Disputations Against Divinatory Astrology

Although in this election of hours and days, we would rather exercise our freedom than take it away? But so it is, certainly; astrology was displeasing to them in every way, although it was that part especially which subjected religion and morals to the heavens. They execrated it, refuted it everywhere, judged it to be impious, everywhere vain, here blasphemous, everywhere superstitious, here abominable, everywhere ridiculous. Wherefore, Augustine, in the book On Christian Doctrine, said that those who are called genethliaci pertain to a pernicious superstition, not only because they think our actions proceed from the stars, but also because they think the outcomes of our actions do. And in the book of Confessions, speaking of the planetarii—that is, the astrologers—he says that Christian and true piety expels and condemns them. And explaining that of Moses, "He placed the stars for signs and for times," he says "not signs," as if to observe them is a matter of vanity, but [signs] necessary for life in every way, such as sailors, farmers, and that kind of craftsman observe. In the same place, Basil said it was a most occupied vanity; Ambrose, that it was useless and impossible; Theodoretes, that it was refuted by the philosophers; Chrysostom, that it was vain, false, and ridiculous. Let us read Bardesanes, Eusebius, Didymus, Apollinaris, Tertullian, and countless other men, even apostolic men; and why should we recount the Hebrews, heretics, and nations—that same kind of men who pursued them with this censuring rod? To the point that it was a cause for wonder to Augustine that, while these testimonies refuting the astrologers were read with such fame in the churches, the assemblies were nevertheless full of our men who would receive the times for doing things from the mathematicians. The same man, when preaching to the people on the sixty-third Psalm, brought forward a mathematician who was doing penance, who had renounced it no otherwise than if a Jew or a heathen had received the bath of regeneration. And interpreting this beautifully, he warns us of our insanity: that we enter into the astrologers as free men so that we may exit as slaves, and we spend our freedom on them with purchased lies. In his book On the Nature of Demons, he says expressly that it is not permitted for anyone after Christ to interpret the nativity of anyone from the heavens. Jerome says that to seek the courses of the stars and the outcomes of future things from them is among the reproaches of Egypt—that is, the remains of idolatry. Severianus, in the book he wrote on the seven arts—which Rogerius falsely cites as if it were by Cassiodorus—after he spoke of true astronomy, says: "Then those things which pertain to foreseeing the future ought to be so unknown that they do not even seem to be written; for they are without doubt contrary to our faith." This he said word for word. But if the opinion of so many and so excellent men moves no one, let the pontifical authority at least deter them, which forbids this profession to our people such that Alexander III, the supreme pontiff, wished to abstain a certain priest from the ministry of the altar for a whole year because he had searched for something by investigating the theft of a certain church's astrolabe, although, as the same pontiff testifies, he had admitted no magic or other superstition there. In the synod of Pope Martin, it is written: that true Christians should not [follow] the courses of the moon or of the stars, or the vain fallacy of signs for...