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

by Lynn Thorndike

Signs in the stars.

It is true that sometimes by divine permission the stars are signs to men, for the Son of God Himself says in the Gospel by Luke that “There shall be signs in the sun and moon and stars,” and His incarnation was revealed by a star. But it is a stupid popular error to suppose that other men each have a star of their own, and, continues God, speaking through the medium of Hildegard, “That star brought no aid to My Son other than that it faithfully announced His incarnation to the people, since all stars and creatures fear Me and simply fulfill My dictates and have no signification of anything in any creature.” This last observation receives further interpretation in a passage of the Causae et Curae[433] which explains that the stars sometimes show many signs, but not of the future or hidden thoughts of men, but of matters which they have already revealed by act of will or voice or deed, so that the air has received an impression of it which the stars can reflect back to other men if God allows it. But the sun and moon and planets do not always thus portray the works of men, but only rarely, and in the case of some great event affecting the public welfare.

Superiors and inferiors; effect of stars and winds on elements and humors.

If the stars do not even signify the fate and future of man, they are none the less potent forces and, under God, causes in the world of nature. “God who created all things,” writes Hildegard in the Liber divinorum operum,[434] “so constituted superiors that He also strengthens and purifies things below through these, and in the human form introduces also those things allotted for the soul’s salvation.” This passage has two sides; it affirms the rule of superiors over inferiors, but it makes special provision for the salvation of the human soul. And thus it is a good brief summary of Hildegard’s position. Sun, moon, and stars are represented as by the will of God cooperating with the winds—which play an important part in Hildegard’s cosmology—in driving the elements to and fro;[435] and the humors in the human body now rage fiercely like the leopard, now move sluggishly like the crab, now proceed in other ways analogous to the wolf or deer or bear or serpent or lamb or lion—animals whose heads, belching forth winds, are seen in the vision about the rim of the heavenly spheres.[436] They suggest the influence of the signs of the zodiac, although there appears to be no exact correspondence to these in Hildegard’s visionary scheme of the universe as detailed in the Liber divinorum operum. In the Causae et curae, on the other hand, she gives a detailed account of how pairs or triplets of planets accompany the sun through each of the twelve signs.[437] In other passages[438] she affirms that the sun and moon serve man by divine order, and bring him strength or weakness according to the temper of the air.

Influence of the moon on human health and generation.

Hildegard more especially emphasizes the influence of the moon, in which respect she resembles many an astrologer. In the Causae et curae[439] she states that some days of the moon are good, others bad; some, useful and others, useless; some, strong and others, weak. “And since the moon has this changeability in itself, therefore the moisture in man has its vicissitudes and mutability in pain, in labor, in wisdom, and in prosperity.” Similarly in the Liber divinorum operum[440] it is noted that human blood and brain are augmented when the moon is full and diminish as it wanes, and that these changes affect human health variously. Sometimes one incurs epilepsy when the moon is in eclipse.[441] The moon is the mother of all seasons. Hildegard marvels in the Causae et curae[442] that while men have sense enough not to sow crops in mid-summer or the coldest part of winter, they persist in begetting offspring at any time according to their pleasure without regard either to the proper period of their own lives or to the time of the moon. The natural consequence of their heedlessness is the birth of defective children. Hildegard then adds[443] by way of qualification that the time of the moon does not dominate the nature of man as if it were his god, or as if man received any power of nature from it, or as if it conferred any part of human nature. The moon simply affects the air, and the air affects man’s blood and the humors of his body.

Relations of the four humors to human character and fate.

Hildegard, however, not only believed that as the humors were perturbed and the veins boiled, the health of the body would be affected and perhaps a fever set in,[444] but also that passions, such as wrath and petulance, were thereby aroused and the mind affected.[445] This is suggested in a general way in the Liber divinorum operum, but is brought out in more detail in the Causae et curae, where various types of men are delineated according to the combinations of humors in their bodies, and their characters are sketched and even their fate to some extent predicted therefrom. In one case[446] “the man will be a good scholar, but headlong and too vehement in his studies, so that he scatters his knowledge over too wide a field, as straw is blown by the wind; and he seeks to have dominion over others. In body he is healthy except that his legs are weak and he is prone to gout; but he can live a long while, if it so please God.” Such a passage hardly sounds consistent with Hildegard’s statement elsewhere already noted that man cannot know the length of his life beforehand. In the case of choleric, sanguine, melancholy, and phlegmatic men[447] Hildegard states what the relations of each type will be with women and even to some extent what sort of children they will have. She also discusses four types of women in very similar style.[448] These are not exactly astrological predictions, but they have much the same flavor and seem to leave little place for freedom of the will.

Hildegard’s varying position.

In one passage, however, Hildegard comfortingly adds that nevertheless the Holy Spirit can penetrate the whole nature of man and overcome his mutable nature as the sun dispels clouds, and so counteract the moist influence of the moon. She also states concerning the significations of the stars concerning man’s future, “These significations are not produced by the virtue of the planets themselves alone or stars or clouds, but by the permission and will and decree of God, according as God wished to demonstrate to men the works of the same, just as a coin shows the image of its lord.”[449] In another passage, on the other hand, Hildegard recognizes, like Aquinas later, that it is only rarely and with difficulty that the flesh can be restrained from sinning.[450]