Chapter 5

Now, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him….

Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.

And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.

When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him…

And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.

This narrative passage, from the second chapter of the Gospel According to St. Matthew, is the only reference in Scripture to the Star of Bethlehem, which became the universal symbol of Christ’s birth. That symbol gained swift acceptance among the early Christian faithful and has enjoyed unimpeachable authority for two thousand years. There is also a little-known but coordinate legend about the star that was still current in Palestine when the 20th century began. It held that when the Magi, coming from the East, at length made their way to Bethlehem guided by the star, they lost sight of it in the daylight and wandered about the village in confusion and despair. Finally, one of them went to the well of an inn to draw water and, upon looking down, “saw the Star reflected in the water at midday.” That told them they were at the place where the Christ child lay.

That well was still being shown to pilgrims as late as 1910.

Who were the Magi? And what was that star? An early bishop of Antioch, writing to the Ephesians at the start of the 2nd centuryA.D. (about thirty years after the Gospel According to St. Matthew was composed) tells us: “Its light was unspeakable and its novelty caused wonder.” And in the 3rd century, the Church father Origen wrote that it was “a new star unlike any of the other well-known planetary bodies…but partaking of the nature of those celestial bodies, like comets, which appear from time to time.” In the Apocryphal Gospel of James, we read: “And [Herod] questioned the Magi and said to them: ‘What sign did you see concerning the new born King?’ And the Magi said: ‘We saw how an indescribably great star shone among these stars and dimmed them, so they no longer shone, and so we knew that a King was born for Israel’ ” (21:1).

In the arc of biblical history, the star appeared to fulfill the Old Testament prophecy of the soothsayer Balaam (in Numbers 24:17) that “a star shall come forth out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel.” In the two thousand years since it shone there has been endless debate as to what it was—a real or natural event? A symbolic one? Or a miracle beyond the power of science to explain? If natural, was it a comet, a nova, a meteor, planetary conjunction, or some other phenomenon? If symbolic, in what sense? If a miracle, how defined? According to the 4th-century Eastern hierarch St. John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407), “the star was not a star at all…but some invisible power transformed into the appearance of a star,” as shown by its eccentric course. “Its divine nature,” he thought, “was so powerful that its mere appearance was sufficient to bring the barbarian Magi to the feet of Christ.” Or as St. Augustine put it:

The star which the Magi saw when Christ was born according to the flesh was not a lord governing his nativity but a servant bearing witness to it; it did not subject him to its power but in its service pointed the way to him. What is more, that star was not one of those which from the beginning of creation keep their regular courses under the Creator’s law, but at the new birth from the Virgin a new star appeared, which performed its office by going before the faces of the Magi in their search for Christ until it led them to the place where lay the infant Word of God…So Christ was not born because it shone forth, but it shone forth because Christ was born; so if we must speak of it, we should say not that the star was fate for Christ, but that Christ was fate for the star.

In short, the star was both a supernatural event, and a natural event supernaturally decreed. Either way, it in no sense ruled the life Christ lived.

The first known visual representation of the star appears in a 6th-century manuscript known as the Codex Egberti; the second in Giotto’s 14th-centuryAdoration of the Magi, which depicts it as a comet rather than a star. Most astrologers (and astronomers) today think it was the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that took place in Pisces in 7B.C. , as first suggested by Johannes Kepler in 1603. The two planets, it is thought, fused into one exceptionally bright light, which became the “Star of Bethlehem” of biblical lore. That conjunction also coincided with the meeting of the two zodiacal cycles—the tropical and the sidereal—which happens only once every twenty-six thousand years. It therefore signified the dawning of a new age, and a new grand cycle of ages. As Kepler wrote: “He [God] appointed the birth of His Son Christ our Savior exactly at the time of the great conjunction in the signs of the Fishes and the Ram, near the equinoctial point”—that is, just as the vernal equinox, by precession, moved backward into the constellation before it in the zodiac. The best biblical scholarship today also places the birth of Jesus at about that time.

Other worthy theories about the star are variations on the theme. One identifies it with an occultation of Jupiter by the Moon that occurred on April 17, 6B.C. , at sunrise and (together with other factors) might have been thought to signify “the birth of a Hebrew king.” Another relates the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction favored by Kepler to a series of momentous celestial events. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the 1st centuryA.D. , tells us that “Herod died after a lunar eclipse visible in Jericho shortly before Passover,” and we know that such an eclipse occurred on March 13, 4B.C. , a year in which Passover fell on April 11. Since the slaughter of the innocents that occurred in his reign followed hard upon Christ’s birth and shortly before Herod’s death, it appears likely that Christ was born the year before, in the spring of 5B.C. In the view of astronomer Mark Kidger, who has made this subject his special field, the birth of Christ was announced by a series of heavenly omens, of which only the first was the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction that Kepler singled out. That was followed, Kidger writes, by “a massing of nearly all the planets in Pisces” (in February of 6B.C. ), in turn succeeded by “two portentous planetary pairings, also in Pisces, later that month—namely, Jupiter’s occultation by the Moon, and a conjunction of Saturn with Mars.” After that came a blazing nova (reported in Chinese and Korean astronomical records) that lit up the sky in February or early March, proclaiming the Christ child’s birth. The Chinese chronicle theCh’ien-han-shu, for example, records that a new star was sighted near Theta Aquilae in March of 5B.C. and remained visible for seventy days. Seventy days or ten weeks was time enough, according to this theory, for the Magi to follow the star in their journey across the deserts from the East. Moreover, “during their journey, the Star, which was in the east when first seen, would have gradually swept across the sky to the south. When the Magi set out for Bethlehem, they would have seen the Star before them in the south at dawn.” This may explain the peculiar phrasing in the New Testament text. They came, we are told, from the East, yet saw his star “in the east”—that is, to the west of where their journey began. What does this mean? The King James translators erred. The biblical Greek phraseen tai anatolai means not “in the east” but, more precisely, at “sunrise.” The correct translation (now widely adopted) is, “We saw his star at its rising”—referring to the heliacal rising of a planet or star.

“All stars,” explains Kidger, “except the ones that are close to one of the poles of the sky, are invisible at certain times of the year. This is because the Sun passes either in front or nearly in front of them (if they are on the ecliptic), blocking out the star completely while it passes behind the Sun. Alternatively—if a star is farther north or south of the ecliptic—at certain times of year it will rise or set at the same time as the Sun. This means the star is only above the horizon during the hours of daylight and cannot be seen at all at night. More technically, from the time the star sets at sunset, to the time, weeks or months later, when it rises at sunrise, it is atconjunction with the Sun.” Invisible then, it eventually reappears in the morning sky, at dawn. The sighting of Sirius, not incidentally, was used in ancient times to predict the flooding of the Nile. So when the Magi said that they had seen Christ’s star “in the east” they meant “in the first light of dawn.” That is also why Herod was oddly unaware of what they were talking about. A comet would not have gone unnoticed. But a more occult astrological event, known to astrologers but not necessarily readily apparent to laymen? Perhaps.

The Magi who came to Bethlehem to adore the infant Christ were neither “wise men” nor “kings,” as later story had it, but astrologers. The biblical Greek termMagos referred to a specific Persian caste of astrological seers. The story of the three kings was introduced later, in the 6th century; and their description as “Wise Men” was also a later, somewhat embarrassed attempt to acknowledge their sagacity while glossing over who they were. By the 9th century they had begun to appear under the names of Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, representing three different continents and races—Europe, Africa, and Asia—thus appearing to be the first gentiles to certify that Jesus was the Christ. (Modern biblical scholarship has caught up with the truth, and most translations today identify the Magi as astrologers, either in the text itself or an accompanying note.)

If the birth of Christ was proclaimed by a celestial and astrological event, so, too was his death. The Bible tells us that his crucifixion was marked by a solar eclipse—“about noon,” according to Luke (23:44) when “darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed.” This eclipse, as seen from Jerusalem, must have been total or nearly so, as corroborated by the Apocryphal Gospel of Peter, which tells us: “And many went about with lamps, supposing it was night, and fell down.”

THE EARLYCHURCHhad declined to take an official position on astrology, although certain theologians—Tertullian, for example—were suspicious of its “pagan” origin. Tertullian argued that astrology had been valid until the birth of Christ, when it was superseded by Christian revelation. That, in his allegorical view, was the “hidden” meaning of the dream “sent to the Magi telling them to return home by a different route”—that is, to change their ways. But others (including Origen, as well as the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus) held that insofar as the stars were set (according to Genesis) in the heavens for signs and for seasons, their artfully choreographed ballet and configurations were the alphabet of God. Astrology was therefore a divine science, and those who mastered its celestial letters could only grow in piety and faith.

Some of the later Church fathers, including St. Augustine, formally condemned astrology, although others accepted it as compatible with faith. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, acknowledged the influence of the planets upon human affairs, and attempted to reconcile astrology with the Christian doctrine of free will. Roger Bacon, a Franciscan and the greatest scientist the Middle Ages produced, was expert in judicial or mundane astrology, which seeks to correlate planetary cycles and patterns with world events, and devoted to the study of “elections.” Another medieval adept was Giovanni di Fidanza, better known as Bonaventura, one of the greatest of the medieval saints. Indeed, for all its misgiving, the Church could never quite escape the enormous fact that astrological events had figured so prominently in the life of Christ. How was one to condemn the study of the stars when the Holy Spirit itself had used a star to announce the savior’s advent? Or to ignore the fact that it had required the skill of three astrologers to locate the manger where he lay? In truth, not much in Scripture was against it. After all, the Sun, Moon, and Stars were created in the beginning as “signs,” Christ’s birth signified by a star, his death marked by an eclipse, and the Second Coming, according to Luke 21:25, to be announced by “signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars.” Almost all the passages which seem to look askance at astral divination (Isaiah 47:13; Jeremiah 10:2–3; 2 Kings 23:54; Zephenia 1, 4–5) really condemn the idolatry of nature, that is, worship of the planets or stars as gods. But they do not condemn them as signs, or as an expression of God’s will. And so, according to God’s will, in the Book of Judges (6:19–20) the prophet Deborah tells us that “the stars in their courses fought against Sisera,” who had oppressed the Israelites, and so working through her brought him low.

Nevertheless, the Church eventually saw the authority of astrology as competing with its own, and condemned it: the Council of Laodicea forbade priests to practice it, and the Council of Toledo threatened with a curse anyone who believed in astrology or divination. This position was subsequently confirmed by the councils of Braga, Agda, Orleans, Auxerre, Narbonne, and Rheims. Meanwhile, the Constitution of the Apostles in the 4th century had refused the rite of baptism to all who “pretended to divine”; Salic law (the penal code of the Franks) condemned astrologers as “casters of spells”; and the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great (despite his own use of astrology on occasion), had threatened them with death. His successor, Constantine II, swore to have them ripped apart with iron claws.

But Church authority could not root the subject out. It sustained an underground existence in the West; flourished in the East throughout the Byzantine Empire; and in India, the Arab world, China, and Persia, assumed a collateral importance that was no less marked. Marco Polo tells us in hisVoyages that there were five thousand astrologers at the court of Kublai Khan. Hindu practitioners thrived from the Indus River to Ceylon, and the caliphs of Islam had maintained its study in their great institutions of learning, such as the Academy of Wisdom founded (with the help of Jewish adept Jacob ben Tarik) in Baghdad by al-Ma’mun. Writing about 1136, Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us that the 7th-century Northumbrian king Edwin consulted an astrologer named Pellitus from Spain, and that the legendary King Arthur maintained a school of adepts at Caerleon, men “learned inastronomia and the other arts, who diligently observed the movements of the stars and who at that time foretold to king Arthur by accurate calculations the coming of any remarkable thing.” Monastics read, copied, and covertly studied theMathesis of Firmicus Maternus, despite Church disapproval; Gerard, archbishop of York under Henry I, was refused Christian burial by his canons after a copy of Maternus was found under his pillow at his death.

During the Carolingian Renaissance an interest in astrology had also been revived, led by Alcuin, the Anglo-Saxon poet and scholar whom Charlemagne made head of his great Palatine School at Aachen, and who had formerly directed the Cathedral School at York. By the reign of Charlemagne’s successor, Louis the Pious (reigned 814–40), it was said that “every Carolingian lord had his own astrological adviser,” as did William the Conqueror, who relied on Gilbert Maminot, bishop of Lisieux.

By the 12th century, astrology had openly returned to the West enriched by a number of Arab concepts, including conjunction theory, dozens of new lots or parts—such as the Part of Friends or the Part of Fate—and by a deep study of the lunar calendar, with its examination of the fixed stars in relation to the degrees or “mansions” of the Moon. Latin translations of Arabic works (derived in part from the Greek) enthralled the learned community, and for five centuries thereafter, astrology pervaded European culture, just as it once pervaded that of imperial Rome. Before long, many cities (such as Florence) maintained a city astrologer in much the same way that a modern community maintains a health officer, while scarcely a figure of importance—pope, general, or king—could be found without his court astrologer to advise him: Henry II and Charles IX of France; Catherine de Médicis (herself proficient in the art, which she practiced at an observatory near Paris); the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV; Charles V of France; and so on. When Charles V of France died in 1380, almost a tenth of his vast library was found to consist of astrological works. At least twelve popes were also votaries of the art—among them Julius II, Paul III, Sixtus IV, Innocent VIII, Leo X, and Urban VIII. Julius II used astrology to set the day of his coronation; Paul III, to determine the proper hour for every Consistory; Sixtus IV fixed all important dates and receptions according to the planetary hours, and enlisted the help of the German astrologer Regiomontanus in his calendar reform. Innocent VIII consulted horary charts in shaping his foreign relations; Leo X founded a chair of astrology at the Sapienza, and not incidentally, helped to provoke the Reformation when he sought to finance St. Peter’s Basilica through the sale of indulgences. Leo’s own favorite astrologer was Franciscus Priulus, “who,” we are told, “was so dismayed by his own ability to read and predict the events and secrets of people’s lives that he became inconsolably depressed and committed suicide.” Some of the Reformation popes who followed looked to astrologers to tell them whether Luther would prevail. In the Rome of Urban VIII, “astrology was even more popular among the common people than cards and dice. Along the banks of the Tiber and along the Corso, in the warrens of the Borgo and Trastavere, street vendors hawked sheets calledAvvisi,” which not unlike the tabloids of today “purveyed a juicy mix of news, gossip, and prognostication,” with an emphasis on what the stars foretold about events great and small.

With respect to Luther, Protestants and Catholics alike pored over his chart in an effort to discover whether he was a prophet or the Anti-Christ. They could scarcely know, since the exact year and time of his birth were in doubt. Luther himself wasn’t quite sure of when he was born, and his mother couldn’t remember. That left room for a good deal of speculative play. Protestants preferred a time in 1483 that coincided with a configuration of planets that indicated “a theologian of great commitment to the cause of religion and unshakeable firmness of purpose.” Catholics guessed that he had been born at 1:10A.M. on October 22, 1484, which allied him with a fearful conjunction of five planets in Scorpio in the ninth house, to accord with his identity as “a sacrilegious heretic, a bitter enemy of the Christian religion, and profane.” Neither was right. But Luther himself might not have cared much either way. Although he accepted the prevailing belief in celestial portents (“whatever moves in the heavens in an unusual way is certainly a sign of God’s wrath,” he wrote), and expected the Second Coming to be announced by a profusion of comets in the form of the Cross, he looked askance at astrology as a whole. Philipp Melanchthon, however, his chief lieutenant in the Reformation, was a firm believer in the art and a friend of Joachim Camerarius, who published a Greek edition of Ptolemy’sTetrabiblos in 1535. Melanchthon read it and decided that a Latin translation was warranted, which he completed in 1553.

To fully understand this tremendous efflorescence of astrology in the West, one must go back to the 12th century and the reconquest of Moslem Spain.

It is said that St. James the Apostle, the brother of St. John, once preached in Galicia, where, according to his wishes, his body was later laid to rest. In time, much to the dismay of the faithful, the place of his burial was forgotten or lost until one night he appeared to the Emperor Charlemagne in a dream and told him where the body lay. He urged him to lead an army across the Pyrenees to reclaim it, along a path marked out by the stars. A star later guided a bishop to the spot. And so the place of his tomb became known as Compostela—fromcampus stellae, field of the star.

Yet more than that saint’s tomb would lure Crusaders to the prize. Two centuries after its founding, Arabic Spain had become the wealthiest and most advanced state in Europe, with the greatest of its cities—Cordoba, Toledo, and Seville—comparable in grandeur to Baghdad at its height. At a time when Rome was in ruins and London, Paris, Venice, and Antwerp were still untidy medieval towns, Cordova—“the cupola of Islam,” “the minaret of piety”—shone like a golden bowl among vessels of clay. The greatest of her palaces, the Azahara, was almost a city in itself, and her great mosque, the Mezquita, built from demolished churches, was sheathed in glittering gold. Within, colorful mosaics gleamed and glistened in the radiance of ten thousand lamps. Many of her splendid homes were furnished with marble balconies to catch and hold the summer breezes and hot-air ducts beneath mosaic floors for winter warmth. Over three hundred public baths served a population of half a million, who at the hours of prayer flocked to seven hundred mosques. The streets were also paved and lit. In the library of her great academy of learning, founded in 948, some 600,000 manuscripts were stored.

A number of Western scholars were aware of this cultural richness, and came to taste it, such as Gerbert d’Aurillac (later Pope Sylvester II), who studied at Cordova and Seville before directing the cathedral school at Reims. William of Malmesbury tells us that when in Spain among the Saracens, Gerbert had studied “the astrolabe of Ptolemy and Firmicus on Fate.” Aside from being a convinced student of astrology, he possessed a Renaissance breadth of learning; constructed globes, astrolabes, a famed abacus, and “observation tubes” (precursors of the telescope); and invented the pendulum clock. He also introduced Arabic numerals to the West.

SINCE ITS OCCUPATIONby the Saracens, Spain had been an independent emirate, formed soon after the Umayyads of Damascus were overthrown. It had consistently been blessed by administrators of exceptional ability and wisdom, including the famed grand vizier Almanzor (Abu Amir al-Mansur), who had enlarged and completed the Mezquita before he died in 1002. Almanzor had also managed to hold Moslem Spain together by his own unrivaled skill. But thereafter it broke apart into little fiefdoms, which allowed the Christians to begin to recover ground. From the mountains of Asturias and Galicia, crusading armies steadily pushed their way south, taking Toledo, Cordova, Valencia, Seville, and other towns. The Moors (as the Moslems of Spain were called) regrouped and recovered some of their losses, but by 1248, only the kingdom of Granada remained in Saracen hands. And that would eventually fall before the combined armies of Aragon and Castile.

Though the Christians came as lords, they soon proved captive to what they found. This proved true in every field, but none so much as in learning, which revolutionized the West. In a sense, Western culture now regained its own lost footing with an Arab staff, for the learning of the Arabs had kept Western civilization almost from extinguishing itself. As the Christian armies advanced, they discovered that the huge Arab libraries in the enclaves they vanquished contained many “lost” works from classical times, as well as advanced works in philosophy and mathematics that the Arabs themselves had composed. From Spain came the philosophy and natural science of Aristotle and his Arabic commentators, in the form which was to transform European thought; the ancient medical classics of Hippocrates and Galen; Euclid and the new algebra; the work of Arab physicians like Avicenna; treatises on perspective and optics; and the new planetary tables of King Alfonso X, the Wise. New and remarkable information was to be had in astrology, astronomy, pharmacology, psychology, physiology, zoology, biology, botany, mineralogy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, music, meteorology, geography, mechanics, hydrostatics, navigation, and history—just to give one list. Arabic terms also now entered the language of Western science and commerce:zero, algebra, cipher, algorism, almanac, nadir, alchemy, alcohol, elixir, tariff, arsenal, admiral, andalembic. The reclaimed riches of classical and Arab culture alike were stupendous, as a tremendous translation effort ensued. Almost from the moment the reconquest began, European students and scholars had begun crossing the Pyrenées to Toledo, Cordova, and other centers, where they collaborated in rendering the treasured texts.

As in Alexandria, in Hellenistic times, Jews, Christians, and Moslems worked closely together and engaged in a universal exchange of ideas. Gerard of Cremona translated the works of Hippocrates and Galen, Ptolemy’sAlmagest, Aristotle’sPosterior Analytics, theSpherics of Theodosius, and some sixty other works; Herman of Carinthia took up Aristotle’sEthics, Poetics, andRhetoric; Adelard of Bath (who also wrote a treatise on the astrolabe) translated Euclid’sElements and the astronomical tables of Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Theodore of Antioch translated various works on zoology; Plato of Tivoli, Rudolf of Bruges, Hugh of Santalla, Robert of Chester and others translated Aristotle’sPhysics andMetaphysics, Proclus’sOn Motion, thePneumatics of Hero of Alexandria, Euclid’sCatoptrics, and a hundred other seminal texts. Bartholomew of Messina, Burgundio of Pisa, Egidius de Trebaldis of Parma, Arnold of Barcelona, Blasius Armegandus of Montpellier, Herman of Palmatia, and Robert of Retines likewise lent their talents to the task. Moreover, by the middle of the 12th century, most of the important works on astrology had also been made available to the Latin West. Abu Ma shar, Alcabitius, and Masha’allah were translated by John of Seville; Haly Abenragel by Judah ben Moses, who rendered the text from Arabic into Old Castilian first, from which it was later translated into Latin; theCentiloquium —a collection of one hundred aphorisms ascribed to Ptolemy—by John de Luna Hispalensis, who also wrote a textbook on the art of elections, which Chaucer consulted when writingThe Canterbury Tales. Abraham Ibn Ezra, a Sephardic Jew, explained the use of the decimal system with respect to the calendar and also wrote his own brief introduction to astrology calledThe Beginning of Wisdom in 1148. All this formed part of the great European renaissance of the 12th century, which not only anticipated the more famous efflorescence of the 15th, but saw the culmination of Romanesque art, the beginnings of the Gothic, the emergence of a vernacular literature, the recovery of Greek science, and the revival of Latin classics, poetry, and Roman law. Because of this flood of knowledge, the first universities began to appear, and college and university degrees were developed to grade the level of knowledge obtained. A number of scholars versed in Arabic learning came to England from Spain, hence the phrase “Oxford Don” that came to be bestowed upon a professor who “held a chair”—that is, on one who had earned the right to occupy an academic throne of authority in some field.

Since Aristotle was the lord of the new learning, astrology now basked in his scholastic prestige. His scientific thought had first been transmitted to the West, in fact, through a translation of a work by Abu Ma shar; and there was little in Aristotelian science with which astrology was not in basic accord. Aristotle himself had said, inOn Generation and Corruption, that “the earth is bound up in some necessary way with the local motions of the heavens, so that all power that resides in this world is governed by that above.” Within the sciences themselves, the three judged most important—astrology, astronomy, and mathematics—were scarcely told apart. Peter of Blois, who had studied theology under John of Salisbury (secretary to the martyred archbishop Thomas à Becket, afterward a saint) tells us: “Mathematicians are those who, from the positions of the stars, the aspect of the firmament, and the motion of the planets, discover things that are to come.” And astronomy, in the view of Adelard of Bath, “describes the whole form of the world, the courses of the planets, the number and size of their orbits, the position of the signs…By this science, a man acquires knowledge, not only of the present condition of the world, but of the past and future. For the beings of the superior world, endowed with divine souls, are the principle and cause of the inferior world here below.” In effect, astronomy, astrology, and mathematics were one.

IN THEEAST, the Byzantines were touched by the same flame. Although Eastern emperors, in the early days at least, had condemned astrology, others fell back upon it, or allowed its cultivation at court. The first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, had been prepared to ascribe astrological import to natural disasters, and reportedly asked an astrologer to elect the most propitious time for the founding of Constantinople to ensure that the city would endure. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that the emperor Valens, upon being warned by the astrologer Heliodorus of a plot against him, appointed him to his own inner cabinet, while the Emperor Zeno enlisted astrologers to “analyze the prospects of political rivals” in holding on to power. There was also a considerable exchange of ideas, including astrological ones, between the Arab and Byzantine worlds. At the end of the 8th century, for example, the Byzantine scholar Stephanus the Philosopher brought a treasury of astrological manuscripts to Constantinople from Baghdad, where he had studied with Theophilus of Edessa, the Greek-speaking military astrologer of the Caliph al-Mahdi. Some (like Rhetorius the Egyptian) were also Arab-trained. Byzantine anthologies of astrological material were eventually compiled, and by the early 11th century there was a proliferation of Greek translations of works by, among others, Masha’allah, al-Kindi, and Abu Ma shar.

Astrology gained still more ground and stature during the Byzantine renaissance of the 9th century (which paralleled the Carolingian renaissance in the West) along with Greek astronomy, which was recovered in part from Arabic translations of Greek texts. The Byzantine Emperor Manuel Comnenus (reigned 1143–80) relied on astrology and defended it on the basis of natural science, Scripture, and Church teaching. Under his rule, many Greek translations of Arabic and Persian treatises were made, and the time of his own coronation at St. Sophia on March 31, 1143, was astrologically elected (the chart for the event survives), which may or may not account for his splendid reign. His constant companion, John Camaterus, archbishop of Bulgaria and later patriarch of Constantinople, was also an adept. He wrote two astrological poems dedicated to his prince, and cast to know the fate of everything from the fall harvest to military campaigns. The Emperor Andronicus II had an expert astrologer in Theodorus Metochites, who served as “prime minister” for most of his reign. Metochites wrote with authority on philology, history, philosophy, rhetoric, poetry, and the sciences; a work on astrology prized by Chaucer; yet somehow managed to balance his private studies with his conduct of affairs of state. His contemporary, Nicephorus Gregoras, said of him: “From morning to evening he was wholly and most eagerly devoted to public affairs, as if scholarship meant nothing to him; but in the evening, after having left the palace, he became absorbed so completely in his studies that you would think his whole life were scholarship.” Another emperor, Andronicus IV (who deposed his father, John V Paleologus), was advised by the astrologer John Abramius on his siege of Constantinople and entered the city at the “elected” time of 8:30A.M. on August 12, 1376.

By the 13th century, astrology east and west was absorbing the greatest and most influential figures of the age—Michael Scot (ca. 1175–1234), one of the translators of Aristotle from Arabic into Latin and counselor to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II; Guido Bonatti, adviser to the Ghibelline condottiere Guido da Montefeltro, “who never fought a battle without consulting the stars”; Lutbert Hautschild, abbot of St. Bartholomew of Eeckhout and protégé of the Duc de Berry, whose celebratedTrès Riches Heures were decorated with astrological symbols; Jacques Coeur, also an alchemist; the Yorkshire-born John Sacrobosco (also known as John of Holywood, by an English translation of his name), whoseDe Sphaera Mundi was one of the source books used by Chaucer for hisTreatise on the Astrolabe; and Arnaud de Villeneuve, an authority on the Hermetic sciences who became rector of the University of Montpellier before running afoul of the Church.

Scarcely an authority of any magnitude demurred. Robert Grosseteste, the 12th-century bishop of Lincoln, made a special study of comets; Roger Bacon, whose encyclopedic knowledge embraced theology, mathematics, geography, astronomy, perspective, physics, alchemy, and the experimental method, thought the coming of the Anti-Christ might be divined by astrological means; Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great), a Dominican friar and the foremost scholar of his age, upheld “the influence of the planets over global affairs,” as did his pupil, St. Thomas Aquinas, who reconciled astrology to Church faith.

Aquinas, for his part, insisted on the role of grace. Opposing a rigidly deterministic interpretation of astrology as inconsistent with the doctrine of free will, he argued in theSumma Theologica that the stars exert a direct and essential influence on men’s bodies but an indirect and accidental influence on their souls. He was convinced that astrology “worked” but reasoned that it did so insofar as a person was bound up with his corporeal nature—with his physical body, and its appetites and needs. Then, like any other “body,” he was ruled by the stars. But when his soul was in communion with God, his will was freed from this bondage, and he had the capacity to act above and beyond the compulsion because his spirit was in touch with a higher power. For that reason, mundane astrology, which dealt with societies, was often right, because people in groups, like a “mob,” cannot possess an independent volition, but by nature move as a herd. In short, the stars might incline, but could not compel, because the will was free to resist. The wise man who could master himself could also therefore master the stars. This solution to the problem of fate and free will became the classic one for later writers and crystallized the orthodox attitude toward astrology in the medieval Church. Yet it remained a matter of dispute whether free will could alter or affect events, or only the posture of the soul. As St. John of the Cross later put it: “I am made and unmade not by the things that happen to me, but by my reactions to them. And that is all God cares about.”

In the late Middle Ages, astrology was incorporated into the curricula of a number of universities in Europe and was considered an indispensable part of the training of any physician in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Chairs of astrology were established at the universities of Paris, Padua, Milan, Bologna, Florence, Vienna, and Oxford, for example, and occupied by some of the great scientists of the age, such as Pietro d’Abano, Regiomontanus, and Giorgio Peuerbach. Regiomontanus, a professor of astronomy and astrology at Vienna, whose work was valued by Columbus, wrote the most advanced books at the time on trigonometry, compiled some of the earliest ephemerides, and translated Ptolemy’sAlmagest.

Yet a certain ambivalence remained. This was provoked by errant dabblings in magic, by attempts to apply astrology to the life of Christ (by casting his horoscope), and by other presumptive use of the art. Cecco d’Ascoli, one celebrated Italian professor of astronomy and astrology, was burned as a heretic in Florence in 1327 after he claimed that from the chart he cast “one could have predicted Jesus’ great wisdom, his birth in a stable, and his death on the Cross.” He atoned for the sins of many who before and after him did such castings, including, not incidentally, Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, who somehow escaped reproof.

There were also some skeptics. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, or Maimonides, born in Cordova, Spain, but raised in Cairo, Egypt, thought the verse in Leviticus 19:26, “Ye shall not observe times,” seemed to forbid astrology, and he condemned it as “a tree under the shadow of which all sorts of superstitions thrive, and which must be uprooted in order to give way to the tree of knowledge and the tree of life.” When some rabbis in southern France sought his advice on whether the art could provide any guidance to prayer, he replied: “The real science of the stars is knowledge of the form of the spheres, their size, their motion, the time of their revolution, their northern or southern inclination, their rotation to the east or to the west, the orbit of each star and its way”—in short, astronomy. “From this science eclipses of the luminaries can be known; when and where they will occur; from which degree the [new] moon appears as a crescent that grows to fullness and then gradually decreases; when the moon is visible or not visible; why there is a long day and a short day; why two stars will co-rise but not co-set; why the days differ in length at various locations whereas at one location the day equals night.” Yet he also observed, “For as much as God hath created these stars and spheres to govern the world, and hath set them on high and hath imparted honor unto them, and they are ministers that minister before him, it is meet that men should laud and glorify and give them honor.”

The notion that astrology was inherently fatalistic also weighed against it, despite the scholastic solution to the problem of free will. But elections, of course, were not fatalistic at all. Albert the Great, indeed, went so far as to say that it was “rash and working against the freedom of the will not to elect astrologically propitious times for one’s actions.” This doctrine was also related to astral magic—an attempt to channel, harness, or direct the power of the stars into objects by creating them at times when the sky was best aligned for their use. This was commonplace in the compounding of medicines, which were thought to have more efficacy if made at the proper time. Certain plants were also believed to have the “virtues” or powers of the planets that ruled them or to which they seemed to correspond. Modern notions to the contrary, the idea that heavenly power could be drawn down into images was not, strictly speaking, idolatrous or superstitious but had to do with a particular concept of time. That time was astrological, as in elections. For at the right moment, it was supposed, the power or virtue of the planets could be harnessed by talismans fashioned of apt materials to receive their power—as solar panes today are fashioned to absorb the energy of the Sun. By capturing these astral emanations, astrologers, in theory, could divert the power of the heavens to their own ends. Thus “love charms” made of copper (the metal of Venus) were created in the hour Venus ruled, when the planet was in its dignity or exaltation, and engraved with some appropriate image or symbol that expressed its special force. But it was not always so simply done.

One of the great exponents of astrological magic was the astrologer Thebit ben Corat (or Thabit ibn Qurrah), who served the caliph of Baghdad and died in 901. Here is an example of his advanced technique. To promote a political career, he writes,

When you want to make an image of a man who wishes to become the head of a city or province, or judge of a prefecture or a town…carve the head of the image when the Dragon’s Head is in the Ascendant, and let the lord of the ascendant be a benefic, free from aspect of the malefics. Carve the body of the image under whatever rising sign the Moon shall be in, carve the shoulders and breasts with Venus in the ascendant, the haunches with the Sun rising in one of its dignities, the thighs with Mercury in the ascendant, but not retrograde or combust, or afflicted, and in one of his fortunate [dignified] places; and the feet under the ascendant of the Moon in conjunction with Venus…And see that the ascendant be fortunate, and its lord, and the tenth house, and that the malefics be remote from the ascendant and its lord, and let the lord of the eleventh be one of the benefics, in aspect of the ascendant and its lord; and let the lord of the tenth be in conjunction with the lord of the ascendant in a friendly conjunction or with complete mutual reception. When you have done this and made the image in this manner, he will obtain what he desires from his king and be given the post he seeks. Preserve the image as I have told you, and it will do the work, if God wills.

Albert the Great, not incidentally, approved of “engraving astrological images on gems and minerals to work marvels.” Roger Bacon likewise subscribed to the belief that images and verbal charms, if made under the proper astrological conditions, were endowed with “heavenly” power. Indeed, he was convinced that many of the miracles of saints had been performed by such means, including magic words spoken at the proper time.

Yet the influence of St. Augustine was not easily overcome. His is a curious case for so mighty a thinker because of awkward contradictions in what he wrote. He claimed to have been drawn to astrology in his youth, only to reject it with age; but in his later critique of it, he seemed unacquainted with most of its traditions and borrowed some of his objections from Cicero’s works. He considered astrology untenable, for example, based on the divergent fate of twins, and pointed to Jacob and Esau as a case in point. How, he asked, could the heavens account for the dramatic differences in the destinies of two such children—one a desert wanderer, the other the father of a mighty tribe—born at nearly the same time? An astrologer would say that “nearly” is the answer. For, to allow the art to defend itself on its own terms, no adept would have supposed their charts identical in the first place. In the course of just four minutes, a new degree (and therefore possibly a new decan, subrulership, fixed star, and so on) can rise above the horizon, and give a wholly different cast to a child’s fate. Radio experts, as one writer points out, “operate in fractions of seconds,” makers of glass lenses “in millionths of an inch.” Again, “if someone were to forget one figure in the combination of a safe, could they unlock it?” So it is with twins, where the slightest difference in the time of birth can make for “a very appreciable difference in character and the timing of events.” Yet this was something Augustine somehow failed to grasp.

In Book 5 ofThe City of God, he tells us:

As to what they [the astrologers] attempt to make out from that very small interval of time elapsing between the births of twins, on account of that point in the heavens where the mark of the natal hour is placed, and which they call the “horoscope,” it is either disproportionately small to the diversity which is found in the dispositions, actions, habits, and fortunes of twins, or it is disproportionately great when compared with the estate of twins, whether low or high, which is the same for both of them, the cause whose greatest difference they place, in every case, in the hour on which one is born.

It is to no purpose, therefore, that that famous fiction about the potter’s wheel is brought forward, which tells of the answer which Nigidius [Figulus, the Roman astrologer] is said to have given when he was perplexed with this question…For, having whirled round the potter’s wheel with all his strength he marked it with ink, striking it twice with the utmost rapidity, so that the strokes seemed to fall on the very same part of it. Then, when the rotation had ceased, the marks which he made were found on the rim of the wheel at no small distance apart. Thus, said he, considering the great rapidity with which the celestial sphere revolves, even though twins were born with as short an interval between their births as there was between the strokes which I gave this wheel, that brief interval of time is equivalent to a very great distance in the celestial sphere. Hence, said he, come whatever dissimilitudes may be remarked in the habits and fortunes of twins.

In the physics, or spherical geometry of his example, Figulus was absolutely right. And in the end, not unlike Cicero, Augustine kept a foot in both camps. He acknowledged that astrologers sometimes demonstrated an amazing power to predict, which he could only ascribe to the help of demons, though he later admitted inThe City of God that the stars hold some obvious sway over the physical life (if not the soul) of man. If the stars affect terrestrial change, he added, “it does not follow that the wills of men are subject to the configurations of what the stars might ordain.” (That had given Aquinas his own starting point for reasoning out the matter.) Even so, he was dolefully convinced that it led men to resign themselves to fate instead of engaging their own free will to strive toward grace. He was therefore repelled by any abject dependence on the art, and tells the story of a man who was so anxious that his son be born at an auspicious moment, when the planets, as he supposed, were well aligned, that when his wife went into labor beforehand, he stood at her bedside exhorting her in a panic to somehow delay the birth.

AS THE HEIRSof Greek and Arab thought, most medieval thinkers, like Pierre d’Ailly, were also convinced that historical change was regulated by planetary cycles, “beginning with the shortest term, the monthly lunar cycle, which became especially important if it culminated in an eclipse, and moving up to the long-term cycle of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions.” In d’Ailly’s view, such great conjunctions had heralded or coincided with the Great Flood, the fall of Troy, the death of Moses, the foundation of Rome, and the advent of Christ. The “element” in which they occurred was some guide to the grief they would inflict. “So if you want to know the kind of misfortune and torment [associated with each],” wrote Masha’allah, “look at the shift of the conjunctions from one triplicity to another unto the lot of the transit, in whatever sign it takes place, and if it takes place in a fiery sign, the misfortunes will be from fire. If in a watery sign, from water; if in an airy sign, from wind; and if in an earthly sign, from a landslide, earthquake or falling rocks.”

D’Ailly’s own apocalyptic views had been prompted in part by the Great Church Schism, which endured for forty years, led to the establishment of rival popes, and split Western Christendom in two. Europe as a whole was also variously afflicted by plague, war, famine, rebellion, and economic chaos, all of which, “contributed to an atmosphere of apocalyptic frenzy.” That seemed to d’Ailly, according to a common interpretation of 2 Thessalonians, a foreboding of the world’s last days, and so he believed the next great conjunction would mark the beginning of the end of the world. According to d’Ailly, however, the full effects of that fateful conjunction would not come until 1789, when the Anti-Christ would appear and the old order, which he took to mean the end of the world, would be completely overturned. He was not entirely wrong, of course, since in that year the French Revolution turned the political world of Europe on its head. “If the world shall last until that time, which only God knows,” D’Ailly concluded, “then there will be many great and amazing alterations and changes in the world, chiefly with respect to laws and sects [religions].” Those who see the French Revolution as the beginning of the triumph of secularism might be tempted to think him right.

Following Abu Ma shar, d’Ailly also believed that Jupiter was the planet that signified religion, worship, and faith and that since there were six other planets to which it could be joined by conjunction, “it followed that the world would see six major religions,” each with the characteristics of its planetary mate. According to this scheme, Judaism was signified by the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn; idol worship by Jupiter and Mars; the worship of the stars by Jupiter and the Sun; Islam by Jupiter and Venus; Christianity by Jupiter and Mercury; and the sect of the Anti-Christ by Jupiter and the Moon.

Other conjunctions had their own import. In 1186, for example, Europe was thrown into a panic because of a supposed conjunction of Mars and Saturn in Libra (an air sign), which was thought to portend a windstorm of cataclysmic force. Special services were held in churches to prepare for the worst, and people built caves and other shelters for themselves in the sides of mountains and even tunneled underground. It took the superior astronomy of an Arab astrologer to help calm fears. In correcting the prediction, he pointed out to the bishop of Toledo that on the projected day of the conjunction, September 16, Mars would in fact not be in Libra, but Virgo (an earth sign), and since Venus would also be in Scorpio, which is the house of Mars, it would soothe or countermand the latter’s malevolent force.

Along the same lines, the Black Plague that swept through Europe from 1345 to 1348 and killed nearly a third of its population was also thought to have an astrological cause. In 1348, King Philip VI of France asked the medical faculty of the University of Paris to account for the calamity, and the formal reply they submitted that October ascribed it to the conjunction of Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter in Aquarius, as exacerbated by a lunar eclipse. “For when the sun is directly opposite the moon,” wrote the astrologer Geoffrey de Meaux, “then the power of each of them reaches the earth in a straight line, and the mingling of influences of sun and moon with that of the superior planets creates a single celestial force.” To make things worse, Mars was in Leo, a fire sign, together with the Dragon’s Head, in square to Jupiter—which corrupted the whole atmosphere and made it ripe for pestilence.

Again, in advance of 1524, the impending conjunction of all seven planets in Pisces was thought to “portend certain changes and transformations for the whole world…such as we have hardly heard of for centuries before our time.” Two preceding lunar eclipses of 1523 contributed to the general fears. The fact that it was a water sign seemed to portend torrential rains, and perhaps a flood on the scale of the biblical deluge. In anticipation of the inundation, many people sold off their lands and other possessions for cash, pitched tents on hilltops and mountains, and built little arks to carry them over the waves. A certain Prior Bolton of St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield—a kind of early “survivalist”—built himself a fortified house on Harrow Hill and stocked it with provisions to last him a year. The flood did not materialize, but there was a great Peasants’ Revolt in Germany that seemed almost as fearsome to some and shook central Europe to the core.

IF THEMIDDLEAGES ACCEPTEDthe conjunction theory of the Arabs, it also embraced the ancient lore of comets and eclipses that belonged to the astrology of the Chaldeans and the Greeks. In ancient Babylon, comets had been associated with instability in government and the death of kings, and were portents of disaster in the world of Greece and Rome. Homer in theIliad speaks of a comet unloading disaster from its “burning” locks, and we have seen its calamitous role in the politics of imperial Rome. In China, as well, war, executions, the deaths of generals and royalty, and any great natural shock, such as an earthquake—“all rode in on the comet’s tail.”

Meaning was detected in their shapes—variously described as “bearded,” “hairy” (the meaning of the Greekkometes ), or like a spear or sword—a dread precursor and weapon in the sky. According to Josephus, the fall of Jerusalem inA.D. 70 had been preceded by a comet, which appeared above the city “like a spear.” Pliny in hisNatural History associated comets with civil unrest, and in the 1st centuryA.D. Seneca remarked that some comets are “blood-stained and threatening, bringing prognostication of bloodshed to follow in their train.” Not unlike conjunctions, comets in Earth signs were associated with drought; in water, with torrential rains and floods; in air, with mighty winds and pestilence; in fire, with war. Marcus Manilius linked them to war, treachery, insurrection, and natural disaster, and thought a comet accounted for the devastating plague that struck Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Comets were also said to have heralded the battles of Philippi (42B.C. ) and Actium (31B.C. ), and the annihilation of three Roman legions under Varus in Germany inA.D. 9. When a comet appeared inA.D. 11, it was popularly believed to signal the impending death of Augustus, who published his horoscope to demonstrate that his demise was not yet due. Yet his end was near, and a blood-red comet was seen overhead four years later when he died.

Comets were also said to have coincided inA.D. 337 with the death of Constantine the Great; in 453 with the death of Attila the Hun; in 455 with the death of the Emperor Valentinian III; in 729 with the inroads of the Saracens into Gaul and the deaths of the Anglo-Saxon ruler Osric and St. Egbert; in 1066 with the Norman Conquest; in 1199 with the death of Richard I of England; in 1477 with the death of Burgundy’s Charles the Bold; in 1515 with the victory of Francis I of France over the Duke of Milan’s Swiss troops at the battle of Marignano, as seen in the Low Countries on September 15, the day the battle raged; and in 1560 with the death of Francis II. They would also be associated in 1618 with the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War. In signifying the demise of the high and mighty, comets were nothing if not ecumenical and applied indifferently to Arabs, Christians, and Jews. The death of Muhammad was said to have been so signified; and a number of popes perished under their light. The early Church fathers (Origen, Synesius of Cyrene, and St. Jerome, among them) had accepted comets as fatal omens, as did Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede, John of Damascus, Peter Abelard, and Robert Grosseteste. St. Jerome, indeed, thought comets would be among the fifteen signs to precede the Day of Judgment when the world came to an end. The custom of ringing church bells at noon originated in a papal edict meant to propitiate the comet of 1456, which coincided with the invasion of Constantinople by the Turks: “Lord, save us,” intoned Pope Callistus III, “from the devil, the comet, and the Turk.” A comet rising before the Sun was said “to accelerate the manifestation of the events it portends, whereas a vespertine, or evening, comet delays it.” The interpretive colors were related to the planets, according to the Babylonian scheme: white, Venus; orange, Jupiter; dusky or grey, Saturn; red, Mars; variable, Mercury; yellow, Sun; blue, Moon.

Solar and lunar eclipses were also closely watched. Of importance were the date and time of occurrence (position of the eclipsed body in the sky), duration, magnitude, direction of the shadow, color, shape, its sign, decanate, and celestial house, parts of the disc eclipsed, and its aspect to planets and stars. Babylonian omen texts tied eclipses to the deaths of monarchs—for example: “On the 16th day an eclipse takes place. The king dies” (1700B.C. ). Or, slightly later: “On the 20th day an eclipse happens. The king on his throne is slain.” Pliny noted that a solar eclipse had occurred after the murder of Julius Caesar. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tied such an eclipse in 664 to the death of a king. Ptolemy ascribed great importance to eclipses and predicted the regions they would affect from the area of the zodiac in which they occurred. So Casca in Shakespeare’sJulius Caesar tells us: “For I believe, they are portentous things / Unto the climate that they point upon.” Just as the tail of a comet pointed to the area of the world affected, so, according to tradition, an eclipse impacted those countries from which it was “visible or total, or nearly so.” When falling in a fixed sign as well as a royal one, its effects were said to be lasting upon those lands and dynasties concerned. Also, if a comet was first seen in Leo, for example, it boded ill for monarchs; if in Virgo, for the harvest. The duration of an eclipse indicated how long its effects would last: for a lunar eclipse the hours were converted into months; in the case of a solar eclipse, into years.

Far to the east, astrologers thronged the Mongol and Chinese courts. Anyone planning to undertake a trip, or business venture, would consult an astrologer to ascertain its prospects, and scan the skies for some indication of heaven’s intent. Comets, conjunctions, occultations, “guest stars” or nova, “odd appearances of the Sun and Moon,” solar and lunar halos, and so on, E. C. Krupp writes, were “unwelcome postings on the celestial bulletin board” and “greeted with interest and concern.”

In China, as in the days of imperial Rome, the palace astrologer occupied a precarious niche. Knowledge of the heavens was privileged, and any ruler had a vested interest in controlling what an astrologer might say. In the twilight of the Sui dynasty (A.D.581–618), for example, the astrologer Geng Xun told the emperor Yang Di that a military campaign he had just undertaken would fail. The emperor, enraged, condemned him to death. But before the sentence could be carried out, news from the battlefront proved him right. Geng was freed, rewarded for his skill, and promoted; but a few years later the emperor was assassinated, and a struggle for the throne ensued. Geng consulted the stars to ascertain its outcome and promptly concluded that he was on the wrong side. But before he could announce his change of allegiance, he was slain on the palace grounds. Two hundred years later, in 840, in an effort to reserve astrological knowledge to the state, the emperor issued an edict prohibiting imperial adepts from talking to other officials or even members of the population about their work. In 1583, when Matteo Ricci, the famed Jesuit astronomer, traveled to Beijing, he was told that it was a capital crime to study mathematics as used in astrological computations without the emperor’s leave.

In natal astrology, eclipses have traditionally been regarded as malefic, especially when they fall on an angle or a planet in the chart. Some astrologers believe that “the last eclipse prior to birth is of importance to the native and that its path may mark areas on the Earth that will be of significance in the life.” For example, the eclipse of February 29, 357B.C. , prior to the birth of Alexander the Great, “was on the Midheaven at his birthplace, Pella in Macedonia. Its path of totality swept through the very lands which he was later to conquer: Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia.” Similarly, according to theLarousse Encyclopedia of Astrology, “the path of the eclipse that occurred on the day of Karl Marx’s birth (May 5, 1818) swept directly across the Russian Empire.” In such ways do natal and mundane astrology sometimes intersect. According to a kindred scheme, those born when a comet appeared were often thereby tied years hence to epochal events. “The year that Mithradates was born” notes Justin, a writer of the 3rd centuryA.D. , in hisPhilippic History, “as well as the year that he ascended the throne [120B.C. ], there appeared for seventy days a comet of such great brilliance that the sky seemed on fire. It was so big that it occupied a quarter of the heavens, and so bright that it eclipsed the light of the sun. Four hours elapsed from its rising to its setting.” A comet also flashed across the sky at the birth of Alexander the Great.

Some, of course, imagined that the Star of Bethlehem had been a comet, and indeed the periodicity of comets would later figure in attempts to determine the date of Christ’s birth. Meanwhile, the great cathedrals of medieval Europe had been transformed into solar observatories in a more general attempt to bring the Church calendar into accord with the celestial map. Astronomers and astrologers alike (there being no clear difference between them) collaborated on the task. Tradition had fixed the date of Christmas for December 25, because it coincided with the pagan midwinter festival of Sol Invictus, “the undefeated Sun.” In an early bid to attract its “sun-worshipping” adherents to the faith, the Church had coopted that day as its own. InA.D. 525, Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk and Church scholar, had decided to call the first year of Christ’s lifeA.D. 1—though we know now that Christ was born five to seven years before. Meanwhile, the date for Easter (with its roots in the Jewish lunar calendar) had been set two hundred years earlier by the Council of Nicaea, inA.D. 325, which proposed that it fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Yet determining auniversal date for Easter bedeviled the Church.

Since the full Moon and equinox might both occur at different times at different places on Earth, the Church, for the sake of unity of worship, tried to determine an “averaged” date that it could reliably calculate and announce in advance. “Everything depended,” writes J. L. Heilbron, “on exact average values of the periods between successive vernal equinoxes and between successive full moons.” At the same time, adherence to the outdated Julian year had skewed the normal calculations since it undermeasured the length of a solar year by about eleven minutes—an error that threw the calendar out of sync with the seasons one complete day every 125 years. So by the 12th century, the supposed date of the vernal equinox—and therefore Easter—was no longer in harmony with the celestial clock. To correct the discrepancy, and rightly calculate the time of the Sun’s return, cathedrals all over Europe—in Rome, Milan, Florence, Bologna, Chartres, Antwerp, and elsewhere—were subtly converted into solar observatories, by tracing a “meridian line” from south to north (in effect, from solstice to solstice) on the cathedral floor, which sunlight, let in through a hole in the roof, would trace in turn throughout the year. The time it took for the Sun to make its way to the same spot—usually marked by a brass marker or a metal rod—measured the length of the year.

One of those who had an ingenious hand in this, and helped to refine the method at a later date, was Paolo Toscanelli, the astrologer who had supplied Columbus with his map. Toscanelli was not only a great cosmographer, but, in his own day, an astronomer almost without peer. His painstaking and exact observations and calculations of the orbits of various comets (including Halley’s) that appeared between 1433 and 1472 survive in manuscript, as does his astrological commentary on their meaning. In the left transept of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence may still be seen the famed gnomon he constructed in 1468, consisting of a marble slab in the dome with a hole in it, which enabled him, by the shadow it cast from the Sun, to determine the altitude of each solstice and, to within half a second, the time of each midday.

MANY ASTROLOGICAL ADEPTSwere colorful characters. Galeotti Martius, astrologer to Louis XI, for example, was a tall, stately man with a long, sweeping beard who dressed in clothes of the richest velvet, was renowned as a wrestler, and also captain of a legion of horse. A formidable if ostentatious scholar, he entertained his powerful clients in a lavishly decorated study, which included a silver astrolabe (a gift of the German Emperor) and a Jacob’s staff of ebony jointed with gold (received from the reigning pope).

No career in the early revival, however, was more distinguished than that of Michael Scot. Born in Balwearie near Kirkcaldy in Fife, Scotland, about 1175, he studied first at the Cathedral School of Durham, then at the universities of Oxford and Paris before crossing the Pyrenées to Toledo, where he learned enough Arabic to help translate Aristotle into Latin for the glory of the West. From Toledo he went to Sicily, became a priest, an aide in succession to two popes, Honorius III and Gregory IX, then court astrologer to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Both popes offered him preferment, including the exalted posts of archbishop of Cashel in Ireland, and archbishop of Canterbury in England, but it was at Frederick’s court that he thrived. The emperor, who carried on a regular correspondence of his own with Arab scholars, treasured Scot’s overall knowledge of Arabic learning and was said to have especially valued a book, now lost, that Scot wrote on algebra. Other works ascribed to him are doubtful. One was a so-calledMagic Book, meticulously written in yellow, green, red, and black ink on vellum, in mysterious characters, with a Latin gloss. The characters are incredibly beautiful, of no known language though of an Arabic cast. The Latin gloss also suggests that it was a guide to summoning or dismissing spirits and demons from within a circle with a wand, mitre, habit, sigil, and the incantation of the proper spells.

Scot’s posthumous reputation as a fearful wizard probably began when he was placed by Dante in his imagined Hell. In later years, it spread through Europe, and eventually entered the myths and legends of the Scottish Border region, where he became a figure of romance. In Sir Walter Scott’sLay of the Last Minstrel, he is portrayed as a mighty warlock in command of nature herself. With a mere gesture of his arm, he can cleave “the Eildon hills in three” and “bridle the [river] Tweed with a curb of stone.” TheLay also makes him an earl, and gives him a coal-black stallion whose pounding hoofs can shake cathedral towers, and who feasts his friends on dishes of exceptional relish brought by spirits from the royal kitchens of France and Spain.

No examples survive of Scot’s astrological work, but he is said to have foretold the place of the Emperor Frederick II’s death, which Frederick supposed to be Florence but turned out to be Florentiola in Apulia, in 1250. Scot also seems to have known he would one day be killed by a stone falling on his head. To protect himself, he wore an iron skullcap beneath the hood of his robe; but just once, as he was about to enter a church for the elevation of the host, he removed it, and the fatal stone fell from the roof.

If Scot remains elusive, his real life almost eclipsed by the legend to which it gave rise, the opposite is true of Guido Bonatti, the outstanding European astrologer of the Middle Ages. His written legacy is substantial, though comparatively little is known of his life. Born in Forli around 1200, he evidently studied astrology at Bologna, was a landowner, traveled widely, and won the confidence of a number of monarchs and princes, who relied on his advice. For most of his career, however, he was caught up in Italian politics and in the chronic Guelph-Ghibelline strife. In 1246 he warned Frederick II of a plot against him, which was thereby foiled; joined the entourage of Guido Novello, the Ghibelline leader in Tuscany, whom he advised at the battles of Montaperti and Lucca in 1260 and 1261, and as the official astrologer of Florence, concluded a treaty with Siena that averted an impending war. Four years later, he was back at Forli, which under Guido da Montefeltro became the Ghibelline stronghold in the Romagna from 1275 until 1283. In the Annales of Forli it is recorded that in 1282 the town was besieged by an army commanded by Pope Martin IV, an ally of the Guelphs. Bonatti suggested that his master could entrap the papal army by withdrawing his own forces and allowing the pope to occupy the town. This was done, and while the papal forces were celebrating their illusory triumph, Montefeltro, who knew every weak point in the town’s defenses, attacked and retook the town. This confrontation apparently followed an enlightened but futile attempt made by Bonatti a few years before to reconcile the two camps. Having wearied of the factional strife, which had long wracked Italy to no purpose and beleaguered his home town, he had proposed that the two sides join together to build a new town wall. This was to be done at a time elected by him as propitious, and a tentative agreement to do this was forged. At the time set, a representative from each party was to cement a new foundation stone in place. As the solemn moment approached, workmen stood poised with their implements and the two chosen partisans stood holding their stones. Bonatti gave the signal—and the Ghibelline at once put his stone in place. But the Guelph balked, suspecting a ruse. Moments passed; the planets shifted, then were realigned. “God damn you,” Bonatti shouted. “You ignorant fool. Do you know what you’ve done? This was more than just the chance of a lifetime, for a moment like this won’t come again for another five hundred years!” Shortly thereafter, the annals tell us, the Guelph faction in the town was crushed.

“All things,” wrote Bonatti, “are known to the astrologer. All that has taken place in the past, all that will happen in the future—everything is revealed to him, since he knows the effects of the heavenly motions which have been, those which are, and those which will be, and since he knows at what time they will act, and what effects they ought to produce.” In a stunning demonstration of his own expertise, Bonatti devoted his last years to the completion of his masterpiece, theLiber Astronomiae, a comprehensive treatise on astrology based on Arab sources, which has justly been described by Robert Hand as “probably the most important single astrological work written in the Western tradition between Ptolemy and the Renaissance.” Within its pages, the whole substance of the art as it was understood was gathered up.

He is ever thorough. Here are a few of his 145 famed “Considerations,” as seen through the hourglass of time:

The 111th is, To consider in Nativities and Questions especially of Law suits and controversies, whether the Dragon’s Tail be in the Seventh? For that signifies damage or overthrow to the Native’s enemies and prosperity to the Native or Querent, because the Dragon’s Head will then be in the Ascendant. If it be in the eighth, it denotes the decay and loss of their estate or substance, and increase of the native’s. In the third, prejudice to the Native’s Brethren. In the fourth, to his Parents. In the fifth, to his children. In the sixth, to his servants. In the ninth, to his journeys. In the tenth, to his preferment. In the eleventh, to his Friends. In the twelfth, to his cattle of greater sort, etc. And so to all other things signified by each house respectively: so do Saturn and Mars also, but not so much. Likewise, ’tis observable that other ill positions may make void the said significations, but no so much as Saturn and Mars, unless they themselves are significators of the mischief, and then much of their malice is abated.

The 120th Consideration is, to observe whether the Lords of any of these Eight Houses, viz., the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, or twelfth, be in the Seventh. For which soever of them is there, the person by him signified will prove the Native’s enemy, unless a perfect reception, with some good aspect as Trine or Sextile intervene. Yet a Square or Opposition with Reception will abate the enmity, but not wholly prevent it. Thus if it be the Lord of the Third, his Brethren will prove him enemies; if of the Fourth, his Parents; if of the fifth, his children, etc., nor shall he gain of or by them so much as he shall lose another time; or if any of them sometimes appear kindly, it will be but from the teeth outward, and for their own ends.

By such careful and intricate considerations, predictions about life and fate could sometimes be made. In general, they required a thorough knowledge of mathematics and astronomy as well as astrology’s own compendious body of received doctrine; to this one had to add years of study and a certain impalpable gift for interpretation that, beyond the principles and rules, enabled the astrologer to untangle the strands of fate.

Though Bonatti could be dauntingly detailed, he could also be pithy and succinct. Here is his guidance for discovering, again by horary means, whether a threatened battle between two armies will take place:

Look at the first house and its ruler and the Moon and the seventh house and its ruler, and see whether they are joined together by body in any one of the angle, since that signifies that there will be a battle between them. But if they are not joined by body, see whether they are joined by opposition or square aspect, since that similarly signifies that there will be a battle. And if neither of these configurations exists, then see whether any planet transfers the light between them by opposition or square aspect, since that signifies that there will be a battle if there is no reception between them. But if the heavier one of them receives the one which transfers their light between them, it signifies that there will not be a battle, or, if there is, that it will not last long…If there is no planet to transfer the light between, there will be no battle at all.

Here, pertaining to a birth chart, is his judgment as to whether someone is destined for the crown: “Note in the Nativities of Kings and rich men, and such grandees as are fit to bear rule, whether both Luminaries are in the Degrees of their Exaltations, or in their own Houses, in the same degree one with the other, and free from affliction? For this signifies that the native shall obtain great honors, for he shall be made Emperor or something like it; so that he shall be as it were monarch of the world.”

Every presidential aspirant might want to learn this by heart.

AMONG CONTINENTAL MONARCHS, none was more conspicuous for his cultivation of occult learning than Charles V of France. Charles assembled a library of more than one thousand books, a collection huge for its time, with a rather large assortment on astrology and divination. Among them were the works of Ptolemy, Ibn Ezra, Abu Ma shar, Masha’allah, Guido Bonatti, and Haly Abenragel. He also commissioned translations of Arab commentaries on many of these texts, though it is not known to what extent he may have been guided by their advice. Christine de Pizan, the daughter of one of his Italian astrologers, wrote inThe Book of the Body Politics that Charles was captivated by the subject, and we know that “horary questions and elections were common at his court.” We also know that the principal general in his employ—Bertrand du Guesclin—sought tactical advantage in battle from his study of the art and pored over the horoscopes of at least two of the English commanders he faced in the Hundred Years’ War. Charles himself endowed a college of astrology and medicine at the University of Paris in 1371, and evidently “regarded himself, and wished himself to be regarded by others, as a learned man, skilled in the natural and occult sciences among other things.”

THOUGH THEENGLISHwere not as quick to take up astrology as their Italian and French counterparts (the earliest surviving English birth chart is that of Edward II, born on April 25, 1284), astrology had planted itself firmly at court, in the Church, and at the great universities of the realm by the reign of Henry VI (1422–61). In between, the art had enjoyed a steady rise. Though earlier kings had shown only a limited interest in the occult, some nobles, particularly those with contacts in Italy and France, had already sought out the advice of astrologers on various matters, while “an ever-increasing number of astrologer-physicians,” Hilary Carey tells us, “most educated in the medical schools of the great Italian universities”—at a time when astrology was an intrinsic part of medical diagnosis and treatment—“enjoyed the patronage of English kings.”

Pedro Alphonso, physician to England’s King Henry I, wrote: “It has been proved by experimental argument that we can truly affirm that the Sun and Moon and other planets exert their influences in earthly affairs…And indeed many other innumerable things happen on earth in accordance with the course of the stars, and pass unnoticed by the senses of most men, but are discovered and understood by the subtle acumen of learned men who are skilled in this art.”

England’s Henry II (reigned 1154–89), the son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, was a student of the art, and at his invitation the Arab-Jewish astrologer and physician Abraham Ibn Ezra came from Toledo to lecture in England in 1158. The king also took note of the astrological advice of Adelard of Bath, who had translated Euclid, al-Khwarizmi’s astronomical tables, and Abu Ma shar. Edward III may not have embraced astrology completely, but he owned a personalized copy of theSecretum Secretorum orBook of Secrets, an apocryphal compendium of magical, political, and medical lore supposed to have been written by Aristotle for Alexander the Great. It contained precepts on the science of government, and featured all sorts of occult lore ranging from astrology to the magical properties of numbers, gems, and plants. It also contained an onomantic table (a form of divination that used letters in names) for predicting the outcome of battles, though whether Edward consulted it is not known. Nevertheless, after the Battle of Crécy in 1346, in which English long-bowmen demonstrated their supremacy over armored French knights, the king’s chaplain, Thomas Bradwardine, evidently felt obliged in his victory sermon preached at Neville’s Cross, near Durham, to warn the king not to ascribe his triumph directly to the stars. Taking 2 Corinthians 2:14 as his text (“Give thanks to God who always leads us in triumph”) he declared: “What astrologer could predict this? Or foresee such a thing? There is one prediction which will never be proved false: whatever God wishes to happen or to be done, that is done; whomsoever God wishes to be victorious, he is victorious; and whomsoever God wishes to reign, he will reign. Although therefore the heavens and the earth, and all things under the heavens should be against you, if God is for you, what can harm you? And although the heavens and the earth and all things under the heavens should be for you, if God is against you, what can help you?” He would hardly have put it that way if astrology in court circles had not been gaining ground.

As indeed it was. A calendar commissioned by John of Gaunt, one of Edward’s sons, included astrological tables for medical use, and one of the horoscopes to survive from the period was clearly cast in response to a question asked by a courtier as to whether the future Richard II would gain the throne. At the time, the expected heir, Edward the Black Prince, had just died, and the reigning King Edward III was in decline. The chart indicated, in fact, that Richard would be crowned. Once crowned, Richard moved to incorporate the occult sciences into the rich and eclectic life of his fashionable court. In this, his taste was allied with that of Charles V of France, King Wenceslas of Bohemia (the “Good King Wenceslas” of Christmas song), and other monarchs. Richard’s beautifully decorated book of divination, much of it consisting of extracts from theSecretum Secretorum, included a set of geomantic tables, based on the treatise of an Arab astrologer, in which 3,200 possible answers were given to twenty-five representative questions. Some of these were typical of what the client of an astrologer might ask: “Should I marry?” “Will I become rich?” “Is my wife (or mistress) pregnant?” “Will the pregnancy go well?” “Who will win the battle?” “Will I be promoted at court?”

Astrologers making such predictions sometimes lived on the razor’s edge. In 1441, Richard Bolingbroke and Thomas Southwell, both “reputable physicians and senior Oxford scholars,” were tried for treason after they were found to have cast a horoscope that predicted the death of Henry VI. As later dramatized in Part 2 of Shakespeare’sKing Henry VI, this episode also involved Eleanor Cobham, wife of the Lord Protector of the realm, who together with a woman known as “the Witch of Eye” (Eye being a village in Suffolk) “had consulted Bolingbroke and Southwell for astrological help in conceiving a child.” In the aftermath of the trial, Bolingbroke was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Smithfield; Southwell died in prison; Eleanor Cobham was banished; “the Witch of Eye” burned. The king, meanwhile, understandably spooked, had “commissioned two [other] astrologers to produce an alternative interpretation of the horoscope” but the first would prove more nearly correct, at least with respect to the manner of his end.

Yet many astrologers at this time, such as John Holbroke and John Argentine, also enjoyed considerable repute. Holbroke, a doctor of theology, was a master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, chancellor of the university, and a mathematician and astronomer of renown. His chief work was an ephemeris which, by more accurately recording the true and mean motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets, with a table of the ascensions of the signs, revised and corrected the Alfonsine tables then in use. John Argentine, no less distinguished, was provost of Kings College, Cambridge, as well as royal physician and astrologer to both Edward IV and Edward V. Henry V was also a student of the art and commissioned splendid astrolabes of gold and silver for his use. Henry VII cherished Bonatti’s work and had at least two astrologers, Baptista Boerio and William Parron, at his court. Henry VIII consulted an astrologer by the name of John Robyns and insisted that Thomas Cranmer keep him informed about any comets that appeared. Sir Thomas More’s son-in-law, William Roper, relates that Henry also had More from time to time “up into the leads there to consider with him the diversities, courses, motions, and operations of the planets and stars.” Meanwhile, Cardinal Wolsey, Henry’s first chancellor, hoped that by studying the king’s horoscope he could successfully anticipate his actions and “pander to his whims.” Wolsey also tried to elect auspicious times for some of his diplomatic missions, but not all of them worked out. Sir William Paget, state secretary to Edward VI, could scarcely get enough of what Bonatti taught, and his successor under Elizabeth, Sir Thomas Smith, “could scarcely sleep at night” for his study of the art. Smith’s pupil Gabriel Harvey, “friend and counselor to Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser,” was similarly possessed.

If Mary Tudor’s tenure on the throne was “tainted by popish superstition,” that of Elizabeth did not shy from the occult. When Elizabeth came to power in November 1558, few would have predicted a long and prosperous reign. Fear and uncertainty were rampant after a tumultuous succession of ill-fated rulers and the bitterness and hatred of religious strife had led to conditions akin to civil war. Even Ivan the Terrible in Moscow, enmeshed in intrigue and presiding over a sundered realm, could regard the English crown as no more stable than his own. The queen faced plots both at home and abroad, and feared that Spain and France might overcome their own mutual enmity and unite against her rule. Astrologers belonging to contending factions were also at work. Those who favored Mary, Queen of Scots urged revolt on the grounds that Elizabeth would not survive her first year—and, indeed, a lunar eclipse on April 2, 1558, together with a conjunction of Saturn and Mars, seemed to augur the worst.

But the cryptic prophecies that caused the greatest alarm among the English were those of Nostradamus, whose opaque, encoded forecasts seemed to apply to Elizabeth’s reign. According to the course of public events, they were thought to have predicted the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots to the dauphin of France; the recent death of Queen Mary of England; the death of Henri II of France in a jousting match; the threatened war with France over Scotland; and the accession of Elizabeth herself. Elizabeth’s new archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, scoffed at his pronouncements as a “fantastical hodge-podge,” yet “the people did so waver, and the whole realm was troubled,” and seized with a terrible doubt.

Elizabeth herself was prepared to give astrology its due. She accepted the notion that, as she remarked in a letter to Mary Stuart, “our dispositions are caused in part by supernatural signs, which change every day,” but at the same time discouraged her subjects from exploring the matter on their own. From 1581 on it was a felony to cast her horoscope, or even to possess it, and a capital crime to predict her death. Even so, it was the mischief of prediction that she feared, not the stars themselves. She had a stalwart heart. In May 1582, when all England was alarmed by a comet, her courtiers “went about to dissuade her majesty (lying then at Richmond) from looking on [it],” but she “with a courage answerable to the greatness of her state, caused the window to be set open, and declared,‘Iacta est alia, The dice are thrown.’ ” When her anxious attendants asked her, “Should the comet not be feared?” she replied, with an exemplary piety, that “her steadfast hope and confidence was too firmly planted in the providence of God, to be blasted or affrighted with those beams.”

That comet was but one of several celestial events that seemed to augur ill. Most were thought to point toward 1588, when a great new Saturn-Jupiter conjunction would take place. “I am astrologically induced to conjecture,” wrote Richard Harvey, “that we are most like to have a new world, by some sudden, violent, & wonderful strange alteration, which even heretofore hath always occurred.” Few doubted this was so. In 1475, the year before his death, Regiomontanus had published an almanac in which he predicted that 1588 would be momentous for European politics. He thought that it would be ushered in by an eclipse of the Sun in February and marked by two total eclipses of the Moon, one in March and one in August, when Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars would also hang in ominous conjunction “in the Moon’s own house.” He was not far off. In that notable year the Spanish Armada was launched and defeated, the king of Denmark (Frederick II) died, the king of France (Henri III) was driven out of Paris, and there was a terrific struggle for the Polish throne.

IN WAYS THAT WERE SOMETIMES SUBTLE, sometimes obvious, astrology touched nearly every aspect of secular and religious life. Despite the official position of the Church, the persecution of astrologers was also fairly rare. The Church found no fault with medical astrology, and openly embraced “elections” since its practice made “a calculated effort to modify the future favorably” by a strategic act of free will. In the Church’s own heavenly hierarchy, the nine orders of angels were also astrologically assigned. “Thrones were of the realm of Saturn, since Saturn is static,” as one writer tells us. “Dominions were of the realm of Jupiter, since Jupiter is a planet of rulers; Powers were assigned to Mars, the planet of power; Principalities were assigned to the Sun, symbol of Kings; Virtues were assigned to Venus; Archangels were assigned to Mercury; and Angels to the Moon. Above the Thrones were the Cherubim and Seraphim, who controlled the Fixed Stars and the Primum Mobile, making the Nine.” That stately system, based on the astrological—not astronomical—signification of each planet, may be viewed as the cabalistic counterpart of fortune-telling with playing cards, which is an astral method of divination. The four suits represent the four fixed signs, as well as the four seasons, and the thirteen cards in each suit correspond to the thirteen lunar months. The four suits of 13 cards add up to 52 (the weeks of the year). The numbers 1–13 are added to make 91, multiplied by 4 to give 364, or the approximate number of days in a year. The Joker was added to make 365.

The art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance found inspiration in astrological motifs. Down to the 18th century, many literary works, buildings, and works of art are nearly unintelligible without a knowledge of such ideas. We find symbolic figures representing the zodiac in many of the great cathedrals—in Notre Dame, Amiens, Reims, Cremona, and St. Mark’s, for example—in sculpture, mosaics, paintings, frescoes, illuminated manuscripts, even household wares. A famous astrological frieze adorns Merton College at Oxford; Oxford itself is named for a zodiac sign (Taurus, the celestial Ox or Bull). Many of the paintings of Raphael, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Tintoretto, Dürer, Rubens, Hieronymus Bosch, and others, can scarcely be understood without reference to astrological theme. Raphael’s famedVision of Ezekiel, for example, depicts God surrounded by the four fixed zodiac signs, and his decorations for the cupola of the Chigi Palace show the planets and constellations as gods. Guido Reni portrayed St. Michael the Archangel with the Balance of Libra in his hand; Dürer’sMelancholia is a complete portrait of Saturn exalted in Libra, in which the figure of melancholia, winged, and crowned with the myrtle leaves of Venus, “counsels a patience that will mean the triumph of the soul over sorrow through a penetration of the meaning of life and death.” A number of Botticelli’s paintings—includingVenus and Mars —are astrological allegories; Holbein’sThe Ambassador’s Secret incorporates a complete horoscope in encoded form.

The work of Chaucer, Dante, Rabelais, Shakespeare, and other masters is rich with related themes. For example, the famous speech in Shakespeare’sAs You Like It about the “Seven Ages of Man” is based on a planetary scheme. In theDivine Comedy Dante begins his wanderings when the Sun is in Aries—the beginning of the zodiac, but also (as Dante tells us) the sign ruling when God created the world: “…The hour was morning’s prime and on his way / Aloft the Sun ascended with those stars, / That with him rose when Love Divine first moved / Those its fair works.” Pisces, representing Christ, is also rising over the horizon; Virgo—the stars of his mother, the Virgin—is opposite on the descendant, the two together “cradling the Earth.” Venus exalted in Pisces represents divine love in the first Canto of thePurgatorio; in theParadiso Dante boldly attributes his own poetic gift to the constellation of Gemini, the sign that dominated his natal chart. “O glorious constellation!” he exclaims, “O mighty stars pregnant with holy power.” Though he placed two famed astrologers in his poetic Hell, their sin was not so much astrology as pride. Dante himself, in any case, had no doubt about the influence of the stars upon human life. Were it not for the influences of the stars, he wrote, children would be exactly like their parents—which turned Augustine’s argument about twins on its head. “Our life, and also the life of every living thing here below,” he wrote, “is caused by the heavens,” which, as he put it in thePurgatorio, “according to its stars direct every seed to some end.” Marco’s speech to the poet in the sixteenth canto of thePurgatorio is also a pure statement of orthodox doctrine on the art.

Chaucer, a high court official under Edward III, was familiar with Ptolemy, Alcabitius, al-Kindi, Masha’allah, and others, and deeply versed in the work of Bonatti and Michael Scot. HisTreatise on the Astrolabe, written about 1391 for “Little Lewis,” a boy of ten who may have been his own son, set out to deal with astrology in all its aspects, as well as the technicalities of the astrolabe itself. His work, which remained unfinished, explained the characteristics of the signs, the correspondence between them and the parts of the human body, and the planetary hours. In considering how to judge whether an ascendant is fortunate or not, he tells us, it must not contain an evil planet (Mars or Saturn), or be in aspect to them, or conjunct the Dragon’s Tail. However, should it contain a fortunate planet (Venus, for example), that would be a cause for “joy.” (A simplistic view, of course, but then his work was meant to introduce the subject to a child of ten.)

The Canterbury Talesis full of astrological lore. The bawdy Wife of Bath ascribes her lust to Venus, her hardiness to Mars, and her general sensuality to her Taurus ascendant. “Alas! alas!” she cries, “that ever love was sin! / I followed ay [always] mine inclination / By vertu of my constellacion.” We learn that those with Mercury in Pisces (the sign in which the planet has its “fall”) fare poorly in love because Pisces is the sign where Venus is exalted; Venus, on the other hand, suffers in either Gemini or Virgo, where Mercury reigns. In “The Knight’s Tale,” the advice of Arcite to Palamon accepts the rule of the stars over man’s destinies as an unavoidable fact, and counsels Stoic resignation:

For Goddes love, tak al in pacience

Our prisoun, for it may non other be;

Fortune hath yeven [given] us this adversitee.

Som wikke [evil] aspect or disposicioun

Of Saturne, by sum constellacioun,

Hath yeven us this, although we hadde it sworn;

So stood the heven whan that we were born;

We moste [must] endure it: this is the short and pleyn.

The tale also explains the planetary hours and the procedure for calculating a fortunate ascendant for an election chart. In “The Man of Law’s Tale,” the Emperor’s daughter, Lady Constance, is betrothed to a Turkish Sultan, but her father fails to elect a propitious time for her voyage, so that the unfortunate ascendant under which it begins brings a string of misfortunes in its train. All this, we are told, a competent astrologer could have helped her to avoid. The lawyer asks, “Was there no philosopher [astrologer] in all thy town [to elect a better time]?” Aries was rising with Mars, its ruling planet, in Cancer, the sign of its “fall,” just as Constance embarked, and a “feeble Moon” in “disastrous,” fashion was moving away from Aries—its place of mutual reception—toward a conjunction with Mars. As a result, the hoped-for marriage was “slain.” One cannot always know when Chaucer is speaking in his own voice, although astrology in theTales is disparaged only by such disreputable characters as the Franklin, who rails against the mansions of the Moon. Chaucer dolefully concludes: “For in the sterres, clerer than is glas, / Is written, God wot, whoso coude it rede, / The death of every man, withouten drede.” [“For in the stars, clearer than in glass, is written, God knows, whoever can read it, the death of every man, without doubt.”]

Some of the tales, such as “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” would seem to be celestial allegories in which the characters themselves represent planets or stars. Thus an apparently “unsophisticated, farmyard story of a vain cockerel” who narrowly escapes becoming the feast of a fox turns out to mirror an actual stellar event. The tale takes place on May 3, as Chaucer tells us, with the Sun in Taurus. The exact date was May 3, 1392. The cockerel (representing the Sun) announces the break of day to his seven hens (the Pleiades). On that day, the fox (Saturn) neared conjunction with the Sun (thus placing the cockerel at risk), but the Sun is saved by “the timely arrival of a widow and her two daughters, who correspond to the rising of the Moon and the twin scales of Libra.” Again, in “The Franklin’s Tale,” Chaucer allows us to fix the date of the events precisely—as Christmas Day, December 25, 1387—when exceptionally high tides temporarily submerged a rocky stretch of the Brittany coast. In the tale, a magician pretends to make the coast appear to disappear, by understanding in advance the Moon’s effect on the tides.

InTroilus and Criseyde, Chaucer’s other poetic masterpiece, set in the Trojan War, the Trojan astrologer Calkas defects when by “calculing” he discovers the Greeks will win. Troilus fares well in love when Venus is in Criseyde’s seventh house; Pandarus chooses to convey a message to Criseyde when the Moon is “in good plyt”; the two lovers consummate their desire when Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon conjoin in Cancer to cause a torrential rain; and that night Troilus can only hope that the “badde aspects” made by the malefics in his chart, as well as his “Venus combust” will somehow be overcome by Jupiter’s benignant rays. Jupiter fails him, Criseyde is obliged to leave Troy as part of a prisoner exchange, and as she departs, she bemoans “the cursed constellation” under which she was born.

ALMOST ALL THOSEwho knew anything about astrology were learned, as the science of it required. But some of this learning also trickled down in simplified form. Most of the popular lore was lunar, and had to do with interpreting the phases of the Moon. Planting by the Moon was time-honored, of course. A fast or waxing moon, “increasing in light, well placed and aspected,” was usually favored for most ventures or occasions—unless one was being bled; mental effort was best made when the Moon and Mercury were in friendly aspect or both in the signs that Mercury ruled. A haircut was thought to last longer when the Moon was on the wane.