Judicial v. Natural, and Microcosm v. Macrocosm
By the time of the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum in the late fifteenth century, astrology had undergone a number of important changes, but the terminology used to describe its practice had remained relatively static despite being somewhat imprecise. The Greeks of the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. used the term astrologia to describe both the study of the movements of the heavens and the use of those movements to foretell future events. Astronomia, the origin of the English word astronomy, was rare in antiquity, and there was no clear attempt to distinguish them until Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae (ca. 630). Isidore defined astronomia as the study of the movements of the heavens and the naming of the stars and planets, while astrologia was divided into the physical study of the stars and planets, which seemed to remain fairly indistinct from astronomia, and the superstitious study, which he referred to as mathematici. The term mathematici would continue to indicate those who prophesied by the stars well into the early modern era.[1] But these distinctions were not hard and fast and medieval scholars of astrology did not always adhere to these divisions. Theodore Otto Wedel describes at least two different instances during astrology’s rediscovery in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—one by William of Conches and the other by Roger Bacon—of an inversion of these definitions.[2] The division of the science into a physical and superstitious branch, more easily definable, returned under new dichotomous terms following its renaissance: natural astrology and judicial astrology. Like astronomia, the natural branch of astrology dealt with the physical influences the sun, moon, planets, and stars exerted upon the earth and the material world such as the change of the seasons, the prediction of eclipses, the position and path of the planetary orbits, meteor showers, the coming of comets, and so on. Judicial astrology studied the physical influence that the heavenly bodies and the cosmos exerted over people, including the prognostication of major historical events, the foretelling of horoscopes, the determination of propitious moments, and the like.[3] The study of all events associated with the heavens fell into the realm of astrology which, until Newton, embodied both the study of the celestial objects themselves and their effect on the world below. During the Scientific Revolution, the natural form of astrology slowly distanced itself from the judicial and became what we now recognize as astronomy. It was not until Galilean observational astronomy and Newtonian physics came to replace the hegemony of Aristotelian cosmology that judicial astrology fell into irreparable disrepute. In any case, the point is that well into the Middle Ages, astronomy and astrology were considered two sides of the same coin, one a part of the other, usually under the umbrella term of astrologia.
Some early Christians were emphatic about the science of astrology, albeit the natural version, since it took a careful observation of the heavens to calculate the lengths of canonical hours of prayer and to fix the dates of religious festivals, church holidays, and most importantly, Easter. The bitter debate over how to reckon the anniversary of the Resurrection led to one of the earliest Church schisms—the Eastern Church following the more traditional Jewish lunar calendar, which meant Easter would not be observed on Sunday every year, and the Roman Church asserting that it was essential that Easter occur on a Sunday. The Council of Nicaea (325) considered the establishment of the official date of Easter one of its top priorities.[4] The real question here is to what extent these early Christians divided the judicial branch of astrology (astrologia or mathematici) from the natural (astronomia) or if these divisions were even recognized at all at this time.
One answer comes from the early medieval bishop Gregory of Tours (A.D. 538-94). Gaul at this time had only recently come under the control of the Franks and other Germanic tribes filling into the lands formerly occupied by the Roman Empire. Therefore, while Gregory was a Christian in an established bishopric, many of the recently converted Christians still practiced their new religion in much the same manner as they had practiced their tribal rituals, and pagan traditions persisted in this way. In his work De Cursu Stellarum (On the Course of the Stars) Gregory promulgated an astronomy that he intended to use practically to the benefit of his monastery, such as calculating the appropriate canonical hours of prayer as well as demonstrating the lengths of days and nights based on his own scrutiny of the sun and the moon. While there is no evidence that Gregory understood the mathematics involved in Ptolemaic-Aristotelian cosmology, he delivered some descriptions of the early medieval Christian attitude toward the practice of astrology. Firstly, in his work, Gregory never concedes to the stars the powers generally reserved for God alone, namely dominion over the cosmos and actions within history. He even goes so far as to remove traditional Greco-Roman, Germanic, and Celtic names from certain constellations that may confer onto them divinity and suggest a tolerance toward their worship by the recently converted pagans. Here, as with Moses’ invective against idolatry, the careful Christian penchant for not confusing Creator with creation is evident[5]
Gregory’s influence echoed in the region well into the seventh century, when Eligius, Bishop of Noyon from 641 to 660 decreed it illegal to address the sun or moon by the title of “Lord”, thereby putting into practice the removal of astrological elements from common rhetoric, which began by the simple removal of names from constellations. However, this general rhetoric endured among lay people as well as scholars. The common Christian intolerance of pagan practices was a simple way for the Christian authorities, with a tenuous hold on power during the gradual dissolution of the Roman Empire, to assert their political control and syncretize acceptable Germanic practices with Christian ones. It is interesting to note that in De Cursu Stellarum Gregory himself employs a pagan-style personification of the heavenly bodies. In a diagram of the sun and moon, an image of a bearded figure similar to contemporary depictions of Christ, stands in place of the sun while a female figure, crowned with a crescent stands in place of the moon. Despite claiming to be free from the ancient astrological superstition, the discourse and archetypal imaging in Christian writing maintained its astrological roots.[6]
The method of Scholasticism, after the twelfth century, also offered another weapon in defense of astrological practice. For example, an anonymous Scholastic writing at the turn of the thirteenth century wrote, “we do not believe either in the deity of either the stars or the planets, nor do we worship them, but we believe in and worship their Creator, the omnipotent God. However, we do believe that the omnipotent God endowed the planets with the power that the ancients supposed came from the stars themselves.”[7] Medieval Scholastics such as Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200-1280), while he admitted the authority of the stars, reaffirmed, like Augustine, “that man’s freedom was his very power to resist that influence.”[8] That said, even the great Albertus was quite liberal in his interpretation of astrology as a science and its enmeshing with Christian doctrine. Albertus, a noted natural philosopher and Scholastic instrumental in the effort to square Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy, maintained that the heavens were always the most important feature in all of natural philosophy since they were the pinnacle of the material universe and that, as God had made man in the “image of the greater world” (imago mundi), they were also highest in the cosmic hierarchy. Man, in other words, was subject to the heavens from a physical standpoint. This had been conceded by thinkers from Augustine to Gregory of Tours to Institoris and Sprenger. In his Summa Theologiae, Albertus examined the sixth day of creation and God’s command that “the earth bring forth the living creatures according to their kinds” (Genesis 1:24). Displaying his skill at religio-scientific compromise, Albertus questioned how the earth could be given the power to bring forth the animals when Christian astrologers had stated that that power lay in the heavens. In fact, the entire Christian philosophy of the relationship between heaven and earth had placed all power in the former or at least reasoned that God’s role in material creation was direct. Albertus ascertained that while the material principle created by God was in the earth, the realm of matter, the “active principle” or the original causation was astrologically determined by the heavens, as it was the residence of God.[9] According to him, God had built into the universe the faculty of creation and had endowed the material itself with the ability to “bring forth” earthly creations.
The influential Italian Neo-Platonist Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) preserved this view into the early Renaissance, and he references Albertus’ reconciliation of free will and astrological signs. Matter, Ficino says, can be manipulated based on its creation at “propitious times” and the influence of the stars can be “stored” in talismans, charms, and the like. In this way, astrologers could explore the link between the stellar effect on the material world and its relationship with human activity in a scientific manner. In Ficino’s De Vita Coelitus Comparanda (On Obtaining Life from the Heavens), he discusses this association:
One attributes a quality of a somewhat miraculous kind to the astrological images made of metals and stones. The use of talismans does not contravene free will. Albert the Great, in his Speculum, says that free will is not limited by choice of a propitious time; but, rather, by holding in contempt the choice of a propitious time for beginning a great venture, one gives no proof of freedom: on the contrary one only overturns free will.[10]
Ficino argues, with deference to Albertus, that free will is overturned just as much by not choosing a propitious moment as it is by choosing one; for if one allows the moment to pass, one may be resigned to an unfortunate fate. According to Ficino, free will is surrendered when one does not take advantage of the signs.
The integral medieval and Renaissance belief in the macrocosm-microcosm scheme also influenced astrological thought and lent some credence to the belief that astrology and the working of God were interrelated. Essentially, because man was created in the image of the greater world, it seemed only logical that he was also influenced by it. Put another way, the universe could be understood better if it were anthropomorphized and man could be understood better if he were cosmologized. The Hierarchy of the Heavenly Spheres and the Great Chain of Being, depicting the hand of God holding the hand of Nature who in turn held the hand of Man, were important in the evolution of astrological thought in that it lent credibility to the Christian astrologers’ belief that the role of the stars and God were in some way related.[11] Although some scholars have viewed this concept as too simplistic to yield any real knowledge about medieval outlooks on the physical world, the assumptions of astrology and the recurrence of the microcosm-macrocosm correspondence are too analogous to disregard entirely. For example, the microcosm-macrocosm scheme of comprehending the universe was employed to clarify various scientific theories during the years leading up to the Scientific Revolution. Alchemists appealed to this when elaborating upon their belief that individual metals had specific stellar correspondences.[12] Paracelsus, one of the precursors to the modern physician, described the body in terms of a “small universe” and discussed “action at a distance” as one potential reason for sickness in man. And the English anatomist William Harvey, the first proponent of a closed circulatory system for the carrying of blood, professed a union between the notion of circulating blood and the revolution of the planets, calling “the heart…the beginning of life; the sun of the microcosm, even as the sun in his turn might well be designated the heart of the universe.”[13]
Some, in justifying astrology, went so far as to say that all matter, whether animate or inanimate, could fall under the sway of the stars. Lynn Thorndike, in his influential essay on the situation of astrology within the medieval worldview, stresses that many in the Middle Ages believed that since “living bodies are more highly organized than inanimate things; they also deviate less from the norm and are more closely related to celestial nature than are other material bodies.”[14] This is a reworking of the traditional medieval and Renaissance belief in the microcosm-macrocosm relationship. Living bodies, as the most highly systematized forms of matter, were highest on the sublunar hierarchy; and the stars, the fixed firmament and furthest sphere beyond the planets, were the closest one could get to God without actually leaving the material world behind and entering the incomprehensible metaphysical kingdom of heaven. The soul, of which free will could be considered an aspect, was ultimately separate from, although dependent upon until death, the corporeal matter of the body. Thorndike again:
By their quality of complexion they participate by analogy in the principle of celestial life. That celestial principle has more power over the matter of the body than the body’s own corporal form has. Hence the influence of the stars has more effect upon animate creatures than their corporal nature has, and moves them to forms which are not of the elements, nor are their compounds consequences of the elements, but the celestial force works in them not one but many impressions, none of which their corporal nature could effect.[15]
[1] Tester, A History of Western Astrology, p. 19 and 123 and Wedel, Medieval Attitude toward Astrology, p. 27. I have found no appropriate English translation of the relevant passages from Isodore’s Etymologiae. The Latin text of 3.27 reads: De differentia Astronomiae et Astrologiae. Inter Astronomiam autem et Astrologiam aliquid differt. Nam Astronomia caeli conversionem, ortus, obitus motusque siderum continet, vel qua ex causa ita vocentur. Astrologia vero partim naturalis, partim superstitiosa est. 2 Naturalis, dum exequitur solis et lunae cursus, vel stellarum certas temporum stationes. Superstitiosa vero est illa quam mathematici sequuntur, qui in stellis auguriantur, quique etiam duodecim caeli signa per singula animae vel corporis membra disponunt, siderumque cursu nativitates hominum et mores praedicare conantur. From http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Isidore/3*.html#24
[2] Wedel, Medieval Attitude toward Astrology, p. 61.
[3] Lindberg, David C., The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992, p. 274. For the purposes of this study, I have attempted to refer to “astrology” as the general term used to describe the study of the stars in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and early modern times before the Scientific Revolution. This includes both judicial astrology and natural astrology. Natural astrology and astronomy can be used interchangeably when they refer only to the study of the stars without regards to the influences they pose on human decision making, fate, and free will.
[4]Boorstin, The Discoverers, p. 8-10
[5] McCluskey, Stephen C. “Early Christian Astronomy,” The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. ed. Michael H. Shank, readings from Isis (first published 1990, 81: 9-22). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, p. 150-151
[6] Ibid., p. 153. See also Marie-Louise von Franz. Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and Psychology. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1980. She discusses the archetypal reasons for the equation of Christ, as the central Christian figure, with the sun, which is the most important heavenly body. The moon, she says, is the anima to Christ’s animus and these two supremely significant heavenly bodies represent the masculine/feminine duality found in most polytheistic religions but strangely absent or possibly repressed in Christianity. Perhaps Gregory was compensating in his artistic depiction for that lack of psychological depth.
[7] Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, p. 277.
[8] Boorstin, The Discoverers, p. 24.
[9] Thorndike, “The True Place of Astrology in Western Science, Isis, p. 241.
[10] Ficino, Marsilio, Vita Coelitus Comparanda, quoted in Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, p. 142.
[11]Debus, Allen G. Man and Nature in the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 12. See also Fludd, Robert. Utrisque Cosmi Historia. Plate 17 Integrae Naturae Speculum Artistique Imago. 1617-1619.
[12] See again Marie-Louise von Franz’s Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology. Based on a series of lectures covering Greek, Arabic, and medieval Latin alchemical theory, this book illuminates the psyche of the alchemist and the archetypal projections used by alchemists to explain, among other things, the microcosm-macrocosm relation inherent in medieval science.
[13]Debus, Man and Nature in the Renaissance, p. 27, 69-70. Closely related to the microcosm-macrocosm analogy was that of the Platonic doctrine of the incarnation of souls. Before Ptolemaic-Aristotelian cosmology replaced it, Neo-Platonism held a much greater sway on Christian thought with its more idealistic focus on the otherworldly and with less reliance on physical evidence to corroborate its theories. It molded the new Christianity especially in the second through fourth centuries after Christ (sometimes referred to as Middle Platonism) with the writings of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Philo of Alexandria, and others, and it was extremely influential with Augustine of Hippo, no admirer of astrology, who, as we have seen, laid the foundation for Christian writers of the next several centuries. Neo-Platonism resurfaced in the early Renaissance with figures such as Dante, Petrarch, Leon Battista Alberti, and Marsilio Ficino who allowed some of the doctrines of astrology to be reincorporated into Christianity on the basis of this new philosophical context. In the Platonic system, the soul descended from the heavens; through all the celestial spheres, thus picking up their influences, which later manifested themselves to greater and lesser degrees in the individual; and into a newborn body in which it was confined until death. As the proper place for the soul was in connection with God, the soul spent its entire earthly life longing to rejoin its creator. It is easy to see why Neo-Platonic Christians latched onto these concepts. It is also easy to see why, within this milieu, Neo-Platonic Christian astrologers were given more fodder to feed their quarrel with astrological skeptics. Ficino, who himself ran an “academy” on the Platonic model in Careggi at the villa given him by Cosimo de’ Medici, wrote of the direct relationship between planetary influences and the soul:
Souls descend into the bodies of the Milky Way through the constellation of Cancer, enveloping themselves in a celestial and luminous veil which they put on to enter the terrestrial bodies. For nature demands that the very pure soul be united with the very impure body only through the intermediary of a pure veil, which, being less pure than the soul and purer than the body, is considered by the Platonists to be a very convenient means of uniting the soul with the terrestrial body. It is due to that descent that the souls and bodies of the Planets confirm and reinforce, in our Souls and our bodies respectively, the seven gifts originally bestowed upon us by God. The same function is performed by the [seven] categories of the demons, intermediaries between the celestial gods and men. The gift of contemplation is strengthened by Saturn by means of the Saturnian Demons. The power of the government and empire is strengthened by Jupiter and through the ministry of the Jovian Demons; similarly, Mars through the Martians foster the soul’s courage. The Sun, with the help of the Solar Demons, fosters the clarity of the senses and opinions that makes divination possible; Venus, through the Venereans, incites Love. Mercury, through the Mercurials, awakens the capacity for interpretation and expression. Finally, the Moon, through the lunar demons, increases procreation. (Ficino, De Amore [On Love] Book IV, Chapter 4, quoted in Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, p. 42 and 44. Couliano also describes Ficino’s inspiration for this scheme of the soul’s descent as being based on the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by the Latin Neo-Platonist Macrobius, which in turn was inspired by a treatise by the third century Greek-Syrian Neo-Platonist Porphyry.)
This statement is a direct integration of the Christian model of the incarnation of the human soul with the astrological implication of the descent of the soul from heaven to earth—a traversal that required passing through the heavenly spheres. Apart from the overt pagan element involved in assigning features to the stars that corresponded directly to their mythical deific counterparts, the mention of demons instantly smacks of heresy. It is also interesting that the “lunar demons” corresponded to procreation because everything below the moon was defined by its ability to be born and die and because of the fact that witches were often known to appeal to the moon in their incantations, thus furthering the connection between demonology and the feminine. Somehow, this style of discussion remained intact as an academic discourse, despite the fact that Ficino was attacked by many of his contemporaries, notably Pico della Mirandola. Demons played a crucial role in the prosecution and persecution of witches, and the very fact that Ficino was able to so nonchalantly mention them goes a long way towards flaunting the virtual double standard to which astrologers and witches were held. Ficino even had the bravado to discover the birth date of Pope Innocent VIII in order to cast his horoscope favorably as restitution for not denouncing Ficino’s astrological practices! (Culiano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, p. 56) This seems even more telling if we consider that it was Innocent VIII whose Papal Bull graced the opening of the Malleus Maleficarum, and many have held this Pope at least partially responsible for the inauguration of the witch craze. By his actions, he seems to have been at least implicitly tolerable of astrology, while actively seeking justice against witches.
[14]Thorndike, “The True Place of Astrology in Western Science”, Isis, p. 241
[15]Ibid.
wow...that is a SERIOUS post, this ones gonna take time to get through...
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