A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2) / During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era

by Lynn Thorndike

Birth of Christ and darkness during His passion were both miraculous.

Cecco goes on to affirm that “Christ our Lord” was the true son of God who came into the glorious Virgin and was not made by the nature of the celestial bodies. That He rather was the Maker of celestial natures many things show us. One is that the Magi, who were superior astrologers and acquainted with the secrets of universal nature, adored him as king and son of God, seeing this in the star which appeared to them with the figure of a crowned child beneath it.[2988] Cecco also argues that the period of darkness during Christ’s passion was a true miracle and not due to a natural eclipse, nor to the interposition of a comet called Milex, nor to the occult virtue of the stone heliotrope. The comet Milex is supposed to presage religious change and injury to kings and potentates, but Cecco argues that its interposition would not cut off the sun’s light and further that it is not found at the altitude necessary to interpose. The stone heliotrope is green with blood-colored drops, and when it is placed in a shell full of water in the rays of the sun, vapors arise from it which obscure the horizon in that city. Cecco does not dispute this occult virtue in the gem, which is commonly called “orfanella” and which renders a man invisible by affecting the eyes of others. But he argues that the eclipse during Christ’s passion was universal and not confined to the city of Jerusalem. Some say that an interposition of Venus and Mercury caused the darkness, but Cecco affirms that this would be astronomically impossible and in itself a miracle and subversion of natural order. Cecco, however, adds that while miraculous, the eclipse was also in a sense natural, since God is the First and Universal Cause and can alter the heavens which are a secondary universal cause.[2989]

Christian qualification of Albumasar.

Cecco also pretends that where Albumasar speaks of creatio as the work of the stars, he must really mean generatio, since the act of creation pertains to God alone, although generation is under the stars.[2990] As for Albumasar’s aphorism, “If anyone asks anything of God when the head of the dragon is in conjunction with Jupiter and the moon in mid-sky, his prayer will be fulfilled”—which Peter of Abano said he had tested twice with success; Cecco declares that it is not proper to interpret this as meaning that prayers to God will be infallibly answered in certain constellations, but that the word deus is to be taken here as indicating the king or other chief magistrate in the state.[2991] Thus Cecco seems at considerable pains to say nothing that might be offensive to the church, and he closes his Commentary on the Sphere with the statement that if in it or other writings of his aught is found to criticize, he will gladly submit it to the correction of the very holy Roman church. Possibly this remark and others like it represent a revision of his works undertaken after his first condemnation at Bologna. According to one of the late manuscripts,[2992] Cecco, when summoned before the Inquisition at Florence, claimed that his book had been corrected by the inquisitor of Lombardy. This defense was not allowed, however, and the terms of the sentence at Bologna would seem to preclude it. And since the sentence given at Florence absolutely forbade anyone to possess the book, there does not seem much reason why a revised rather than the original version should survive.

Cecco’s astrology not the most extreme.

On the whole, then, it would be surprising if Cecco’s condemnation were due merely or primarily to his astrological teachings. As Tiraboschi[2993] noted nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, he upholds human free will, though attributing to the stars a natural inclination to vice or virtue, and holding other superstitions common to the astrologers of his time. Tiraboschi also noted his submissive tone to the church and was unable to see in the Commentary on the Sphere the errors which had been charged to Cecco’s account. More than this, in a number of respects Cecco did not go as far as some of his predecessors or subsequent writers. Christ and Antichrist had been partially subjected to the stars by writers before him who do not seem to have been assailed by the Inquisition for their views, and Pierre d’Ailly, the great cardinal and reformer, went much farther in this direction than Cecco in the next century. Peter of Abano had held views concerning the influence of the constellations on the appearance of new religions and on prayers to God which Cecco rejects. But all in vain the concessions made to the Christian standpoint by Cecco at the expense of astrological doctrine; of him alone we know surely that he was condemned by the Inquisition, and he went to the stake.

Charge that he taught astrological necromancy.

We have not yet, however, discussed Villani’s charge that in his Commentary on the Sphere Cecco asserted that there were evil spirits generated in the sky who could be coerced by incantations under certain constellations to perform many marvels. Villani perhaps has reference to the passage in which Cecco gives astronomical directions to be followed by anyone who wishes to make an image by means of which he may receive responses from spirits.[2994] There is indeed a good deal of information concerning spirits in the heavens in Cecco’s commentary on Sacrobosco’s manual, and he shows a wide acquaintance with books of magic. We turn, therefore, from his astrology proper to his attitude to magic and to astrological necromancy.

His attitude toward magic.

Cecco’s attitude to magic so-called is the usual one of condemnation. He repeats that Zoroaster was “the first inventor of the magic art,” and gives a classification of the magic arts almost identical with that of Hugh of Saint Victor, but states that he derives it from the Liber de vinculo spiritus of Hipparchus, a book of necromancy. Cecco says that magic is “emphatically censured by holy mother church,”[2995] and he does not directly question or qualify this condemnation. He says nothing of a natural magic which is harmless. His chief concern with magic, as in the cases of Michael Scot and Peter of Abano, seems to be to distinguish astrology from it as a reputable science, and to hold that one can learn of the future better as well as more legitimately by astrology.