One of the most celebrated of the astrologers who was under her patronage was Nostradamus. He was a physician of Provence, and was born at St. Reny in 1503. To medicine he joined astrology, and undertook to predict future events. He was called to Paris by Catherine in 1556, and attempted to write his oracles in poetry. His little book was much sought after during the whole of the remainder of the sixteenth century, and even in the beginning of the next. According to contemporary writers many imitations were made of it. It was written in verses of four lines, and was called Quatrains Astronomiques. As usual, the prophecies were obscure enough to suit anything, and many believers have thought they could trace in the various verses prophecies of known events, by duly twisting and manipulating the sense.
A very amusing prophecy, which happened to be too clear to leave room for mistakes as to its meaning, and which turned out to be most ludicrously wrong, was one contained in a little book published in 1572 with this title:—Prognostication touching the marriage of the very honourable and beloved Henry, by the Grace of God King of Navarre, and the very illustrious Princess Marguerite of France, calculated by Master Bernard Abbatio, Doctor in Medicine, and Astrologer to the very Christian King of France.
First he asked if the marriage would be happy, and says:—"Having in my library made the figure of the heavens, I found that the lord of the ascendant is joined to the lord of the seventh house, which is for the woman of a trine aspect, from whence I have immediately concluded, according to the opinion of Ptolemy, Haly, Zael, Messahala, and many other sovereign astrologers, that they will love one another intensely all their lives." In point of fact they always detested each other. Again, "as to length of life, I have prepared another figure, and have found that Jupiter and Venus are joined to the sun with fortification, and that they will approach a hundred years;" after all Henri IV. died before he was sixty. "Our good King of Navarre will have by his most noble and virtuous Queen many children; since, after I had prepared another figure of heaven, I found the ascendant and its lord, together with the moon, all joined to the lord of the fifth house, called that of children, which will be pretty numerous, on account of Jupiter and also of Venus;" and yet they had no children! "Jupiter and Venus are found domiciled on the aquatic signs, and since these two planets are found concordant with the lord of the ascendant, all this proves that the children will be upright and good, and that they will love their father and mother, without doing them any injury, nor being the cause of their destruction, as is seen in the fruit of the nut, which breaks, opens, and destroys the stock from which it took its birth. The children will live long, they will be good Christians, and with their father will make themselves so benign and favourable towards those of our religion, that at last they will be as beloved as any man of our period, and there will be no more wars among the French, as there would have been but for the present marriage. God grant us grace that so long as we are in this transitory life we may see no other king but Charles IX., the present King of France." And yet these words were written in the year of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day! and the marriage was broken off, and Henri IV. married to Marie de Medici. So much for the astrological predictions!
The aspect in which astrology was looked upon by the better minds even when it was flourishing may be illustrated by two quotations we may make, from Shakespeare and Voltaire.
Our immortal poet puts into the mouth of Edmund in King Lear:—"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of a libertine to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father married my mother under the Dragon's tail; and my nativity was under Ursa major; so that it follows I am rough lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my birth."
Voltaire writes thus:—"This error is ancient, and that is enough. The Egyptians, the Chaldæans, the Jews could predict, and therefore we can predict now. If no more predictions are made it is not the fault of the art. So said the alchemists of the philosopher's stone. If you do not find to-day it is because you are not clever enough; but it is certain that it is in the clavicle of Solomon, and on that certainty more than two hundred families in Germany and France have been ruined. Do you wonder either that so many men, otherwise much exalted above the vulgar, such as princes or popes, who knew their interests so well, should be so ridiculously seduced by this impertinence of astrology. They were very proud and very ignorant. There were no stars but for them; the rest of the universe was canaille, for whom the stars did not trouble themselves. I have not the honour of being a prince. Nevertheless, the celebrated Count of Boulainvilliers and an Italian, called Colonne, who had great reputation in Paris, both predicted to me that I should infallibly die at the age of thirty-two. I have had the malice already to deceive them by thirty years, for which I humbly beg their pardon."
The method by which these predictions were arrived at consisted in making the different stars and planets responsible for different parts of the body, different properties, and different events, and making up stories from the association of ideas thus obtained, which of course admitted of the greatest degree of latitude. The principles are explained by Manilius in his great poem entitled The Astronomicals, written two thousand years ago.
According to him the sun presided over the head, the moon over the right arm, Venus over the left, Jupiter over the stomach, Mars the parts below, Mercury over the right leg, and Saturn over the left.
Among the constellations, the Ram governed the head; the Bull the neck; the Twins the arms and shoulders; the Crab the chest and the heart; the Lion the stomach; the abdomen corresponded to the sign of the Virgin; the reins to the Balance; then came the Scorpion; the Archer, governing the thighs; the He-goat the knees; the Waterer the legs; and the Fishes the feet.
Albert the Great assigned to the stars the following influences:—Saturn was thought to rule over life, changes, sciences, and buildings; Jupiter over honour, wishes, riches, and cleanness; Mars over war, prisons, marriages, and hatred; the sun over hope, happiness, gain, and heritages; Venus over friendships and amours; Mercury over illness, debts, commerce, and fear; the moon over wounds, dreams, and larcenies.