Question II: On divination by the stars

I assume here that Astrology, which argues from the motion of the stars and their various influxes that effects of the same kind follow from purely natural causes, is a true and lawful science; for it is natural to deduce effects from causes. Therefore most holy Sixtus V, in the Bull by which he condemns judicial astrology, speaking of those who conjecture free effects from the motions of the stars, says: Excepting only future events arising from necessary natural causes, or occurring frequently, which do not pertain to divination.

That astrology, however, which predicts free effects from natural causes is not a science but a superstitious fable, as the Doctors note. Since the stars cannot produce effects of a higher order, namely of free will, as I showed in my Treatise on the heavens, disputation 2, question 17, no one can divine those from them. For these lie hidden in the secrets of God. Hence the Saintly Doctor admonishes, ad 8. Eccl., that while we have time we should do good, because man cannot know future things by any announcement, as is said there; and Fagundez also subjoins this, lib. 1. on the first precept of the Decalogue, cap. 38.

I assert, therefore, that natural astrology is lawful, while judicial astrology alone is illicit. So D. Bonaventure and D. Thomas, here; Less. Tom. 1. lib. 2. cap. 43. d. 6. circulo de superstit. 2. part. cap. 3. and 4. Suarez Tom. 1. de Relig. lib. 2. de superstit. cap. 11. Sanchez Tomo primo Decal. lib. 2. cap. 38. a num. 17. Fagundez lib. 1. cap. 38.

The former part is proved by the Saintly Doctors, because like cause, like effect; but the stars were created as causes of sublunary natural things, as is said in Genesis 1. Deuteronomy 4. Therefore from them conjectures can be drawn.

Moderately, however, must these things be predicted, because since they depend on many causes, which can be impeded, they often fail. But things that are casual fail more, as that a passing lightning bolt should strike someone, etc.

I assert secondly, that to divine voluntary events from the stars is superstitious.

It is proved first by the Saintly Doctor. That which is subjected to another does not predominate; but the stars and other natural causes were made in the service of man, as is said in Deuteronomy 4. Therefore they do not predominate over their free wills.

It is proved secondly. Whoever uses the light of the intellect for free works does not depend on the extrinsic determination of natural things, but determines himself; such is man, above all the Wise man. Therefore Ptolemy says:

The wise man will rule the stars:

It is proved thirdly, because what is rightly ordered always tends toward good: Therefore either all will always do good; or they will not move their free will.

It is proved fourthly. If the variety of morals were caused by the motions and influxes of the stars, it would follow that we act all moral things of necessity, and liberty would be wholly taken away: the consequence is Manichaean: Therefore. The consequence is proved; every cause produces according to what it is in act, and not beyond its order; but the stars are natural causes, determined to effects: Therefore all effects of the will would be produced of necessity: Therefore liberty would be taken away, counsels would be removed, merits destroyed, there would be no work worthy of praise or blame, which are absurd.

It is proved fifthly in the body by the Saintly Doctor, because many good works are commanded to us, many urged by counsel, many forbidden: of these eternal punishments are intimated: to those the rewards of glory are promised, as is clear from the Holy Scriptures: But all these are taken away if the stars cause these works in us determinately: for since they would then be necessary, they have neither law nor counsel; nor can they merit either reward or punishment. Thus even grace assisting our operations would be taken away, and glory too. Thus the Justice of God perishes, while our good and evil works are poured back into the stars; and honor and veneration are hurled at the stars, and thus men are snatched away to Idolatry.

It is proved sixthly by experience. For Esau and Jacob were born of the same birth under the same Horoscope, etc., and yet they were so different in morals in life and death. Under the same constellation also there are born the rustic and the king's son; there are born a man and an ass.

It is confirmed against certain observations of the astrologers, for instance, that those born under Aquarius should be fishermen, and those under the sign of Libra, money-changers; and yet in Getulia under the sign of Aquarius they are not fishermen, and in the kingdoms under Libra no money-changers are found.

It is proved seventhly. That which is lower does not predominate over what is above; but the body is lower than the spirit: Therefore the spirit is not subject to the stars.

PROVED eighthly from the inconvenience which they bring in, that the stars are therefore to be venerated. For either the stars induce their effects on man inevitably of necessity, or not. If not, why are they to be venerated or feared? If of necessity; what due service, or what supplications?

PROVED ninthly. Constellations are to be observed from birth, or not. If from birth, as the Genethliaci hold: Therefore also in the following times. Why then do they observe the Horoscope at the nativity? why the royal house? why the Anaphoras and Cataphoras of the houses? If in the first constellation they are not to be observed. Therefore neither in the following ones. Indeed they seem to be observed rather at conception, where the formation of the fetus takes place: for birth is often hastened, delayed, etc. But who knows the moment of conception, in the animation?

The Saintly Doctor draws these arguments from D. Augustine in the places cited, from D. Gregory, homil. 10. on the Gospel, from Damascene lib. 2. de fide, cap. 7. And so it is concluded that hence heresies are brought in.

Finally the Saintly Doctor urges it from the faith, Isaiah 47. it is said: Stand now, and let the diviners of the heavens save thee, who gaze upon the stars, that from them they might announce to thee things to come. For it is a kind of imprecation. Where in the place of Augurs, the LXX have Astrologers. And D. Jerome says of them, who are called Mathematici, and believe that human affairs are governed by the course and fall of the stars.

JEREM. 10. Learn not according to the ways of the nations: and be not afraid of the signs of heaven, which the nations fear: For the laws of the peoples are vain.

These things are prohibited also in the Council of Toledo, first, in the assertion of the faith, and in the chapter Non liceat, 26. quaest. 5., and finally by Sixtus V, motu proprio 21, which begins: Moderator caeli, et terrae. See Suarez Tom. 1. de Relig. lib. 2. de superstit. cap. 11. Delrium lib. 4. disquis. mag. cap. 3. quaest. 1. Fagundez cap. 38.

ADD Suates num. 31. Sanchez Tom. 1. Decal. lib. 1. cap. 38. num. 33. Less. lib. 2. de Iust. cap. 43. dub. 6. num. 42. Fagundez num. 8., that even if the astrologer believes inwardly that the judgment from the stars is not certain but only probable, he is still superstitious. The reason of D. Bonaventure which they use is, because from the stars no such cause can be had as would make a probable indication, but only one that is most remote, and yields doubtful and uncertain judgments.

I ASSERT thirdly, that it is not forbidden to conjecture from the constellations one's temperament and in some degree one's inclination. The reason of D. Bonaventure is, because natural causes communicate an inclining temperament. Hence the choleric are irascible; the sanguine benign, the melancholic spiteful, the phlegmatic sluggish; yet this is not of necessity; for the soul dominates the affections, especially when aided by grace. For we have seen many choleric men gentle, etc. And so, although from natural causes the organization and mixture of the body be such as to incline, yet not so much that you could even probably divine from it; Therefore St. Augustine, lib. 5. de Civit. cap. 2., cited by D. Bonaventure, relating a certain case of two brothers who fell ill together and were cured together, praises rather the answer of the physician, who said this happened from a symmetry of complexions; than that of the astrologer, who said it happened from the same constellation.

Nor is such conjecturing forbidden by Sixtus V in the motu cited, as Fagund. notes, num. 10. Yet this conjecture, since it comes from afar, cannot assert anything with probability, as Fagund. says with D. Bonaventure, in the body.

YOU OBJECT first from Boethius, lib. 4. de consol., prose 6: Fate is an inherent disposition in movable things, by which the Divine Providence weaves each thing into its own orders: But fate, according to D. Augustine, 5. de Civit. cap. 1., is the force of the position of the stars, which, when it exists at the time one is conceived or born, makes known what he will be. If therefore fate is truly real, and consists in the influxes of the stars, and in this consists the whole governance of life: Therefore the diversity of morals depends on these.

The Saintly Doctor answers that Boethius takes fate as it truly is a disposition of divine providence, binding all genera of causes to act according to their proper orders; but D. Augustine takes fate in the sense of the philosophers' estimation, and shows it to be nothing. Whence he adds: If anyone calls fate the order of causes which God has instituted, in so doing he holds the true opinion, and corrects the word. And so it is not permitted to infer from fate as truly real, which consists in the sweet yet firm providence of God, that it consists in the force of the stars, and that the governance of life hangs on these.

YOU OBJECT secondly, from the various constellations various effects are produced in men, even free ones. Thus Aristotle relates, lib. de propriet. elem. and 5. Polit. cap. 7.: Kingdoms have been made empty, and lands depopulated, at the conjunction of two great stars, namely of Jupiter and Saturn. To this tends what the astronomers say, that the transit of Saturn from one sign to another always causes something extraordinary, especially in the conjunction which they call the Great, with Jupiter; and when that took place on the twenty-first of October 1663, Piscator Clarevallensis and others predicted a comet for the following year, which appeared in that same month of December, at which time Saturn was passing from the fiery sign of Sagittarius to the earthy sign of Capricorn; and about that comet indeed many have written many things: but especially in those kingdoms over which it was vertical, it produced, they say, its various influxes, namely under Virgo, Leo, Gemini, Cancer, and Aries. And to prove this they bring forward many examples of events in those regions in which comets, or certain violent stars, were made vertical.

In Europe they note very many cases. Thus they note that a star of the second magnitude in the right arm of Auriga, made vertical as the sygnet of Mercury and Mars, brought that horrible contagion upon Milan and the neighboring cities, but especially Brescia, where of 45,000 only fourteen thousand survived, besides innumerable others laid low in the vast surrounding territory; and at Bergamo there was nearly the same calamity. Thus they say that a star in the head of Medusa, the sygnet of Saturn and Jupiter, of the third magnitude, made vertical over Polyflipponus, in the year 1640, stirred up that great revolution in which, casting off the scepter of King Philip IV, they acclaimed John Duke of Braganza as King. The boreal star in Ursa Major, like Mars, of the third magnitude, in the zenith of the royal city of the Venetians, in the year 1643, is said to have brought innumerable evils upon our most serene republic (may God grant it eternal life) from the Turkish tyrant; thus an ill-formed star in Helice, not unlike Mars, of the second magnitude, in the zenith of the royal city of Parthenope, which is Naples, is said to have stirred up dark seditions under the leader Thomas Aniello (who is also called Masaniello): but the bright star in the head of the Dragon, connected with Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars as its sygnet, while it brooded over the vertex of the royal city of London in England, in the year 1648, is said to have wickedly inflamed that people, like a Fury roused by the Dire Ones, into rebellion against its most clement King Charles Stuart, into horrible parricide, so that, by an example unheard of for centuries, the King himself was most unjustly condemned to death by judges sitting on the tribunal of the filthy rabble, Fairfax acting, and in the broad square of the city, from the lofty scaffold, with his head struck off at the feet of the executioner, his body was laid down. And that monarchy was rolled into the turbulent tyranny of a Democracy and Aristocracy, with the sons of the kingdom, the heirs, sought out for extermination. Likewise the star on the right side of Perseus, friendly to Saturn and Jupiter, in the zenith of that region of the world, the city of Paris, set high, in the year 1650, was believed to have loosed those savage tempests upon the young King Louis the Great XIV, unconquered Firstborn of Louis XIII the Just, now happily reigning, bursting forth in bloody vortices even to the stars to be belched forth.

NUMBERLESS other things they report that happened under stars or comets made vertical, or treading the horizon.

To these, and other such things, the Saintly Doctor answers that the Philosopher attributes to the constellations, etc., only certain dispositions arising from temperament, which indeed can be repelled by the soul; yet because the majority follow them, therefore the astrologers often predict truly, especially concerning men living in the manner of animals; but concerning men who use reason they can say very few things truly.

YOU OBJECT thirdly from Scripture. The Magi, from the star that rose, knew the Lord to be adored, Matth. 1. and Christ, Ioan. 8.: My hour is not yet come: Therefore if Christ hung upon Horoscopes and the stars, much more the rest.

The Saintly Doctor answers that that star was created as a sign of the newborn Messiah, whom they recognized as from the sign of his nativity, with divine revelation irradiating them, and that Christ did not depend on the stars, but awaited the predestined time to fulfill the figures and to redeem the world.

YOU OBJECT fourthly: Stars and comets often appear at the death of Kings, and the astronomers divine many true things from them, and these notable signs of wars, revolutions, etc., as I said in my Treatise on the heavens, disputation 9. question 9., where I described many comets in various centuries together with the gravest calamities, even the downfall of Princes; and most recently, in the year 1664, in the month of December, there appeared a remarkable comet, which was struck by the rays of the sun from behind, out of the East, and these, refracted (not otherwise than when, refracted in a crystal sphere, they are shot forth toward the opposite farthest part) showed a bearded shape toward the west, and that radiant coma persevered as long as the comet, between the penultimate flexure of Hydra, below the Vase, all the way to the tree of the Argonauts, and thence above the prow toward the Dog, not far from the belt of Orion, preceding the sun, was struck by the vibrating sun from the East; but the rays were rolled toward the summer Tropic, since the sun, near the opposite winter Tropic, was making his way toward the Antarctic. But when it grew toward the belt of Orion, where it was seen stationary for several days, before it passed across the equinoctial, it was seen to be comated and shorn. For when it stood directly opposite the sun, it shot its rays upward; but when, withdrawing from the belt of Orion, fleeing beneath the eye of the Bull, and rising above the high head of the Whale toward the joining of the Fishes, it made its way between the equinoctial and the Ecliptic, where it also placed its station; drinking in the rays of the sun from the west it poured them out toward the East, and little by little it perished as it came to the Zodiac, where comets cannot long remain, since they approach the sun too nearly.

And so it was seen by me even after the Easter feasts. But I always observed that it scarcely appeared greater with the spyglass than without it, although the moon through the same glass appeared far greater. From which I deduced, according to the rules of Perspective, that the comet existed far above the moon, much higher than it, emitting a sharper pyramid, appearing far thinner in proportion than the moon. Now at this time the opinion of Tycho Brahe is most flourishing, that comets wander not in the air, but in the Spheres of the heavens. Nor indeed could this one have been concocted from terrestrial exhalations, since it extended over 22 degrees of longitude in its orb, which are 1980 miles, which, translated into the supreme region of the air, would constitute a corresponding globe far larger than the whole terrestrial globe. This one seems to have been concocted from the great preceding conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn; more proximately indeed from a universal conjunction of almost all the Planets, which at this time, when the comet first appeared, were moving under the sign of Capricorn; and Saturn himself, after the greatest copulation with Jupiter, was joined first to Mars, then to Venus, to the Sun, and finally to Mercury; according to P. Cabeo, in meteoris. And so it was rolled about within the ambit of the Moon and of Mercury, and it would have received from both those Planets, and from its parent Saturn, a cognate organization; malignant births from it were augured; in color too, similar to Saturn, leaden mixed with some varied and sub-white, with other Planets indicated by the Gemini, the birth was seen to be most similar. Wherefore they ominously predicted malignant diseases, sudden deaths, exiles, and straits. And because it ran against the order of the signs, according to the doctrine of Cardano, they argued a change of Laws and of Kingdoms, a Tyranny; and according to the sayings of Origani, the death of those Princes whose states are subject to the signs which the comet traverses: And in our case under Virgo, Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus, Aries, but especially under Leo, Gemini, and Aries, where it placed its station; but the long horse-like tail indicates lasting seditions, according to text 54. in the second Book of the quadripartitum of Ptolemy. — not indeed to all, but to those over which it was vertical, or whose horizon it grazed; otherwise, since that comet traversed a greater area of the signs of the Zodiac, whether by reason of the signs, or by reason of the responding Trigon, almost the whole world would be shaken.

THENCE, step by step, they deduced that this comet, which on the 16th of December, across the Tropic of Capricorn by seven degrees, and 18 above our Horizon, was finally raised 58 degrees above our Horizon, had already been made vertical over many kingdoms, as below the Tropic of Capricorn in Tibiquiri of the Island of St. Lawrence, and many others of the AEthiopian sea, and between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Equator in the kingdoms of Peru, Brazil, Cephalae, Madagascar, Mozambique, Quiloa, Manicogni, Caphatae, Quarz, Damus, Cemae, Melinda, Vanguae, Janz the greater and lesser, and New Guinea. Above the Equator by 12 degrees, the kingdoms of Tangar, Madagazo Mechae Diasar, etc., Bexin, Melgetae, Giuper Mapan with all Guinea, Zocorote, Calicut, Cochin, Onori, Marsingae, Goa, Zelandae, Malaccae, Samonae, Siam, Baloan, Borneo, Molucci, Mindanao; it was also Horizontal over the kingdoms of Sweden, Norway, Finmark, Lapland, Scriphinia, Bodiae, Finland, Novgorod, Volgdae, Bernia, Corelia, Braimia, Sarmatia, Condorae, Iceland, Greenland, up to the Zenith of the arctic pole, to which the Equinoctial is the Horizon. So has the book published at Milan, in the year 1664.

This scaffold of narrations unveils the vanity of the astrologers with regard to free operations. And so the Saintly Doctor answers that comets are produced by God, and moved by Angels, to deter men from vices, but not to strike only those over whom they were vertical or horizontal. But this the here-and-now experiment teaches; for in this year, in that region, nothing new came of it; but on the contrary, in the regions of Europe the Princes of Austria died, the Emperor fell sick unto death, indeed even the Supreme Pontiff Alexander VII died, as did also the Duke of Mantua, Charles II. There rested in peace also the heroic Queen, most worthy mother of Louis XIV King of France: the King of Spain passed away. Also at the same time died P. Matc. Antonius Galitius, General Minister of our Religion, the Oracle of Rome, and constantly at the side of the Supreme Pontiff in counsel. And so the comet sent into the world threatened these losses to Christian lands, but not to the kingdoms of Madagascar and Finland, nor was it going to aim any operations at free will.

You object lastly: The most excellent Governance of God directs lower things through higher, and earthly things through the heavenly, as St. Dionysius says in de cael. Hier.; and what is governed ought to be subject to its perfect governor.

It is answered, that God governs the lower bodies through the higher; but not spirits through bodies; for although spirits inhabit the earth, they are far higher than bodies. Therefore the heavenly bodies serve these in ministry, not in dominion.