning, placed the stars in the starry heaven—that is, the firmament—according to certain forms or images of the animals and species of the inferior world.
It seems at first that this question should be answered affirmatively. For Sacred Scripture makes express mention of certain clusters of stars which God constituted and disposed in heaven at the beginning. Therefore, the antecedent is proved.
For the Lord says in Job 38: “Will you be able to join the shining stars, the Pleiades, or will you be able to disperse the circuit of Arcturus? Do you know the order of heaven, and will you place its reason upon the earth?”
And Job himself says concerning God in chapter 9: “Who alone stretches out the heavens and walks upon the waves of the sea; who makes Arcturus, Orion, the Hyades, and the interior regions of the south; who does great and incomprehensible and marvelous things.”
And again, Amos 5: “You who turn judgment into wormwood and abandon justice upon the earth: who make Arcturus and Orion.”
Therefore, it can be held from Sacred Scripture that God constituted from the stars the aforesaid images of which all astronomers make mention.
For Arcturus is an image of a she-bear situated around the Arctic pole, in which seven more noble stars form, as it were, a wagon possessing a shaft.
Likewise, the stars which are called the Hyades and Pleiades are in heaven in a certain image, according to the astrologers.
Likewise, Orion is an image of a terrible armed man holding a sword, who is also called bold. As is evident from the table of fixed stars which is placed in the seventh distinction of the Almagest, the figure of Orion comprises twenty-eight stars and is situated in a remarkable part of heaven before the footsteps of the Bull as Isidore says in Book III.
The astronomers say that God also placed forty-eight other images in heaven, of all of which Sacred Scripture makes no mention: namely, twelve in the Zodiac—Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, and so forth—and thirty-six outside the Zodiac.
Among these thirty-six images is the image of a winding dragon situated around the Arctic pole. According to Ptolemy, there are thirty-three stars in this image. Around that dragon are two images of she-bears, namely the lesser and the greater.
Likewise, among those images is the image of Perseus, that is, the image of a man carrying the head Algol, that is, the devil.
Again, there is the image of a man on fire or encircled by flames. There is the image of a dancer, the image of a juggler, images of two faces, images of serpents, scorpions, dogs, a wolf, a hare, and a stag; the image of Pegasus, a winged horse; the image of Hydra; and the image of a centaur whose anterior part is that of a human being and posterior part that of a horse. And so concerning other monstrous forms of this kind, as can and customarily does appear in the pictures of astronomers, and so forth.
But the contrary is established because Scripture says in Genesis 2: “Therefore the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their adornment.”
But what adornment and perfection would heaven possess if it consisted of chimerical monstrosities and images fashioned not by God but by the devil?
In response it must be said that, just as the tortuous, deceitful dragon and prince of this world once filled the earth with various monstrous images of idols by suggesting that some god presided over every kind of thing, so, with God’s permission, he attempted to fill God’s most beautiful and glorious work—namely heaven, which God constituted as an object of religious contemplation for mortals—with images in which he himself was accustomed to appear, and to make it a mirror of superstitious divination.
For if the Lord God had placed the forms and images of animals in heaven so that some fixed face should correspond to earthly animals, from which they depended, individuals were formed and preserved, and they received their countenances, then, just as he placed in heaven the images of fierce and vile beasts and of useless chimeras, much more would he have placed there the images of gentle and useful animals and of certain virtuous human beings.
But we see in heaven no image of a dove, but of a stag; not of a lamb, but of a goat; not of the cross and of the Crucified, nor of a priest, but of a juggler.
Therefore, was almighty God more solicitous for the preservation of fierce animals, frogs, and useless serpents than of gentle animals which serve human beings in many ways? It is therefore false that such images among the stars of heaven were formed by God.
Likewise, if the Lord God subjected every species of generable and corruptible things to its own image in heaven, where is the image of the vine? Where is the image of a fruit-bearing tree? Where is the image of wheat and of the other species especially necessary for human use?
Isidore therefore spoke well in the final chapter of Book III of the Etymologies. After he had interpreted the foreign names of the aforesaid images, he adds:
Observations of other signs, or the other superstitious things which join themselves to the cognition of the stars, are without doubt contrary to our faith. They ought therefore to be unknown to Christians, so that they do not even appear to have been written. But some, enticed by the beauty and brightness of the stars, fell with blinded minds into the fall of the stars, so that through harmful computations—which are called mathematical arts—they endeavor to be able very often to foreknow the outcomes of things. Not only the doctors of the Christian religion, but also Plato, Aristotle, and others among the gentiles, moved by truth, condemned them with one judgment, saying that confusion of things is generated from such persuasion rather than that it benefits human felicity in any way.
These are his words.
From this statement of Isidore three things are obtained.
First, many superstitious things have been joined to the consideration of the stars.
Second, conjecture concerning future things tends rather toward the confusion of human affairs than toward their direction. Hence it is superstitious to consider from the stars dreams and the thoughts of human beings.
Third, true and accomplished philosophers, diligent investigators of things, hold from their own principles that this business is superstitious.
Hence Isidore adds concerning Plato and Aristotle: “And although they were not devoted to heavenly wisdom, nevertheless, through testimony to the truth, they rightly exposed their errors.”
These are his words.
The response to the objections placed at the beginning of the little question will be evident in the final part of Little Question Three.
These things are from Henry in the place cited above.