Reconstructing Thomist Natural Astrology: Astral Prediction in Robert Bellarmine’s Lectiones Lovanienses

• In Event: Natural Philosophy and Astrology in the Renaissance

Abstract

In 1586 Pope Sixtus V promulgated the bull Coeli et terrae, which regulated aspects of astrological prediction. It allowed predictions relating to health, medicine or agriculture, but disallowed even uncertain predictions concerning human actions. Banning such predictions contradicted Rule IX of the 1564 Index, and the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. Contemporaries were unsure of the bull’s precise implications. In 1587 Robert Bellarmine, then consultor to the Index, was involved in reviewing the rules of the Index. He argued that the wording of Rule IX should be altered to reflect the provisions of the bull. It remains unclear, however, what he sought to achieve. This paper considers Bellarmine’s likely intentions by examining his discussion of astrological prediction in the Lectiones Lovanienses, delivered in the early 1570s. Here he defended a modified version of Aquinas’s ideas, which rejected the latter’s belief that it was possible to make uncertain predictions concerning human actions.

Author

• Neil Tarrant, University of Edinburgh