Refining the Astrologer's Art: Astrological Diagrams in Bodleian MS Canon. Misc. 24 and Cardano's Libelli Quinque (1547)

Gaurico Luca , Revolution of Maximilian I's nativity, Archivio di Stato, Milan, Archivio Sforzesco, Miscellanea 1569.

Bacchelli Franco , “Gaurico, Luca”, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (henceforth DBI), lii (1999), 697–705, p. 699.

Ibid., 700. On Gaurico see also Thorndike Lynn , History of magic and experimental science (New York, 1923–58), v, passim, and esp. 252–63, 279.

Rather unjustly, one may add, considering the political dimension of astrology and the type of information contained in many of these charts. For astrology as a political art, see the perceptive remarks of Grafton Anthony in “Girolamo Cardano and the tradition of Classical astrology. The Rothshild Lecture, 1995”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , cxlii (1998), 323–54, esp. pp. 337–41.

Almost all these terms, as well as variations of these, are to be found in Gaurico Luca , Tractatus astrologicus (Venice, 1552). All the square charts included in this article are drawn in the same way: We can think of them as three intersecting squares that divide the space limited by the larger square in twelve separate sections, or houses. There were, however, variations to this model. On the various forms of horoscope, see North J. D. , Horoscopes and history (London, 1986), 2 (for the squared horoscopes), and 157 (for the spherical ones).

It seems that at this time conversio was used as a synonym of revolutio. See Gaurico Luca , Tractatus iudicandi conversiones sive revolutiones nativitatum (Rome, 1560).

There are many different methods of house division. Cardano was famous for using the method of equal houses, but in Gazio's time the most common method was probably that of Alcabitus (which John North defines as the ‘standard’ method). On houses and house division, see North, op. cit. (ref. 5), 1–69; and Eade J. C. , The forgotten sky: A guide to astrology in English literature (Oxford, 1984), 41–51. Eade explains how to erect a figure at pp. 51–9.

Eade , op. cit. (ref. 7), 82.

“revolutio annorum mundi est motus solis sive introitus solis in priumum punctum arietis; revolutio vero alicujus nativitatis est reversio solis as eundem punctum zodiaci in quo fuit hora nativitatis”. See Les Tables alphonsines avec les canons de Jean de Saxe, edition, commentary and translation by Poulle Emannuel (Paris, 1984), 46.

See Alcabitius , Liber introductorius (Venice, 1485), fols. dd₂v–dd₃v. I have consulted Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, 4 Inc.c.a. 394 (digital copy: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/∼db/0004/bsb00045289/image_1; accessed 10/07/2010).

Cardano can be credited with having launched the genre in print. He first published ten charts in an early Milanese edition of his Libelli duo (1538). He then expanded it into one comprising sixty-seven charts (Libelli duo, 1543), and then into one of a hundred (Libelli quinque, 1547). These charts were later subsumed into the Opera omnia of 1664 (v, 458–502). Cardano, however, seems to have had the ambition of publishing two hundred charts, as can be inferred from his edition of De libris propriis of 1544, 1557 and 1562. The notoriously complex chronology of Cardano's works has been treated exhaustively in Ian Maclean, “A chronology of the composition of Cardano's works”, in Cardano Girolamo , The Libris propriis. The editions of 1544, 1550, 1557, 1562, with supplementary material , ed. by Maclean Ian (Milan, 2004), 43–111. On the genesis of Cardano's Libelli quinque, see also Faracovi Ornella Pompeo , “Introduzione” in Girolamo Cardano, Come si interpretano gli oroscopi (Pisa and Rome, 2005), 9–22.

Garcaeus Johannes Gartze , Astrologiae methodus (Basel, 1576). For an engaging discussion of this ‘genre’ and its most famous exponents, see Grafton Anthony , “Geniture collections, origins and uses of a genre”, in Jardine Nicholas Frasca-Spada Marina (eds), Books and the sciences in history (Cambridge, 2000), 49–68.

Sixtus ab Hemminga's Astrologia ratione et experientia refutata (1583) is probably the most remarkable attack against astrology ‘in practice’. On this text, see Grafton , op. cit. (ref. 12), 64, and Vanden Broecke Steven , The limits of influence: Pico, Louvain, and the crisis of Renaissance astrology (Leiden and Boston, 2003), 252–6.

For other examples of astrological notebooks, see Page Sophie , “Richard Trewythian and the uses of astrology in late medieval England”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, lxiv (2001), 193–228; and Kassell Lauren , Medicine and magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman, astrologer, alchemist, and physician (Oxford, 2005).

An exception to this are readers' annotations of various charts. In this case the printed text is open to further interpretations and revisions, this time not made by the author, but by his reader. It is therefore the reader that tests his knowledge and refines his skills. For examples of this kind of textual manipulation, see Grafton , op. cit. (ref. 12).

Under the chart of Cardinal Carretti, Cardano noted: “Apposui quatuor has Cardinalium genituras a Bonaventura Castellioneo acceptas ut quivis intelligat, decreta nostra esse firmissima.” Cardano Girolamo , Libelli quinque (Nuremberg, 1547), fol. 232v.

Together with Giovanni Angelo Arcimboldi, Archbishop of Milan, Castiglioni drew up the index of prohibited books issued in Milan in 1554. The ban included work related to the ‘occult arts’ of chiromancy, geomancy, hydromancy, piromancy, nigromancy, and ars notoriae, but not astrology. The only Italian astrologer to be banned was the Bolognese Bartolomeo Cocles, most probably, however, for his work on chiromancy and geomancy. The banned author ‘Bononatus’ cannot be definitively identified with the medieval astrologer Guido Bonatti. See de Bujanda J. M. , Index des livres interdits , iii (Index de Venise 1549, Venise et Milan 1554) (Geneva, 1987). Divinatory astrology was not banned until 1559. On Bonaventura Castiglioni, see Palma M. , “Castiglioni, Bonaventura”, DBI , xxii (1979), 124–6. The controversial horoscope of Christ that Cardano had included in collections of genitures of 1454 and 1455 was later expunged, presumably because of religious concerns. His brushes with the Inquisition, however, are to be related to the accusation of Averroism and to the content of some of his philosophical and natural philosophical works and not, it seems, to his astrology. Even when Cardano's non-medical works were put on the Index in 1580, however, this does not seem to have deterred churchmen from owning them. On these issues, see Maclean Ian , “Cardano and his publishers 1534–1663” in Keßler Eckhard (ed.), Girolamo Cardano: Philosoph, Naturforscher, Arzt (Wiesbaden, 1994), 307–8, pp. 322, 329 [now republished in Maclean Ian , Learning and the market place: Essays in the history of the early modern book (Leiden and Boston, 2009), 131–61]; di Rienzo Eugenio , “La religione di Cardano: Libertinismo e eresia nell'Italia della Controriforma”, in Keßler, op. cit., 49–76; and Siraisi Nancy G. , The clock and the mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance medicine (Princeton, NJ, 1997), 225–9 (epilogue), and particularly the quotation with which the book ends.

British Library, MS Arundel 88 (end of 15th cent.) for instance, contains a small number of royal charts by the Italian astrologer Giovanni Battista Boerio. Two small collections of charts exist for fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century France. See Thorndike , op. cit. (ref. 3), iv, 99; Boudet Jean-Patrice Charmasson Thérèse , “Une consultation astrologique princière en 1427”, in Comprendre et maîtriser la nature au Moyen Âge: Mélanges d'histoire des sciences offerts à Guy Beaujouan (Geneva, 1994), 225–78; and Poulle Emmanuel , “Horoscopes princiers des XIVe et XVe siècles”, Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France, séance of 12 Feb. 1969, 63–77. So far, however, I have not come across a fifteenth-century Italian manuscript collection as rich as that of Gazio.

Cardano explicitly says so in his De supplemento almanach, first printed in the Libelli duo, and, later, in his Libelli quinque. See Grafton Anthony , Cardano's cosmos: The world and works of a Renaissance astrologer (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 65. That some of his charts came out of his daily exchange with other physicians and astrologers and from his own practice can be inferred from Cardano's friendships with the physician-astrologers Niccolò de Symis and Giovanni Antonio Castiglione, cited in Grafton, op. cit., 72–3.

The two manuscripts are, respectively, Bodleian Library, MS Canon. Misc. 23 (Opus astrologicus) and MS Canon. Misc. 24 (Nativitates virorum illustrium et alia astrologica notabilia). Little is known of Gazio. A biographical note within the manuscript indicates that he was born on 10 December 1461 in Padua and died in 1528 (fol. 122r). Gazio's most popular medical work is his Florida corona medicinae sive de conservatione sanitatis (1491). See Thorndike , op. cit. (ref. 3), v, 170–1.

MS Canon. Misc. 23, fol. 12r: “Erecta nativitatis figura et per animodar rectificata et locatis planetis et stellis fixis in locis suis non devenias precipitanter ad iudicium, ut multi facere consueverunt. Sed primus considera planetarum debilitatem aut fortitudinem….” On the margin is written “Iudicia stellarum introductorius”.

All these authors are citied at various times in the manuscript.

MS Canon Misc. 23, fols 42v–43v. On melothesia, its classical origins, and the zodiac man, see Clark Charles W. , “The zodiac man in medieval medical astrology”, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Colorado, 1979; and idem, “The zodiac man in medieval medical astrology”, Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, iii (1982), 13–38. On the zodiac man, see also Sachiko Kusukawa's contribution to this issue.

MS Canon. Misc. 23, fols 46r–49r.

The Sun is in his mansion in Leo, and exalted in Aries. It may acquire dignities also when it is in Sagittarius, as by day the Sun rules the fiery triplicity of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, or if it is in one of its faces (namely 1–10° Virgo, 11–20°Aries or Scorpio, 21–30° Gemini or Capricorn). For an explanation of essential and accidental dignities, see Eade, op. cit. (ref. 7), 59–88.

For a definition of fortuna and infortuna as, respectively, benefic and malefic planets, see Vitali Gerolamo , Lexicon mathematicum astronomicum geometricum (reprint of the 1668 Paris edn), ed. by Bezza Giuseppe (La Spezia, 2003), 237–8, and 290.

A planet is defined peregrine when in a degree which affords it no essential dignities. See Eade , op. cit. (ref. 7), 84.

MS Canon. Misc. 23, fol. 46r. These are only some of the many ‘criteria’ listed by Gazio. Movable signs are the ‘cardinal’ signs Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. See Eade , op. cit. (ref. 7), 70.

‘Reception’ between two planets can be mutual, and in this case each planet is in the other's sign of dignity (either the ruling sign, or the sign in which they are exalted, or one of those ruled by triplicity, or each other's terms or faces). On reception, see Eade, op. cit. (ref. 7), 69, and Vitali, op. cit. (ref. 26), 458.

Venus's essential dignities are Taurus and Libra (its signs or mansions), Pisces (its exhaltation), the earthy triplicity of Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn by day, and a series of terms and faces that would be too long to list here. See Eade , op. cit. (ref. 7), 67–8.

MS Canon. Misc. 23, fol. 46r. Venus is indicated elsewhere in the same manuscript as “significator pulchretudinis et formositatis”. See fol. 42r.

Cf. this list with the ‘typologies’ listed by Cardano to describe his own collection of genitures in the Libelli duo, as quoted in Grafton , op. cit. (ref. 19), 80.

Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), 24v–25r.

MS Canon. Misc. 23, fol. 42v–r. On Venus's influence on sexual inclinations see Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), 63v–64v. On sexuality and astrology, see also Lemay Helen , “The stars and human sexuality: Some medieval scientific views”, Isis, lxxi (1980), 127–37; Maxwell-Stuart P. G. , “Representations of same-sex love in early modern astrology”, and, especially with reference to Cardano, Darrel H. Rutkin, “Astrological conditioning of same-sexual relations in Girolamo Cardano's theoretical treatises and celebrity genitures”, both in Borris Kenneth Russeau George (eds), The sciences of homosexuality in early modern Europe (London, 2008), 165–82, 183–200.

MS Canon. Misc. 23, fol. 48v.

MS Canon. Misc. 23, fol. 47v. Here Gazio uses the term ‘respecta’ probably to indicate a generic favourable aspectual relation between Venus and Jupiter.

Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), fol. 25v. Cardano, however, was never an astrological determinist. Grafton , op. cit. (ref. 19), 85.

Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), fol. 48r. An Italian translation of the De iudiciis geniturarum is now available in Cardano Girolamo , Come si interpretano gli oroscopi, transl. by Delia Teresa Faracovi Ornella Pompeo (Pisa and Rome, 2005).

MS Canon. Misc. 23, fol. 57v.

Ibid., fol. 27r.

Ibid., fol. 32r.

Ibid., fols. 18v–19r, and 64v–67v.

Cardano states two criteria for his choice: That these charts had something remarkable about them, and that he possessed solid knowledge of the lives of the people he was investigating. Grafton , op. cit. (ref. 19), 66.

MS Canon. Misc. 24, fol. 13v. At his death Zeno, who was the nephew of Paul II, bequeathed the sum of 60,000 ducats to the Venetian Senate to help with the war against the Turks launched by Alexander VI. In his lifetime apparently Zeno was notorious for this greediness. On him, see Soranzo Giovanni , “G. B. Zeno, nipote di Paolo II, cardinale di S. Maria in Portico (1468–1501)”, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia , xvi (Rome, 1962), 249–74; and Setton Kenneth M. , The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571) (Philadelphia, 1976–84), i, 533.

MS Canon. Misc. 24, fol. 13v.

Ibid.

MS Canon. Misc. 23, fol. 46r.

MS Canon. Misc. 24, fol. 16r.

Gaurico , op. cit. (ref. 5), fols 87r–115v. The book is divided into six sections, each dedicated to a specific ‘type’: The first part contains the foundation charts of cities, the second the charts of popes, cardinals and prelates, the third those of emperors, kings, and princes, the fourth famous men in the arts, the fifth those men that died a violent death, and the sixth those with some disability. Gaurico's ‘typologies’ cover all the areas included in Gazio's own list of human types, but, unlike Gazio's, they are mostly scant in astrological details and rich in biographical information. This may be because Gaurico's text was meant to appeal to a broad audience of intellectuals and not so much to practising astrologers. On Gaurico's charts of Alessandro and Lorenzino, see now Vanden Broecke Steven , “De Laurier en de Kosmos: Astrologie en de moord op Alessandro de' Medici (1537)”, in Verschaffel T. (ed.), Koningsmoorden (Leuven, 2000), 175–86.

MS Canon. Misc. 24, fol. 30v. Nothing is known of Maffeo, son of Candiano Bollani. He is not listed among Bollani's sons in Pillinini G. , “Bollani, Candiano”, DBI , xi (1969), 287–9. For a similar example of prorogation used to explain somebody's death, see Stadius's analysis of René de Châlon's chart in Broecke Vanden , op. cit. (ref. 13), 229–31.

These are in Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), respectively, at fols 130r, 132r, 138v, and 147r.

The almuten (or almutez) of a chart is the planet that governs the horoscope, and it is determined by adding up the dignities and debilities of each planet. See Eade, op. cit. (ref. 7), 88–9.

Scorpio was the sign on the cusp of the eight house, and for this reason Saturn was the lord of this house.

Charts and commentary are in MS Canon. Misc. 24, fols 18v–19r.

Ibid., fol. 32v.

Ibid., fol. 31r.

Ibid., fol. 72r. The Sun was considered particularly important for establishing the course of chronic illnesses, and continuous fevers must have fallen into this category. On the way to establish the outcome of an illness Cardano advises: “si sit ex genere chronicarum, considera Solem, si acutarum Lunam.” Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), fol. 92r.

MS Canon. Misc. 24, fol. 72v.

Together with the list provided in Gazio's manuscript, see also Gaurico , op. cit. (ref. 5), fols 116r–121r.

In his Astrologiae methodus (1576), Johannes Gartze (Garcaeus) included a whole series of charts of monsters. See Gartze , op. cit. (ref. 12), 41–6.

Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), fol. 153v.

According to Vitali, Jupiter was combustus if it was within 6 degrees from the Sun, or, if one was to follow Vitali's near-contemporary Andrea Argoli, within 8½ degrees. See Vitali , op. cit. (ref. 26), 157–8.

In interpreting his own chart, Cardano said that he, too, would have been a monster, were it not for his own knowledge of his own weak body and his great efforts to overcome his own shortcomings. See Grafton , op. cit. (ref. 19), 83–4.

Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), fol. 153v.

These techniques are already explained in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos (IV, 10), but were expanded substantially in the work of Arabic authors and were treated in detail by both Cardano and Gaurico. In his Libelli quinque, Cardano first treats the theme of revolutions briefly in relation to genitures in Book III (De iudiciis geniturarum) and then comprehensively in Book IV (De revolutionibus). See also Gaurico , op. cit. (ref. 6).

On the techniques of revolutions and profections, see Broecke Vanden , op. cit. (ref. 13), 227–31, esp. notes 1, 4, 11.

MS Canon. Misc. 24, fol. 118r.

Cardano's considerations were slightly different, but reached similar conclusions. See Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), fol. 147r.

See Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), fol. 123v, on the Moon as his hylec and significator corporis.

MS Canon. Misc. 24, fol. 118r.

Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), fol. 145v.

Ibid., fols 144v, 182r. In the copy now at the Bayerische Staatbibliothek the owner of the book drew the chart himself in order to visualize the celestial configuration properly. The one exception where Cardano draws revolutions in his collection of genitures is his own geniture, which he scrutinized in unprecedented detail.

See, for example, Giacomo Attendolo's chart and his revolutio mortis in Cardano , op. cit. (ref. 16), fol. 237v.

Gaurico , op. cit. (ref. 6). See also Vitali , op. cit. (ref. 26), 162.

Hayton Darin , “Astrologers and astrology in Vienna during the era of Emperor Maximilian I (1493–1519)”, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2004, and idem, “Astrology as political propaganda: Humanist responses to the Turkish threat in early sixteenth-century Vienna”, Austrian history yearbook, xxxviii (2007), 61–91.

Gaurico , op. cit. (ref. 1).

Thorndike , op. cit. (ref. 3), vi, 100–1, and Geneva Ann , Astrology and the seventeenth-century mind: William Lilly and the language of the stars (Manchester, 1995), 156. Cardano himself said that his collection of genitures stood to Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos as Hippocrates's Epidemics stood to the Aphorisms. Quoted in Pompeo Faracovi, op. cit. (ref. 11), 11.

On Cardano's contacts with German astrologers and physicians, and on his trip to Edinburgh to treat Hamilton's, see Grafton , op. cit. (ref. 19).