In the circle of Lorenzo the Magnificent, among his most distinguished Platonists, opinions were divided on this question.Marsilio Ficino defended astrology, and drew the horoscope of the children of the house, promising the little Giovanni, afterwards Leo X, that he would one day be Pope.Pico della Mirandola, on the other hand, made an epoch in the subject by his famous refutation.He detects in this belief the root of all impiety and immorality.If the astrologer, he maintains, believes in anything at all, he must worship not God, but the planets, from which all good and evil are derived.All other superstitions find a ready instrument in astrology, which serves as handmaid to geomancy, chiromancy, and magic of every kind.As to morality, he maintains that nothing can more foster evil than the opinion that heaven itself is the cause of it, in which case the faith in eternal happiness and punishment must also disappear.Pico even took the trouble to check off the astrologers inductively, and found that in the course of a month three-fourths of their weather prophecies turned out false.But his main achievement was to set forth, in the Fourth Book, a positive Christian doctrine of the freedom of the will and the government of the universe, which seems to have made a greater impression on the educated classes throughout Italy than all the revivalist preachers put together.The latter, in fact, often failed to reach these classes.
The first result of his book was that the astrologers ceased to publish their doctrines, and those who had already printed them were more or less ashamed of what they had done.Gioviano Pontano, for example, in his book on Fate, had recognized the science, and in a great work of his had expounded the whole theory of it in the style of the old Firmicus, ascribing to the stars the growth of every bodily and spiritual quality.He now in his dialogue 'Aegidius' surrendered, if not astrology, at least certain astrologers) and sounded the praises of free will, by which man is enabled to know God.Astrology remained more or less in fashion, but seems not to have governed human life in the way it formerly had done.The art of painting, which in the fifteenth century had done its best to foster the delusion now expressed the altered tone of thought.Raphael, in the cupola of the Capella Chigi, represents the gods of the different planets and the starry firmament, watched, however, and guided by beautiful angel-figures, and receiving from above the blessing of the eternal Father.There was also another cause which now began to tell against astrology in Italy.The Spaniards took no interest in it, not even the generals, and those who wished to gain their favour declared open war against the half-heretical, half-Mohammedan science.It is true that Guicciardini writes in the year 1529: 'How happy are the astrologers, who are believed if they tell one truth to a hundred lies, while other people lose all credit if they tell one lie to a hundred truths.' But the contempt for astrology did not necessarily lead to a return to the belief in Providence.It could as easily lead to an indefinite fatalism.
In this respect, as in others, Italy was unable to make its own way healthily through the ferment of the Renaissance, because the foreign invasion and the Counter-Reformation came upon it in the middle.
Without such interfering causes its own strength would have enabled it thoroughly to get rid of these fantastic illusions.Those who hold that the onslaught of the strangers and the Catholic reactions were necessities for which the Italian people was itself solely responsible, will look on the spiritual bankruptcy which they produced as a just retribution.But it is a pity that the rest of Europe had indirectly to pay so large a part of the penalty.
The belief in omens seems a much more innocent matter than astrology.
The Middle Ages had everywhere inherited them in abundance from the various pagan religions; and Italy did not differ in this respect from other countries.What is characteristic of Italy is the support lent by humanism to the popular superstition.The pagan inheritance was here backed up by a pagan literary development.
The popular superstition of the Italians rested largely on premonitions and inferences drawn from ominous occurrences.with which a good deal of magic, mostly of an innocent sort, was connected.There was, however.no lack of learned humanists who boldly ridiculed these delusions, and to whose attacks we partly owe the knowledge of them.
Gioviano Pontano, the author of the great astrological work already mentioned above, enumerates with pity in his 'Charon' a long string of Neapolitan superstitions--the grief of the women when a fowl or goose caught the pip; the deep anxiety of the nobility if a hunting falcon did not come home, or if a horse sprained its foot; the magical formulae of the Apulian peasants, recited on three Saturday evenings, when mad dogs were at large.The animal kingdom, as in antiquity, was regarded as specially significant in this respect, and the behavior of the lions, leopards, and other beasts kept by the State gave the people all the more food for reflection, because they had come to be considered as living symbols of the State.During the siege of Florence, in 1597 an eagle which had been shot at fled into the city, and the Signoria gave the bearer four ducats because the omen was good.
