H. Darrel Rutkin

Astrology and Magic

Concerning astrology, Albert the Great made two major contributions, one undoubtedly authentic, the other questionably so. First, he articulated astrology’s natural-philosophical foundations in his authentic Aristotle commentaries and related works. When I say “foundations”, I do not mean just a passage here or there; rather, for Albert, celestial influences (and thus astrology) are woven into the very heart of Aristotelian natural knowledge, appearing in central processes of nature in several fundamental works, including his paraphrase commentaries on Aristotle’s De caelo and De generatione et corruptione. “His” second contribution appears in the deliberately anonymous Speculum astronomiae, which circulated under Albert’s name for centuries.1 In it, the four canonical types of astrological practice were described and supplied with extensive bibliographies, and legitimate practices were authoritatively distinguished from illegitimate ones. Regardless of the Speculum’s authenticity, however, from the middle of the 14th century both contributions were increasingly connected with Albert’s name.2

The Use and Abuse of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe: Two Case Studies (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Filippo Fantoni)

Not so very long ago, astrology was taught within the scientific curriculum of the finest European universities, especially in Italy, where it was taught from at least the beginning of the fourteenth through the middle of the seventeenth centuries. According to the University of Bologna’s 1405 statutes, which articulate the basic structures of arts education in the premodern Italian universities, astrology was primarily taught in the four-year mathematics course, although it was also taught in different respects in the natural philosophy and medical courses. After prerequisites in arithmetic, geometry and elementary mathematical astronomy, the students began their study of astrology proper in the third year; in the fourth, they advanced to the higher levels of scientific astronomy and astrology by reading two of Ptolemy’s fundamental texts, the Almagest and Tetrabiblos.1