[1177] Azario, in Corio, fol. 258.
[1178] Considerations of this kind probably influenced the Turkish astrologers who, after the battle of Nicopolis, advised the Sultan Bajazet I. to consent to the ransom of John of Burgundy, since ‘for his sake much Christian blood would be shed.’ It was not difficult to foresee the further course of the French civil war. Magn. Chron. Belgicum, p. 358. Juvénal des Ursins, ad. a. 1396.
[1179] Benedictus, in Eccard, ii. col. 1579. It was said of King Ferrante in 1493 that he would lose his throne ‘sine cruore sed sola fama’—which actually happened.
[1180] Comp. Steinschneider, Apokalypsen mit polemischer Tendenz, D. M. G. Z. xxviii. 627 sqq. xxix. 261.
[1181] Bapt. Mantuan. De Patientia, l. iii. cap. 12.
[1182] Giov. Villani, x. 39, 40. Other reasons also existed, e.g. the jealousy of his colleagues. Bonatto had taught the same, and had explained the miracle of Divine Love in St. Francis as the effect of the planet Mars. Comp. Jo. Picus, Adv. Astrol. ii. 5.
[1183] They were painted by Miretto at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Acc. to Scardeonius they were destined ‘ad indicandum nascentium naturas per gradus et numeros’—a more popular way of teaching than we can now well imagine. It was astrology ‘à la portèe de tout le monde.’
[1184] He says (Orationes, fol. 35, ‘In Nuptias’) of astrology: ‘haec efficit ut homines parum a Diis distare videantur’! Another enthusiast of the same time is Jo. Garzonius, De Dignitate Urbis Bononiae, in Murat. xxi. col. 1163.
[1185] Petrarca, Epp. Seniles, iii. 1 (p. 765) and elsewhere. The letter in question was written to Boccaccio. On Petrarch’s polemic against the astrologers, see Geiger. Petr. 87-91 and 267, note 11.
[1186] Franco Sacchetti (nov. 151) ridicules their claims to wisdom.