Disputations Against Divinatory Astrology

...returned to astrology, in which profession you may know even from this how truthful he was, in that he thinks Ptolemy the astrologer was one of the kings of Egypt who succeeded Alexander, when there was no more than five hundred years between them, whereas King Ptolemy flourished four hundred years before Christ, [and] Ptolemy the astrologer wrote under Hadrian and Antoninus. See how much sleepiness or slowness of wit is in such an open matter for such a seeker and faithful observer of the highest things. We shall declare later how much he erred in astrological matters, and on what apt refutations and false lies he insisted as if they were true. Why should I mention Maternus, who hallucinates so much in the rudiments of arithmetic that he writes that Mercury decides when it occupies the middle of the sky in a nocturnal nativity, as if Mercury could never be more than forty or so degrees away from the sun, or the sun by night never be more than seventy degrees from the middle of the sky? I pass over many other things in which you will detect a man of much loquacity but little wisdom. Now, were Mallius not a poet, good God, with what laughter would we pursue him, who says that those celestial images he imagines were started with only a few stars rather than completed, lest the world catch fire from the many fires ignited there! I do not descend to the younger, plebeian, and ignorant men, to whom the whole profession has devolved as if to rightful owners. Bonatus is of primary authority among them. He is not ignorant only of philosophy, but he is clearly insane and raves. Read his first book On Judgments, in which he is punished for the work itself. I lie if you do not judge the man worthy of hellebore. He constructs, where he is less deranged, certain reasons by which he proves astrology to be true—or what shall I say, false, nay, beyond what can be said, childish and ridiculous. The quadrivium, which he thinks is the most effective, is destroyed if astrology is removed, for it is one of the four mathematical arts; see how he does not even know what this thing he professes is! For this divinatory astrology which we are refuting is as distant from that which the mathematicians had acknowledged as light is from darkness, as truth is from falsehood. And this, which usurps the prediction of future events, cannot stand if the former and truer [art] is removed; but the reasoning does not return, that with divinatory [astrology] removed, mathematics is taken away, which is so obvious, even to those who have touched the first elements of these arts, that it is superfluous to declare it with more words. Ptolemy himself, in the prefaces to his Apotelesmatika, after speaking of the twofold nature of astronomy, referring only to the former and mathematical one, says as follows: And what follows. But if perhaps this profession has not displeased some good men at times, it is not therefore good because some good man has not disapproved of it, since good men are not everywhere good, and few attain the prerogative of all qualities, and if something must be said, not all learned philosophers are philosophers. But it is necessary to remember the truths that our lust resists: there are [works] in the first kind that contain all things concerning morals and many theological [matters]; in the second, the greatest part is that which is about physical and mathematical matters...