Monica Azzolini, The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2013).

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Response

It should be noted at the outset that the index to this volume contains no entry for comets. They are mentioned only very infrequently and mostly in endnotes.

Monica Azzolini’s The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan participates in the recent academic rehabilitation of astrology studies. Her present volume seeks to fill the gap in that rising wave of scholarship of the relationship of astrology to political power, especially in a courtly context. The Duke and the Stars, then, is a story of the influence-nexus of astrology, medicine, and political and martial strategy embodied in the intimate and often contentious relationship between the physician-astrologer and courtly patron in the context of the Viscontine and Sforzan ducal courts of renaissance Milan.

Her investigation originated in untidy and often impenetrable Milanese archives, and as such she first sought to answer the question: was there, corresponding to the corpus astronomicum, a corpus astrologicum composing a standard late-medieval and renaissance university reading curriculum? She proceeds, from student notes, transcriptions, and book lists, to reconstruct oft-assigned texts and estimate their ubiquity within the curriculum at the local University of Pavia. Her reconstruction consists of Sacrobosco’s Algorismus, Euclid’s Elementa geometriae, Theorica Planetarum, Messhallah’s De astrolabio, Alcabitius’s Introductorius ad iudicia astrorum, pseudo-Ptolemy’s Centriloquium, Tetrabiblos, and the third book of his Almagest. Perhaps most interesting among this reading list: William of England’s De urina non visa, an instruction in the interpretation and analysis of urine, not by inspecting it, but by casting a horoscope. The reconstruction of this Pavian curriculum lays an important foundation for Azzalini, most of the physician-astrologers explored in her text were educated at Pavia.

With the educational and theoretical context of Italian Renaissance astrology well established, Azzolini proceeds to her main subject: astrological practice in the courtly context. The volume progresses chronologically through the Sforza dynasty beginning with Bianca Maria Visconti and her husband Francesco Sforza and ending with Ludovico Sforza. Notably, the fourth chapter, focused on Gian Galeazzo Sforza, dives into medical astrology. The other chapters focus on the role of astrology in political/martial consultation including nativities, elections (the proper time to initiate an action), and interrogations (Q&A).

While much of the volume, as did contemporaneous astrology, focuses on the influences of the constant celestial bodies — the planets, fixed stars, and luminaries (sun and moon), some scraps pertaining to comets can be scrounged, mostly from the notes. In 1472, two astrologers were asked to interpret the appearance of a comet, countermanding the plague warnings of prophets, instead predicting wars in distant lands and troubles for Christianity. By the time of its disappearance, Duke Galeazzo had ordered five astrological interpretations of the comet. In 1491, a comet happened to accompany the marriage of ducal heir Ludovico. It was interpreted as a sign of dynastic legitimation. In 1456, a physician-astrologer prepared a iudicium (judgment/prediction) for Ludovico Gonzaga in response to a (known now as Halley’s) comet. This assessment of a rare phenomenon was considered a kind of “astrological intelligence.” In preparing it, the astrologer referenced Eusebius, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Haly Avenrodoan (Ali Ibn Ridwan) on the nature and properties of comets.

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Notes

• X – “The rehabilitation of astrology — one of the infamous ‘wretched subjects’ of pre-modern societies — in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies is now almost complete. Astrology is no longer shunned by serious academics. Astrologers have been the subject of entire monographs, and in recent decades there has been a steady flow of works exploring the intellectual tenets of the discipline.”
• “Astrology’s relationship with political power, especially in a courtly context, however, has yet to receive organic treatment, and the role of the court astrologer still awaiits a major study.”
• “My documents are crowded with precisely such figures: people who did not publish even a single work, whose names are now almost completely forgotten, but who, at times, held pride of place in advising powerful rulers.”
• [INTRODUCTION]
• 1-2 – “This book is about the Sforza dukes and their use of astrology, but it is also about these ‘minor’ characters: men who are barely remembered in the histories written about their more famous clients, people who were written out of the history of great men. My argument, simply put, is that these historical actors are far from insignificant. I argue, instead, that the study of these minor professional figures contributes greatly to our understanding of Renaissance cultural, social, and political history. It does so in two important ways: first, by providing a corrective to the idea that Renaissance politics was driven to a large extent by a type of political pragmatism devoid of many of those cultural elements that were characteristic of its time; and secondly, by providing a variety of illuminating examples of how astrological theory was put into practice in Renaissance daily life.”
• 2 – “As this book will demonstrate, people adhered to the principles of astrology to different degrees. The vast majority of people were happy to admit that celestial bodies exerted an influence on Earth; a good part of them believed that the nature of this influence could be determined and interpreted by the professional astrologer. A smaller number among this last group held a more deterministic view — this one not shared even by all Renaissance astrologers in equal measure — that went as far as to argue that one could choose the best moment to attempt an action on the basis of the configuration of the skies.”
• “Not all Renaissance political leaders abided by this last principle — which saw its application in the astrological technique of elections — but there were certainly some areas of political and civic life where these principles were applied with more consistency than others in this period. War was one of them (travel was another).”
• 2-3 – “Far from making Ludovico Maria Sforza less cunning and calculating, moreover, this example suggests that the duke of Milan resorted to all possible means to ensure success. This included astrological counseling, which was deemed conjectural but firmly rooted in the legitimate and reliable art of astrology.”
• 3 – “While much has been done to restore astrology to the intellectual and cultural place it occupied in pre-modern societies, to date historians have tended to pay much less systematic attention to astrological practice in its political and social contexts.”
• 4 – “On occasion, however, we are fortunate enough to be able to explore some of the attitudes that common people held toward astrology from the account of courtiers who commented on the circulation of astrological prognostications. While this glance is generally brief and episodic, it allows us to say that Renaissance people from all walks of life paid attention to astrological forecasting. We know for certain, for instance, that Renaissance lords were often concerned about the power of astrological predictions to stir the populace into action. It seems certain, therefore, that while the prime consumers of astrological counsel were Renaissance elites, the populace was not immune to the powers of astrology.”
• 10 – “The relationship between the court and the university was indeed very close, and many of the figures employed at court at some point or another maintained posts at the Studium of Pavia. As the book reveals, the ‘science of the stars’ that was taught at Pavia — which embraced both the ‘science of movements,’ or astronomy, and the ‘science of judgments,’ or astrology — was clearly applied in the political arena and skillfully used by the dukes of Milan and their entourage for a wide variety of purposes.”

 

• “It is not a coincidence that astrology rose in prominence in times of crisis, when uncertainty mounted, and decision-making on the basis of the information provided through diplomatic channels faltered. As much as other predictive disciplines such as prophecy, astrology attempted to provide answers when these were most difficult to obtain. As political uncertainty grew in the fifteenth century, so did the circulation of prophecies, astrological prognostications, and accounts of prodigies and omens.”

 

• • [I wonder if this is a corollary to Lutheran eschatological uncertainty?]

 

• “Whether it was phrased in the language of religion, in that of celestial influence, or in that of Nature, the explanation was often one and the same: that God’s hand was behind the social and political turmoil that characterized much of the fifteenth century and early sixteenth century. As political leaders grew more anxious about their future, therefore, they paid increasing attention to the words of prophets, prophetesses, and astrologers.”

 

• 17 – “In its turn, the term ‘political astrology’ encompasses a diverse set of practices that rulers and other political figures used to advance their political agendas. This application of astrology to public life could take many forms: astrology could be employed to construct narratives of legitimacy, to predict the death of one’s enemies, to sign alliances, and to forge dynastic marriages.”
• “A variety of astrological techniques were used to put astrology at the service of politics. These generally included casting natal horoscopes, but also making astrological interrogations, elections, and revolutions, namely short-term and medium-term prognostications often related to specific actions or contexts that would help the ruler make political decisions.”
• 18-19 – “We often seem to know more about the clients’ needs than we do about the astrologers’ motives in writing their judgments and prognostications. It is clear why rulers and Renaissance elites may have wanted to resort to astrology as a form of political counsel. It is not always clear, however, why astrologers wrote what they wrote, what they hoped to obtain, and what kind of pressure they were under to oblige their lords.”
• [CHAPTER 1: THE SCIENCE OF THE STARS: LEARNING ASTROLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PAVIA]
• 24 – “The purpose of this chapter is therefore to reconstruct, to the degree possible, the curriculum studiorum of students of astrology at the University of Pavia, the Studium of the Duchy of Milan.”
• 27 – “Together with the study of the movements of the planets in the sky, therefore, students also learned about their effects on Earth. Studied within three distinctive scientific disciplines — mathematics, natural philosophy, and medicine — that formed the traditional four-year cycle of academic studies, astrology was, therefore, at the core of the arts and medicine degree.”

 

• “Most Italian universities had one to two professors of astrology/astronomy: often at least one of them also imparted some other teaching in medicine, be it theoretical or more often practical, thus confirming the strong link between astrology and medicine in the period.”

 

• 28-9 – Of particular interest could be William of England’s De urina non visa – a text for analyzing urine using horoscopes
• 29 – “Can we also speak of a corpus astrologicum, then? Unfortunately, much less is known about the teaching of proper astrological texts: given the extreme popularity of Ptolemy’s Quadripartium, ps.-Ptolemy’s Centiloquium, and the Centiloquium Hermetis in manuscript and print — the first the key astrological text of antiquity, the others two very popular texts of astrological aphorisms — we can be reasonably sure that these texts constituted core parts of the curriculum.”
• 36 – “A number of Arabic and medieval authors dedicated their works to the treatment of the large-scale effects of planetary conjunctions , and particularly the conjunction of the outer planets Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the twelve signs and the four triplicities in which they occurred. These conjunctions, it was believed, heralded the rise and fall of religious sects and dynasties.”
• “The conjunction of 1484, the year in which Boerio transcribed this text, for instance, received much attention from astrologers and was later associated with the rise of Protestantism and the birth of Luther.”
• 47 – “This evidence seems to suggest also that a corpus astrologicum existed, that it was probably both broader and more fluid than the corpus astronomicum, and that it comprised a number of ancient and Arabic texts of various degrees of complexity.”
• 48 – “Of the three main medical functions of late-medieval medicine, namely diagnoss, prescription, and prognosis, all these texts belonged to the latter. Indeed, they provided a useful series of rules to help physicians formulate a prognosis for their patients on the basis of celestial influences.”
• 52 – “Of course, not all Renaissance physicians were well versed in astrology, and some may have been more enthusiastic than others in applying astrology to medicine. Medicine itself was a complex body of knowledge with competing traditions and different schools of thought. While astrological medicine was certainly one important aspect of Renaissance medical practice, it would be mistaken to believe that its application was ubiquitous.”
• “. . . [O]ne cannot fail to notice that some of the most famous physicians of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance . . . were strong proponents of astrology and that this discipline flourished in Northern Italian universities . . .. We can safely say, therefore, that astrology played an important part in Italian university teaching within the curriculum of arts and medicine and that Pavia had a long-standing tradition of astrological teaching. As we shall see in subsequent chapters, what was learned at university — be it elections and interrogations or judicial, mundane, or medical astrology — was clearly put into practice at court.”
• 53 – “That celestial motion exerted an influence on the world below was hardly questioned. The principle of celestial influence at the core of astrology established that this influence varied with the position and mutual relationship of the planets and the luminaries (the Moon and the Sun) with respect to a given time and place on Earth. What needed to be established, at least for astrologers, was how to predict these effects to minimize those that were negative and possible amplify those that were positive and, in general, how to know what to expect for the future in terms of things as varied as someone’s life, the weather and the status of crops, future wars, and religious turmoil.”
• 53-4 – “Each of the planets possessed particular characteristics that made it either ‘fortunate’ or ‘unfortunate’: cold and dry Saturn and hot and dry Mars were considered generally malevolent, and yet Mars was also the planet of war, and thus, if prominent in the birth chart of a ruler, for instance, could herald military and political success. Jupiter’s warm and moist nature, in contrast, was considered positive, the planet being fortunate and a source of fecundity and wealth. Temperate and moist Venus was equally fortunate and usually associated with voluptuousness and pleasure, while Mercury, although considered of changeable nature, was generally associated with intelligence and communication. The two luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, also had properties, the Moon being cold and moist and the Sun hot and dry; on the whole they were considered fortunate, with the Moon more fortunate than the Sun.”

 

• 54 – “As noted, planets are in mutual relationships with each other. The significant angular relationships that characterize this dynamic are known as ‘aspects.’”

 

• 57-58 – TRIPLICITIES AND HOUSES

 

• “As we can see from the brief explanation provided here, astrologers had to consider a bewildering number of factors and their interactions when interpreting a chart: this welter of combinations and permutations both added greater complexity to the interpretation and allowed the astrologer an element of freedom. Within a single chart, the weight to be given to each of these factors-which sometimes were in conflict, sometimes in agreement with each other-was not guided by fixed rules, and this left the astrologer some room to maneuver. No astrologer, therefore, when faced with the same chart, would propose exactly the same interpretation of it. Astrology, as many of its practitioners emphasized, was a conjectural art like medicine: it could be used to predict events but would never offer certainties. More importantly, despite critiques to the contrary, it was never overly deterministic, leaving room for free will and the will of God to intervene.”

 

• 60 – “Together with the practice of nativities . . ., three more branches encompassed the practice of Renaissance astrology: elections, interrogations ,and conjunctions and annual revolutions. Elections dealt with the proper time to initiate action: this could include a rich variety of undertakings, such as the founding of a building or a city, choosing the best time for a marriage or the conception of a child, waging war or signing peace, or setting off on a journey. Interrogations cast charts at a given time and place related to specific questions the client might have.”
• 62 – “Finally, astrologers could make predictions based on the revolution of the year. . . . having cast and examined this chart, the astrologer would go on to express his judgment on a series of classic topics that included the weather, the crops, war and peace, the immediate future of certain classes of people or professions, and political events. Connected to this practice was the analysis of planetary conjunctions of the three superior planets: Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.”
• “As noted, these types of interpretations derived their origins from the doctrine of great conjunctions made so popular in Albumasar’s De magnis coniunctionibus, where the ninth-century Arabic astronomer and astrologer theorized that the conjunction of the superior planets brought with it a change of religions and kingdoms. Thus, the Black Death of 1348 and the Great Schism of 1378 had similarly been interpreted as consequences of the Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions of 1345 and 1365 in the late Middle Ages.”
• 63 – “If astrology within late-medieval and Renaissance society did not reach quite the same level of prominence that it held in the caliphal court of Baghdad in the Abbassid period, where many of the texts adopted by Renaissance astrology were written and these practices refined, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, it still gained considerable favor among a number of European courts.”
• “. . . the Sforza dukes who reigned in the second half of the fifteenth century did not disdain the advice of the astrologers. Rather, they occasionally received unsolicited prognostications and often actively sought the astrologers’ advice to solve problems, answer questions, and procu [sic] political guidance in times of uncertainty and turmoil.”
• [CHAPTER 3 ASTROLOGY IS DESTINY: GALEAZZO MARIA SFORZA AND THE POLITICAL USES OF ASTROLOGY]
• 102 – “Following the example of his grandparents and his own mother, during his life Galeazzo demonstrated a vivid interest in astrology’s diverse personal and political applications, establishing astrology as one of the politically valuable domains of intellectual inquiry at the milanese court. The present chapter illustrates several ways in which astrology was inextricably linked to his reign and highlights how Galeazzo’s interest in astrological predictions was part of a wider political context that valued such information as one important form of political ‘intelligence.’ Such intelligence as, we shall see, could be used for personal, diplomatic, and military ends, depending on the need and the occasion.”

 

• 103 – “In general, it was believed that the interpretation of a person’s geniture could provide useful information regarding his or her own future, thus giving a person the chance to actively dominate the stars, counteracting the evil influx of the malignant planets or certain unfavorable aspects, while maximizing one’s chances to make the most of the positive influx of the benevolent planets and of any positive aspects in the chart. As the stars could only incline and not necessitate — or, in a phrase often attributed to Ptolemy, ‘the wise man rules the stars’ — man’s free will was, at least theoretically, safe-guarded. Seen in this light, astrology could be commended as the discipline that would allow men to take control of their destinies.”

 

• 114-15 – “In later years Galeazzo resorted to Vimercati’s expertise on more than one occasion ,asking him to produce judgments on demand, or receiving from him genitures and revolutions as gifts. His astrological consultations were of the most varied kind. In 1472, for instance, Galeazzo’s ducal secretary, Cicco Simonetta, was instructed to approach Vimercati and another astrologer — the university professor Francesco Medici da Busto — regarding the apparition of a comet that had engendered great speculation among prophets and astrologers alike. Rumors had been circulating that the Franciscan Marco da Bologna had preached to the Milanese population that astrologers had foretold the plague. In this case the preacher did not use the gift of prophecy to predict God’s wrath as others may have done: he instead more simply reported the prediction of the astrologers.”

 

• 115 – “Raffaele Vimercati and Francesco Medici da Busto denied the validity of these predictions and proposed an alternative interpretation of the celestial phenomenon: they asserted that, in their expert opinions, the comet would bring war in distant lands and troubles for Christianity.”

 

• “In total, therefore, Galeazzo would have collected at least five different predictions on the same celestial event [the comet].”
• 167 – “Indeed, no period in the history of the Sforza duchy can be characterized as more uncertain and difficult than that of Ludovico. Possibly as a consequence, in no other period of Sforza domination did astrology flourish as much as a political practice as under his rule.”
• 174 – “According to Calco, Ludovico’s wedding was accompanied by a comet (stella crinita), which appeared for seven days in the skies of Milan, Venice, Florence, FRance, and the German lands. This Calco (and probably Ludovico) interpreted as a good omen, a sort of public form of political and dynastic legitimation (albeit directed not just to Ludovico but to the Sforza dynasty more broadly). Celestial events of this sort were dutifully recorded and interpreted by contemporaries, especially if their significance could be related in some meaningful way to events they were experiencing at the time.”
• 201 – “Ludovico relied extensively on Varesi for astrological advice, but this advice had clear political applications, and as such it had a double nature. The physician-astrologer had also become political and personal counselor. Everybody, Sanuto included, was aware of the increasingly unique influence exerted by Varesi on Ludovico.”
• [NOTES]
• 249 – To pages 67-70 – 10. – “In this iudicium, da Camera briefly cites authors as varied as Eusebius, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Haly Avenrodoan (Ali Ibn Ridwan) on the nature and properties of comets. The rest of the iudicium includes a description of the comet’s position in the sky, its physical properties, and its effects on the sublunary world, all framed within astrological discourse.”
• 277-8 – to pages 127-8 – 104. – “Since Babylonian times celestial portents of this sort, and especially comets, were believed to presage murders, conspiracies, and changes of government. . . . For instance a comet was reported to have forecast the woes of ITaly in Parma on November 20, 1480 . . .. This was accompanied by lamentations that announced the conjunction of JUpiter and Saturn of 1484. Another comet was believed to have foretold the death of Ludovico Maria Sforza’s opponent, Pier Maria Rossi, in 1482.”
• 306 – to pages 174-5 – 31. – “Depending on a large number of factors such as speed, direction, shape, color, and position in the sky, comets could herald positive or negative events. The comet was visible in the sky over Nurenberg on January 17, as recorded by Regiomontanus’s assistant Bernard Walther.”