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Church Time and Astrological Time in the Waning Middle Ages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Time, according to medieval theologians and philosophers, was experienced in radically different ways by God and by his creation. Indeed, the obligation to dwell in time, and therefore to have no sure knowledge of what was to come, was seen as one of the primary qualities which marked the post-lapsarian state. When Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden of delights, they entered a world afflicted with the changing of the seasons, in which they were obliged to work and consume themselves with the needs of the present day and the still unknown dangers of the next. Medieval concerns about the use and abuse of time were not merely confined to anxiety about the present, or awareness of seized or missed opportunities in the past. The future was equally worrying, in particular the extent to which this part of time was set aside for God alone, or whether it was permissible to seek to know the future, either through revelation and prophecy, or through science. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the scientific claims of astrology to provide a means to explain the outcome of past and future events, circumventing God’s distant authority, became more and more insistent. This paper begins by examining one skirmish in this larger battle over the control of the future.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 37: The Use and Abuse of Time in Christian History , 2002 , pp. 117 - 132
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2002
References
1 Oberman, H. A. and Weisheipl, J. A., The Sermo epinicius ascribed to Thomas Bradwardine (1346)’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, 25 (1958), pp. 295–329 Google Scholar [hereafter Sermo epinicius], edit the text from Oxford, Merton College 180, fols 183ra-188vb. The tradition that Bradwardine was Edward Ill’s ‘confessor’ as well as a regular preacher before his army is not very well attested and, although it is repeated by most modern commentators, may well rely on no more than the manuscript of the Sermo epinicius itself. Savile’s description, for example, of the eloquent sermons Bradwardine preached and which were instrumental in their success can be explained by his acquaintance with the manuscript of the Sermo epinicius which he would have known from the Merton library. See Thomae Bradwardini De causa Dei, contra Pelagium, ed. Henry Savile (London, 1618) [hereafter De causa Dei]. Savile and the sources he cites remain the main authorities for what is known of Bradwardine’s life. For further discussion of Bradwardine’s life and work see Gordon Leff, Bradwardine and the Pelagians (Cambridge, 1957); Oberman, H. A., Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine; A Fourteenth Century Augustinian (Utrecht, 1957), p. 21 Google Scholar.
2 For Buckingham’s critique of Bradwardine, see the edition by Genet, Jean-François, Prédétermination et liberté créée à Oxford au XlVe siècle. Buckingham contre Bradwardine (Paris, 1992 Google Scholar).
3 Sermo epinicius, p. 307: ‘Set in Latino parumper ex causa diffusius prosecutus quam in Anglico dicebatur.’
4 See n.1 (Oberman and Weisheipl); E. W. Dolnikowski, ‘Thomas Bradwardine’s Sermo epinicius: some reflections on its political, theological and pastoral significance’, in Hamesse, J., Kienzle, B. M., Stoudt, D. L., and Thayer, A. T., eds, Medieval Sermons and Society: Cloister, City, University. Proceedings of International Symposia at Kalamazoo and New York, Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, Textes et Etudes du Moyen Âge, 9 (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1998), pp. 357–70 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 De causa Dei, sigs a4v-a5r. Bradwardine was elected to succeed on the death of John Stratford on 23 August 1348; however, Edward III resisted the appointment. When John Ufford died before his consecration, Bradwardine was again elected, on 19 June 1349, and travelled to Avignon to receive the pallium. After a reign of less than a month, he died of the plague in Canterbury on 26 August 1349. As a theologian with very little experience of government, Bradwardine’s election is likely to be a reflection of the disruption of the plague years. According to Savile, the King resisted Bradwardine’s appointment because he did not wish to lose so valuable a member of his household.
6 Adæ Murimuth, Continmtio chronkarum; Robertas de Avesbury, De gestis mtrabilibus regis Edwardi tertii, ed. E. M. Thompson, RS, 93 (London, 1889), pp. 201–2. This letter does not in fact indicate that Bradwardine was an ‘eye witness’ of the Battle of Crécy, as Oberman and Weisheipl suggest (Sermo epiniaus, pp. 302–3). His comment on the many dead and captured, etc., suggests reports brought back to camp.
7 Sermo epinicius, p. 323: ‘Set dicunt, quod nullus esse poterit animosus, nisi fuerit amorosus vel diligat amorose; quod nullus se peterit gerere strenue excessive, nisi diligat excessive.’
8 Ibid., p. 309: ‘Quis astrologus pro[g]nosticasset huius? Quis Astrologus preiudicasset hec fieri? Quis astrologus talia previdisset? Quis astrologus talia predixisset? Verum, Rarissimi, ecce pro[g]nosticacio una certa, que numquam potest fallere, numquam falli: quicquid Deus vult fore seu fieri, illud fiet, quemcumque Deus vult vincere, ille vincer, et quemcumque Deus vult regnare, ille regnabit’
9 For the method of calculating the lot of fortune see Abu Ma’shar. The Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology together with the Medieval Latin Translation of Adelard of Bath, ed. and tr. Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto, and Michio Yano (Leiden, 1994).
10 Sermo epinicius, p. 312: ‘Nil igitur [provenir] a fortuna, videlicet preter intencionem agentis, nisi respectu inferiorum causarum…. Omnia fortuita igitur atque casualia ad voluntatem divinam ascendunt.’
11 Ibid., p. 313. See the proposition condemned in Paris in 1270: ‘Quod fatum, quod est disposino universi, procedit ex providentia divina non immediate, sed mediante motu corporum superiorum; et quod ista fatum non imponit necessitatem inferioribus, quia habent contrarietem, sed superioribus’: Denifle, Henri and Chatelain, Emile, eds, Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis, 4 vols (Paris, 1889-97 Google Scholar), 1: 543–55 (no. 195).
12 Jacques Le Goff, ‘Au moyen âge: temps de l’église et temps du marchand’, Annales, 15 (1960), pp. 416–33, tr. in his Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages (Chicago, 1980), pp. 29–42.
13 There is an extensive literature relating to Church objections to the practice of astrology. For discussion of the Renaissance polemic for and against the scientific and ethical status of astrology, see Eugenio Garin, La zodiaco della vita: la polemica sull’astrologia dal trecento al cinquecento (Rome, 1976), Jackson, tr. C. and Allen, J., Astrology in the Renaissance: The Zodiac of Life (London, 1983 Google Scholar). For the wider history of astrology in the later Middle Ages and the Church’s ambiguous relationship to it see Tester, Jim, A History of Western Astrology (Woodbridge, 1987 Google Scholar); Campion, Nicholas, The Great Year: Astrology, Millenarianism, and History in the Western Tradition (London, 1994 Google Scholar), ch.13; and references cited in Carey, Hilary M., Courting Disaster: Astrology and the English Court and University in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1992), p. 168 CrossRefGoogle Scholar n.31.
14 Le Goff, Time, Work and Culture, p. 42. The point is repeated in his ‘Le Temps du travail dans la “crise” du XIVe siècle: du temps médiéval au temps moderne’, Le Moyen âge, 59 (1963), pp. 597–613; also translated in Time, Work and Culture, p. 50.
15 Gregory, T., ‘Temps astrologique et temps Chrétien’, in Le Temps chrétien de la fin de l’antiquité au moyen âge IIIe-IIIe siècles, Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 604 (Paris, 1984), pp. 557–73 Google Scholar.
16 ‘Vir sapiens dominabitur astris.’ This widely quoted saying was usually attributed to Ptolemy, but occurs in neither the Quadripartitum nor the Centiloquium.
17 Pomian, Krzysztof, ‘Astrology as a naturalistic theology of history’, in Zambelli, Paola, ed., ‘Astrologi hallucinati’: Stars and the End of the World in Luther’s Time (Berlin, 1986), pp. 29–43 Google Scholar. Using a terminology of his own devizing Pomian notes: ‘[M]y purpose is to show that astrology was a coherent chronosopy and more specifically: a naturalistic theology of history opposed to and logically incompatible with its theocentric variant.’
18 Smoller, Laura Ackerman, History, Prophecy and the Stars: The Christian Astrology of Pierre d’Ailly (Princeton, NJ, 1994), pp. 80–1 Google Scholar.
19 Cited in 10 out of 45 footnotes by my count.
20 I follow here the illuminating discussion of Dolnikowski, Edith Wilks, Tlwmas Bradwardine. A View of Time and a Vision of Eternity in Fourteenth-century Thought (Leiden, 1995 Google Scholar).
21 Sancti Augustini Confessionum, ed. Lucas Verheijen, CChr, series Latina, 27 (Turnholt, 1981) [hereafter Confess.], XI.xiii.16, p. 202: ‘Omnia tempora tu fecisti et ante omnia tempora tu es, nee aliquo tempore non erat tempus.’ These concepts of the divine were not simply physical and theological conceits. For a poetic realization of a deity existing outside time and space see Dante, Paradiso.
22 For a vintage synthesis see Wedel, T. O., The Medieval Attitude Towards Astrology (New Haven, CT, 1920 Google Scholar). Excellent summaries of the debate about astrology and free will are also provided by Smoller, , History, Prophecy and the Stars, pp. 25–42 Google Scholar, and by Veenstra, Jan R., Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France. Text and Context of Laurens Pignon’s Contre les divineurs (1411) (Leiden, 1998), pp. 137–200 Google Scholar.
23 De causa Dei, III.xii, pp. 688–9: ‘Incipit disputare illam famosissimam quaestionem, nunquid omnia quae euenient, de necessitate evenient; & recitat opinionem Mathematicorum seu Stoicorum dicentem, quod omnia quae euenient, euenient de necessitate simpliciter absoluta.’
24 Genet, Prédétermination, p. 185, affirms the question: ‘Utrum credere prophecie de aliquo contingenter futuro sit meritorium creature.’ Foreknowledge of the Antichrist is also Roger Bacon’s justification for astrological prediction. For argument relating to the necessity of Antichrist, see De causa Dei, III.xv-xvii, pp. 690–2.
25 De causa Dei, III.xii, p. 689; III.xxv, p. 700. Bradwardine noted that John of Salisbury’s voluminous arguments against the Stoics and mathematici had the added endorsement of Thomas Becket.
26 Ioannis Saresberiensis, Policraticus I-IV, ed. Keats-Rohan, K. S. B., CChr.CM, 118 (Turnhout, 1993 Google Scholar) [hereafter Policraticus].
27 Ibid., II.xxvii, p. 155: ‘Lege libros, reuolue historias, scrutare omnes ángulos Scripturarum, nusquam fere in bona significatione diuinationem inuenies.’
28 Ibid., II.xxviii, p. 167.
29 Ibid., II.xxvii, p. 148: ‘Cum aduersus Niuicolinos Britones regia esset expeditio producenda, in quo te consultus aruspex praemonuit? …. Item chiromanticus adhibitus et consultus quid contulit? Nam sub eo articulo uterque, quisquís hoc egerti, consultus est’.
30 Ibid., II.xxix, pp. 169–70: ‘Licet tamen de futuris ut aliquis consulatur, ita quìdem si aut spiritu polleat prophetiae aut ex naturalibus signis quid in corporibus animalium eueniat phisica docente cognouit aut si qualitatem temporis imminentis experimentorum indiciis colligit; dum tamen his posterioribus nequáquam quis ita aurem accommodet ut fìdei aut religioni praeiudicet’.
31 The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, ed. J. H. Bridges, 3 vols (Oxford, 1897), 1: 247: ‘Et adhuc considerandum est, quod si consideremus dicta sanctorum, nos inveniemus manifeste quod non solum non reprobant mathematicos veros, sed approbant in futurorum cognitione. Quoniam Augustinus dicit libro secundo de Doctrina Christiana, quod mathematica habet futurorum regulares conjecturas, non suspiciosas et ominosas, sed rectas et certas tam de futuris quam praesentibus et praeteritis.’ He goes on to illustrate the point by reference to Cassiodorus, Basil, Ambrosius, and Isidore.
32 Augustine, , De doctrina Christiana, ed. Green, R. P. H. (Oxford, 1995), II.cxiii (pp. 108–10 Google Scholar): ‘Quae per se ipsa cognitio, quamquam superstitione non alliget, non multum tamen ac prope nihil adiuvat tractationem divinarum scripturarum et infructuosa intentione plus impedit; et quia familiaris est perniciosissimo errori fatua fata cantantium, commodius honestiusque contemnitur Habet etiam futurorum regulares coniecturas, non suspiciosas et ominosas, sed ratas et certas, non ut ex eis aliquid trahere in nostra facta et eventa temptemus, qualia genethliacorum deliramenta sunt, sed quantum ad ipsa pertinet sidera.’ Augustine provided a more comprehensive critique of astrology, to which he was drawn in his youth, in Confess., VII.vi-vii and De civitate Dei, V.ii-viii.
33 Bacon, Opus Majus, 1: 253.
34 Ibid., 1: 268–9: ‘Nolo hie ponere os meum in coelum, sed scio quod si ecclesia vellet revolvere textum sacrum et prophetias sacras, atque prophetias Sibyllae, et Merlini et Aquilae, et Sestonis, Joachim et multorum aliorum, insuper historias et libros philosophorum, atque juberet consideran vias astronomiae, inveniretur sufficiens suspicio vel magis certitudo de tempore Antichristi.’
35 Ibid., 1: 400: ‘Et ideo Tartari procedunt in omnibus per viam astronomiae, et in praevisione futurorum et in operibus sapientiae.’
36 Denifle, and Chatelain, , Chartularium, 1: 543–55. Pierre Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l’Averroïsme latin au XIIIme siècle, 2nd edn (Louvain, 1911), pp. 175–91 Google Scholar. My description follows Mandonnet’s thematic grouping of the propositions he numbers 93–107.
37 De causa Dei, III.xxiii, p. 697 (twice), and passim.
38 Boudet, Jean-Patrice, ‘La Papauté d’Avignon et l’astrologie’, in Fin du monde et signes des temps: visionnaires et prophètes en France méridionale, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 27 (Toulouse, 1992), pp. 257–93 Google Scholar.
39 This is best illustrated by the popularity of the text known as the Speculum astronomie, attributed to Albertus Magnus, which can be read as a defence of astrological science against theological rigorists. See Zambelli, Paola, ed., The Speculum astronomiae and its Enigma: Astrology, Theology, and Science in Albertus Magnus and his Contemporaries (Boston, MA, 1992 Google Scholar).
40 Ashenden was Bradwardine’s contemporary at Merton and the major English astrological writer of the later Middle Ages. Keith V. Snedegar has completed a fine study of Ashenden, including an edition of his analyses of the conjuctions of 1345–68, which unfortunately has remained unpublished: ‘John Ashenden and the Scientia Astrorum Mertonensis with an edition of Ashenden’s Pronosticationes’ (University of Oxford, D.Phil. thesis, 1988). See esp. ch.7 on problems of faith and science.
41 Boudet, ‘La Papauté d’Avignon’, pp. 258–60.
42 Epistola magistri Johannis de Muris ad Clementem sextum (BN, MS lat. 7443, fols 33r-34v), ed. Boudet, ‘La Papauté d’Avignon’, pp. 283–4: ‘Cum igitur dicat Ptholomeus in principio Almagesti, quod vir sapiens dominabitur astris, et in Centilogio, quod effectus stellarum sunt inter neccessarium et contingens, possunt enim per homines prudentes declinari sepius et auctoritati, nullusque sit inter mortales presentes Sanctitate Vestra prudentior in sensu, nec potentior in effectu, prefatis imminentibus periculis occurrere velociter, et succurrere efficater intendatis, que enim apud alios impossibilia seu neccessaria estimantur, apud Vos possibilia et levia merito reputantur.’
43 De causa Dei. For astrology, fate, and chance see: I.i, corol. 12, p. 8 (Contra adoratores Solis vel Lunae, Martis vel louis, cuiscunque signi caelestis); I.xxviii, p. 264 (De Fato); I.xxix, p. 267 (De Casu & Fortuna); III.xii, pp. 688–9 (Mathematici).
44 Veenstra, Magic and Divination.
45 Maxime Préaud, Les Astrologues à la fin du moyen âge (Paris, 1984).
46 Smoller, History, Prophecy and the Stars, p. 23.
47 Ibid.
48 With the laudable exception of Le Goff, Time, Work and Culture, the English literature is dominated by books for a general readership, including Compton Reeves, Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England (Stroud, 1995). Reeves includes astrology in the chapter on religious pastimes, pp. 182–7.
49 Myrc, John, Instructions for Parish Priests, ed. Edward Peacock, EETS, o.s. 31 (London, 1868), pp. 2–3 Google Scholar.
50 Ibid., pp. 23, 30.
51 Vickers, Brian, ‘Leisure and idleness in the Renaissance: the ambivalence of otium (Part II)’, Renaissance Studies, 4 (1990), pp. 107–54 Google Scholar.
52 Bromyard, Summa Praedicantium: ‘Loquitur trufator, loquitur vetula, loquitur detrac tor, loquitur sortilega de hiis quae ad damnationem pertinent animarum, et muitos habent auditores; …. loquitur Christus, et ejus ministri …. et dicunt “quis est hic?” (Eccl.13).’ Quoted by Owst, G. R., Preaching in Medieval England: an Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts of the Period c. 1370–1450 (Cambridge, 1926), p. 71 Google Scholar n.3. See also Owst, G. R., ‘The people’s Sunday amusements in the preaching of medieval England’, Holborn Review, 68 (1926), pp. 32–45 Google Scholar.
53 The Book of Vices and Virtues, ed. Francis, W. Nelson, EETS, o.s. 217 (London, 1942), p. 15 Google Scholar.
54 Braekman, W. L., ‘Fortune-telling by the casting of dice: a Middle English poem and its background’, Studia Neophilologica, 52 (1980), pp. 3–29 Google Scholar.
55 Symon de Phares, Recueil Jes plus célèbres astrologues et quelques hommes doctes, ed. Ernest Wickersheimer (Paris, 1929), p. 210: ‘En ce temps florit en Angleterre Thomas Bradvardin, singulier homme et grant astrologien. Cestui predist et prenostica plusieurs choses des differans des princes et composa en astrologie ung traicté qui se commence: «Omne motum successivum alteri». Cestui prenostica au roy d’Angleterre, sur la revolocion de sa nativité, d’une grande maladie qui lui advint, dont il fut moult apprecié et estimé des plus grans.’ While it might seem silly for Simon to have described Bradwardine’s treatise on momentum as a work of astrology, I note that the electronic version of the old DNB currently lists Bradwardine’s fields of interest as theology and occultism.