Astronomica

In the year of Christ 1186, they foretold that such great destruction would threaten human affairs from the violence of winds and storms, that throughout that entire seven-year period, men considered their lives bitter due to fear and the expectation of dangers. They announced that all the planets, both the lower The "lower" planets in the medieval system typically referred to the Moon, Mercury, and Venus. and the upper The "upper" planets referred to Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn., would come together in a single conjunction in the month of September; an eclipse of the Sun on the 11th day before the Kalends of May April 21st would precede this gathering of the stars. Finally, those "prophets" promised that the year would be so fatal to the world, and had struck the minds of men with such great consternation, that no one doubted the end of all things was at hand.

But, as Rigord Rigord (c. 1144–1209) was a French chronicler and physician to King Philip II Augustus. writes—who both produced two of their letters and survived many years past the deadline they had set—the outcome proved the vanity of such oracles. And such is the reliability of this art, whether you test it in one supreme practitioner or in their entire assembly.

Truly, we are not the ones who would think the stars and those bright bodies of heaven are idle. However, we utterly deny that those effects are contained within these jocular subtleties and arbitrary divisions original: "arbitrariis sectionibus," likely referring to the division of the zodiac into houses.. Indeed, such a great change has been made in this art by later practitioners that, when compared with the methods of the earlier ones, it cannot seem to be the same art; in fact, in many respects, it is the opposite. And yet, those earlier men seemed to have predicted the truth, and no less are these later men—who follow a contrary path—held to be truth-tellers. But all these things...