Albert accepts the Aristotelian description of the sky and heavenly bodies as formed of a fifth element distinct from the four elements of which earthly objects are composed.[1915] In another passage he subdivides the heavenly substance into three elements composing respectively the sun, the moon and stars, and the sky apart from the celestial bodies.[1916] In any case the stars are nobler than inferior bodies, “less involved in the shadows and privations of matter,” and closer to the first cause of the universe.[1917] Their motion is eternal, unchangeable, incorruptible.[1918] Some have called them animals but Albert holds that they are not animals in the sense that we apply that word to inferior creatures.[1919]
The First Cause and the spheres.
Again like Aristotle, Albert regards the heavens and stars as instruments of the first mover or intelligence, just as the hand is the instrument of the human intellect in making works of art.[1920] They are mediums between the first cause and matter. Albert believes in a number of heavens “existing from the first heaven to the sphere of the moon.”[1921] The first mover moves the first heaven and through it the other spheres included within it. Whether every other heaven has its own celestial intelligence to move it is a question upon which Albert is somewhat obscure.[1922] Others certainly thought so. He mentions, for instance, the opinion of certain Arabs that floods are due to the imagination of the intelligence which moves the sphere of the moon, and concedes that there is some truth in it.[1923] The ancient Stoics and Epicureans, he tells us in another passage, ascribed divinity to the virtue of the circle of the zodiac, which ruled and governed life under the God of gods, as they called the First Cause. Apuleius in the De deo Socratis says that they called the twelve signs incorporeal gods, and the planets and other stars corporeal gods, and the chief effects of the celestial virtue upon inferior nature terrestrial gods.[1924] But probably Albert mentions this merely as an illustration of the great influence exerted by the circle of the zodiac. In a third passage he says that the movers of the celestial spheres, whom the philosophers have called celestial intelligences, are mediate causes between the First Cause and matter; but he presently adds that philosophers of better understanding have said that there is only one Mover of everything, and that the so-called movers of the other spheres are but the virtues and members of the first heaven and its Mover.[1925] Translated from terms of Aristotelian physics into those of Christian theology, this means that the stars are merely God’s instruments, and that, if there are spirits or intelligences delegated to move the particular heavens, these angels are also merely God’s agents.
Things on earth ruled by the stars.
Since the celestial spheres and the stars are the instruments and mediums through which the First Cause governs the world of inferior creation, it follows that the four elements are generated by the motion of the heavens and that plants, stones, minerals, animals—in short, whatever exists in the inferior world is caused by the motion of the superior bodies. This general law that the world of nature and of life on this earth is governed by the movements of the stars is expressly repeated again and again in Albert’s works, and its truth is assumed even oftener.[1926] We may note by way of illustration a few of the specific applications of this general law to be found in Albert’s writings. Arguing the question whether life is possible in the torrid zone at the equator, Albert points out that the rays of the stars are more multiplied there and fall perpendicularly and directly and therefore are even more favorable to the generation of life than in our climate.[1927] In another passage he explains the pagan attribution of the thunderbolt to the god Jupiter as probably a mistake due to the influence of the planet Jupiter in provoking thunder-storms.[1928] A third passage ascribes the height of the inundation of the Nile to the planets, stating that Venus and the Moon produce a greater overflow than other drier stars.[1929]
Conjunctions.
Albert has a good deal to say of the effects produced by the conjunctions of the planets,[1930] ascribing to them great mortality and depopulation, or “great accidents and great prodigies and a general change of the state of the elements and of the world.”[1931] To a conjunction of Jupiter and Mars with others aiding in the sign of Gemini he attributes pestilential winds and corruption of the air resulting in a plague by which a multitude of men and beasts suddenly perish.[1932]
Comets.
Albert also discusses comets, and why they signify wars and the death of kings and potentates rather than of some poor man.[1933] Their especial connection with wars is explained by the astrologer Albumasar as due to their association with the planet Mars. As for kings, owing to their greater fame and power, the relation of celestial phenomena to their destinies has been observed more carefully than the fate of the poor, and as their horoscopes have more planetary dignity, so it is customary to refer greater portents to them.
Man and the stars.