In the next chapter the author takes up books which we should regard as purely astronomical, and says that if these were to be suppressed, “a great and truly noble part of philosophy would be buried for a time at least, until owing to saner counsels it should rise again.” He adds that those who have read these books know that there is not a single word in them which is, or even appears to be, against the Catholic Faith, and that it is not fair for those to judge them who have never even handled them.[2300] Thus the writer seems to think that there is some danger of an attack upon even the study of astronomy.
And of judicial astrology.
The author’s main concern, however, is with judicial astrology, which in the third chapter he distinguishes from astronomy proper as “the science of judgments of the stars.” Of it, too, he speaks in high terms of praise. He declares that it turns man’s thoughts toward God, revealing as it does the great Source of all things. Furthermore, it is the bond between natural philosophy and mathematics. “For if the most high God in His Supreme wisdom so ordained this world that He, who is the living God of a lifeless heaven, wills to work in created things which are found in these four inferior elements through deaf and dumb stars as instruments, and if concerning these we have one science, namely, mathematics which teaches us in things caused to consider their Creator, and another natural science which teaches us to find by experience in created things the Creator of creatures; what is more desirable for the investigator than to have a third science to instruct him how this and that change of things mundane is brought to pass by the change of things celestial?”
The stars do not possess senses or reason.
It will be noted that the author of the Speculum regards the stars as “deaf and dumb” and the heaven as inanimate. In a later chapter[2301] he condemns as “most evidently meriting censure” the assertion made by Albumasar, apparently upon Aristotle’s authority, that “the planets themselves are animated by a rational soul.” For him the stars are mere divine instruments, deaf to would-be worshipers of them, and too dumb—one would infer—to produce the music of the spheres.
Subdivisions of astrology.
The fourth chapter of the Speculum speaks of the four familiar sub-divisions of judicial astrology, namely, revolutions, nativities, interrogations, and elections. To the last is annexed the science of images, which the author regards as the acme or climax of “astronomy,” but with which he admits are associated those necromantic books of evil repute which he proposes carefully to distinguish from the others. This at once reminds us of the passages in Albert’s Minerals where he spoke of the connection between such images engraved on stones and necromancy, but where his associates were curious to know the doctrine of images none the less, and he affirmed that it was good doctrine. Now, after the fifth chapter, which may be described as a statement of astrological theory and technique in a nutshell, he takes up judicial astrology and its several sub-divisions in further successive chapters,[2302] defining the field and describing the literature. A majority of the books listed, good as well as bad, appear to be Latin translations from the Arabic.
Evil images.
Of images the author describes three varieties, the first two of which he severely condemns. The first kind is abominable, including the images of Toz Graecus and Germath of Babylon, those connected with the worship of Venus, and those of Belenus and Hermes. These are exorcized by the names of fifty-four[2303] angels who are said to serve in the circle of the moon,[2304] but are probably really the names of demons. The names of seven are engraved forwards to procure a good result and backwards in order to ward off evil fortune. Suffumigations also are made with aloes, saffron, and balsam to achieve a good result, with other woods for evil ends. The author explains that the spirits are not truly coerced by such things, but sometimes God allows them to pretend to be, in order to deceive sinful men. The practices associated with this first kind of images he censures as the worst sort of idolatry, although their practitioners, in order to retain something worthy of belief, observe the twenty-eight mansions of the moon and other seasons.
A second variety.