In all the better families the horoscope of the children was drawn as a matter of course, and it sometimes happened that for half a lifetime men were haunted by the idle expectation of events which never occurred. The stars[1165] were questioned whenever a great man had to come to any important decision, and even consulted as to the hour at which any undertaking was to be begun. The journeys of princes, the reception of foreign ambassadors,[1166] the laying of the foundation-stone of public buildings, depended on the answer. A striking instance of the latter occurs in the life of the aforenamed Guido Bonatto, who by his personal activity and by his great systematic work on the subject[1167] deserves to be called the restorer of astrology in the thirteenth century. In order to put an end to the struggle of the Guelphs and Ghibellines at Forli, he persuaded the inhabitants to rebuild the city walls and to begin the works under a constellation indicated by himself. If then two men, one from each party, at the same moment put a stone into the foundation, there would henceforth and for ever be no more party divisions in Forli. A Guelph and a Ghibelline were selected for this office; the solemn moment arrived, each held the stone in his hands, the workmen stood ready with their implements, Bonatto gave the signal and the Ghibelline threw down his stone on to the foundation. But the Guelph hesitated, and at last refused to do anything at all, on the ground that Bonatto himself had the reputation of a Ghibelline and might be devising some mysterious mischief against the Guelphs. Upon which the astrologer addressed him: ‘God damn thee and the Guelph party, with your distrustful malice! This constellation will not appear above our city for 500 years to come.’ In fact God soon afterwards did destroy the Guelphs of Forli, but now, writes the chronicler about 1480, the two parties are thoroughly reconciled, and their very names are heard no longer.[1168]
Nothing that depended upon the stars was more important than decisions in time of war. The same Bonatto procured for the great Ghibelline leader Guido da Montefeltro a series of victories, by telling him the propitious hour for marching.[1169] When Montefeltro was no longer accompanied by him[1170] he lost the courage to maintain his despotism, and entered a Minorite monastery, where he lived as a monk for many years till his death. In the war with Pisa in 1362, the Florentines commissioned their astrologer to fix the hour for the march,[1171] and almost came too late through suddenly receiving orders to take a circuitous route through the city. On former occasions they had marched out by the Via di Borgo S. Apostolo, and the campaign had been unsuccessful. It was clear that there was some bad omen connected with the exit through this street against Pisa, and consequently the army was now led out by the Porta Rossa. But as the tents stretched out there to dry had not been taken away, the flags—another bad omen—had to be lowered. The influence of astrology in war was confirmed by the fact that nearly all the Condottieri believed in it. Jacopo Caldora was cheerful in the most serious illness, knowing that he was fated to fall in battle, which in fact happened.[1172] Bartolommeo Alviano was convinced that his wounds in the head were as much a gift of the stars as his military command.[1173] Niccolò Orsini Pitigliano asked the physicist and astrologer Alessandro Benedetto[1174] to fix a favourable hour for the conclusion of his bargain with Venice (1495). When the Florentines on June 1, 1498, solemnly invested their new Condottiere Paolo Vitelli with his office, the Marshal’s staff which they handed him was, at his own wish, decorated with pictures of the constellations.[1175] There were nevertheless generals like Alphonso the Great of Naples who did not allow their march to be settled by the prophets.[1176]
Sometimes it is not easy to make out whether in important political events the stars were questioned beforehand, or whether the astrologers were simply impelled afterwards by curiosity to find out the constellation which decided the result. When Giangaleazzo Visconti ([p. 12]) by a master-stroke of policy took prisoners his uncle Bernabò, with the latter’s family (1385), we are told by a contemporary, that Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars stood in the house of the Twins,[1177] but we cannot say if the deed was resolved on in consequence. It is also probable that the advice of the astrologers was often determined by political calculation not less than by the course of the planets.[1178]
All Europe, through the latter part of the Middle Ages, had allowed itself to be terrified by predictions of plagues, wars, floods, and earthquakes, and in this respect Italy was by no means behind other countries. The unlucky year 1494, which for ever opened the gates of Italy to the stranger, was undeniably ushered in by many prophecies of misfortune[1179]—only we cannot say whether such prophecies were not ready for each and every year.
This mode of thought was extended with thorough consistency into regions where we should hardly expect to meet with it. If the whole outward and spiritual life of the individual is determined by the facts of his birth, the same law also governs groups of individuals and historical products—that is to say, nations and religions; and as the constellation of these things changes, so do the things themselves. The idea that each religion has its day, first came into Italian culture in connexion with these astrological beliefs, chiefly from Jewish and Arabian sources.[1180] The conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn brought forth, we are told,[1181] the faith of Israel; that of Jupiter and Mars, the Chaldean; with the Sun, the Egyptian; with Venus, the Mohammedan; with Mercury, the Christian; and the conjunction of Jupiter with the Moon will one day bring forth the religion of Antichrist. Checco d’Ascoli had already blasphemously calculated the nativity of Christ, and deduced from it his death upon the cross. For this he was burnt at the stake in 1327, at Florence.[1182] Doctrines of this sort ended by simply darkening men’s whole perceptions of spiritual things.
So much more worthy then of recognition is the warfare which the clear Italian spirit waged against this army of delusions. Notwithstanding the great monumental glorification of astrology, as in the frescos in the Salone at Padua,[1183] and those in Borso’s summer palace (Schifanoja), at Ferrara, notwithstanding the shameless praises of even such a man as the elder Beroaldus,[1184] there was no want of thoughtful and independent minds to protest against it. Here, too, the way had been prepared by antiquity, but it was their own common sense and observation which taught them what to say. Petrarch’s attitude towards the astrologers, whom he knew by personal intercourse, is one of bitter contempt;[1185] and no one saw through their system of lies more clearly than he. The novels, from the time when they first began to appear—from the time of the ‘Cento novelle antiche,’ are almost always hostile to the astrologers.[1186] The Florentine chroniclers bravely keep themselves free from the delusions which, as part of historical tradition, they are compelled to record. Giovanni Villani says more than once,[1187] ‘No constellation can subjugate either the free will of man, or the counsels of God.’ Matteo Villani[1188] declares astrology to be a vice which the Florentines had inherited, along with other superstitions, from their pagan ancestors, the Romans. The question, however, did not remain one for mere literary discussion, but the parties for and against disputed publicly. After the terrible floods of 1333, and again in 1345, astrologers and theologians discussed with great minuteness the influence of the stars, the will of God, and the justice of his punishments.[1189] These struggles never ceased throughout the whole time of the Renaissance,[1190] and we may conclude that the protestors were in earnest, since it was easier for them to recommend themselves to the great by defending, than by opposing astrology.
In the circle of Lorenzo the Magnificent, among his most distinguished Platonists, opinions were divided on this question. That Marsilio Ficino defended astrology, and drew the horoscope of the children of the house, promising the little Giovanni, afterwards Leo X., that he would one day be Pope,[1191] as Giovio would have us believe, is an invention—but other academicians accepted astrology. Pico della Mirandola,[1192] on the other hand, made an epoch in the subject by his famous refutation. He detects in this belief the root of all impiety and immorality. If the astrologer, he maintains, believes in anything at all, he must worship not God, but the planets, from which all good and evil are derived. All other superstitions find a ready instrument in astrology, which serves as handmaid to geomancy, chiromancy, and magic of every kind. As to morality, he maintains that nothing can more foster evil than the opinion that heaven itself is the cause of it, in which case the faith in eternal happiness and punishment must also disappear. Pico even took the trouble to check off the astrologers inductively, and found that in the course of a month three-fourths of their weather prophecies turned out false. But his main achievement was to set forth, in the Fourth Book—a positive Christian doctrine of the freedom of the will and the government of the universe, which seems to have made a greater impression on the educated classes throughout Italy than all the revivalist preachers put together. The latter, in fact, often failed to reach these classes.
The first result of his book was that the astrologers ceased to publish their doctrines,[1193] and those who had already printed them were more or less ashamed of what they had done. Gioviano Pontano, for example, in his book on Fate ([p. 503]), had recognised the science, and in a great work of his own,[1194] the several parts of which were dedicated to his highly-placed friends and fellow-believers, Aldo Manucci, P. Bembo, and Sandazaro, had expounded the whole theory of it in the style of the old Firmicus, ascribing to the stars the growth of every bodily and spiritual quality. He now in his dialogue ‘Ægidius,’ surrendered, if not astrology, at least certain astrologers, and sounded the praises of free will, by which man is enabled to know God.[1195] Astrology remained more or less in fashion, but seems not to have governed human life in the way it formerly had done. The art of painting, which in the fifteenth century had done its best to foster the delusion, now expressed the altered tone of thought. Raphael, in the cupola of the Cappella Chigi,[1196] represents the gods of the different planets and the starry firmament, watched, however, and guided by beautiful angel-figures, and receiving from above the blessing of the Eternal Father. There was also another cause which now began to tell against astrology in Italy. The Spaniards took no interest in it, not even the generals, and those who wished to gain their favour[1197] declared open war against the half-heretical, half-Mohammedan science. It is true that Guicciardini[1198] writes in the year 1529: ‘How happy are the astrologers, who are believed if they tell one truth to a hundred lies, while other people lose all credit if they tell one lie to a hundred truths.’ But the contempt for astrology did not necessarily lead to a return to the belief in Providence. It could as easily lead to an indefinite Fatalism.
In this respect, as in others, Italy was unable to make its own way healthily through the ferment of the Renaissance, because the foreign invasion and the Counter-Reformation came upon it in the middle. Without such interfering causes its own strength would have enabled it thoroughly to get rid of these fantastic illusions. Those who hold that the onslaught of the strangers and the Catholic reactions were necessities for which the Italian people was itself solely responsible, will look on the spiritual bankruptcy which they produced as a just retribution. But it is a pity that the rest of Europe had indirectly to pay so large a part of the penalty.
The beliefs in omens seems a much more innocent matter than astrology. The Middle Ages had everywhere inherited them in abundance from the various pagan religions; and Italy did not differ in this respect from other countries. What is characteristic of Italy is the support lent by humanism to the popular superstition. The pagan inheritance was here backed up by a pagan literary development.