The author seems to think that the human will has very little control over revolutions, by which “is indicated what God, the glorious, will accomplish in a given year through the stars as His instruments” for states and peoples; in other words, such general events as harvests, wars, earthquakes, floods, and terrible prodigies. Events signified by comets come under this head also. All such events the author seems to regard as divinely ordered and he cites Ptolemy and Albumasar to the effect that God’s plans are not changeable like those of children or servants.[2313]
Interrogations.
As for the practice of interrogations, the author affirms that to inquire of the stars what course of action one should pursue “does not destroy, but rather rectifies free will.” Some questions asked of astrologers, nevertheless, are very difficult to reconcile with free will, for example, the question whether another person will answer one’s request. If an astrologer is able to answer such a question beforehand, it seems to indicate that the other person has no freedom in the matter. After some juggling with the terms, “necessity” and “possibility,” the author thinks that he has found a mode of reconciliation in “the compossibility of free will with divine providence,” since with the latter he identifies the significations of the stars, and “God knew from eternity which course the man would choose.” Our author hastens to add, however, that God may wish to conceal some things from us, and that he will not assert that “whatever does not escape divine providence is revealed in the heavens.”[2314]
Better not to destroy the books of necromancy.
In the seventeenth and last chapter the author returns to the subject of books of necromancy and suggests that after all even these had better be preserved rather than destroyed, because the time is now perchance near when, for reasons which he will not now disclose, it may be of advantage to consult them occasionally; “yet let those inspecting them beware of abuse of them.”
Experimental books in the arts of divination.
The author adds that there are also “certain experimental books whose names have the same ending as nigromancy,” namely, books in the subjects of geomancy, hydromancy, aerimancy, pyromancy, and chiromancy. Thus we have another example of the association of experiment and magic. These arts, however, in his opinion “do not deserve to be called sciences, but babblings (garamantie or garrimantiae).”[2315] Hydromancy consists in washing the entrails of animals and inspecting the fibres. Pyromancy divines from the appearance of the fire by which the sacrifice is consumed. Both these arts probably involve a sort of idolatry. The author finds nothing idolatrous in geomancy, however, which is based upon astrology and numbers. But aerimancy is frivolous, though it may pretend to be based upon number. Chiromancy he does not wish to judge hastily, because it may be a part of physiognomy which in turn depends upon astrology, since in physiognomy both the physical peculiarities and the personal characteristics inferred from them are due to the stars. The author thus shows the common tendency of medieval men of learning to justify only such methods of divination as they felt could be based upon astrology.
Resemblance of the Speculum to Albert’s attitude to astrology.
The foregoing analysis of the Speculum astronomiae has made it evident that its attitude toward astrology is not at all a peculiar one but just about the usual position of Christian scientists in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. On the subject of astrological images, however, its view is that of Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon rather than that of William of Auvergne or Thomas Aquinas. In general the astrological position of the Speculum closely parallels the attitudes of Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, who in turn held almost identical views. If anything, the Speculum is somewhat less favorable to astrological doctrine than Albertus. Whereas he in large measure accepted the casting of horoscopes, although saving free will, it emphasizes the conflict between free will and nativities. And it more emphatically denies that the stars are animated, a point upon which he seemed rather hazy in his scientific treatises. But there is no actual contradiction between the Speculum and other works of Albert on these points, and we have already seen in the case of his theological and Aristotelian works that Albert is likely to state the same thing somewhat differently according to the point-of-view from which he writes. The writer of the Speculum is obviously desirous to conciliate a theological opposition to or suspicion of “astronomy” and therefore naturally inclines to be moderate and conservative in his advocacy of astrological doctrine.
Is it more like Bacon on the question of Christ’s relation to the stars?