Astrology and Antichrist in the Later Middle Ages

HILARY M. CAREY

T here is now a formidable body of literature on the history of Antichrist in the Middle Ages, but relatively little is known about astrology as a vector for the transmission of eschatological ideas in this period.1 This is a significant

omission, even if we allow for the need to keep the field of eschatological inquiry within reasonable bounds since, as McGinn puts it, all medieval thinkers were eschatological in one sense or another.2 Still, in his Presidential Address to the Royal Historical Society in 1970, R. W. Southern considered ‘astrological prophecy’ to be one of the four classes of prophecy that made up ‘the armoury which prophecy offered for the study of history’ and this would seem to suggest that the subject merits closer attention.3 If astrology was not prophetically significant in the Middle Ages, research conducted over the last five years has demonstrated that it had certainly become so by the time of the Lutheran reformation.4 Even earlier,

1 Astrology is not considered in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, ed. by Bernard McGinn, John J. Collins and Stephen J. Stein, 3 vols (New York: Continuum, 1998), II: Apocalypticism in Western History and Culture, nor in the major monograph on Antichrist by Richard Kenneth Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art and Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), nor the broader survey by Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York: Harper Collins, 1994). Additional bibliography on medieval apocalypticism is summarized by Laura Smoller, History, Prophecy and the Stars: The Christian Astrology of Pierre d’Ailly, 1350–1420 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 183.

2 McGinn, Antichrist, p. 252. 3 R. W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing’, Transactions

of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 22 (1972), p. 172. 4 Especially significant is Robin Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in

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Christopher Hill noted that astrology was associated in the minds of some seventeenth-century people with the work of Antichrist and that the subject was well worth further investigation.5

This article presents a case for the significance of astrology in some kinds of prophetic calculations of the coming of Antichrist, beginning with the speculations of Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century. But it can be acknowledged that, for much of the Middle Ages, astrology and prophecy of the kind attributed to Merlin, the Sybil, Joachim and others were distinct genres and there was little in the way of cross-fertilization. This is puzzling because the two discourses appear to cover similar territory. Both employ a symbolic syntax to encode interpretations about the present and future state of society. Both employ numerical calculations to decipher past and future things. In the case of Joachimist-style prophecy, the numbers and the argument are derived from scripture, whereas astrology follows a method that was generally perceived in the Middle Ages to be rational and scientific. But overall, there would appear to be all the makings of a demarcation dispute.

It is not until late in the Middle Ages that Pierre d’Ailly deployed the full astrological apparatus: the calculation of planetary longitudes, conjunction theory, and the citation of major astrological authorities, to compute a precise date for the arrival of Antichrist, namely 1789.6 As Laura Smoller has shown, this prediction was intended to calm contemporary prophetic exuberance, not encourage the employment of astrology for millennialist speculation.7 Boudet, North and Smoller have examined the work of a number of other late medieval authors who used astrology to consider possible dates for the coming of Antichrist, the second coming of Christ, and the end of the world.8 But questions remain about why it took so long

the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); Robin Bruce Barnes, ‘Images of Hope and Despair: Western Apocalypticism, c. 1500–1800’, in McGinn, The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, II, 143–84; and articles collected in ‘Astrologi hallucinati’: Stars and the End of the World in Luther’s Time, ed. by Paula Zambelli (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1986). For English examples see Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).

5 Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England, rev. edn (London: Verso, 1990), p. 188.

6 Pierre d’Ailly, Concordantia astronomie cum theologia. Concordantia astronomie cum hystorica narratione et elucidarium duorum precedentium (Augsburg: Ratdolt, 1490), chap. 60. D’Ailly repeated the prediction in De persecutionbus ecclesie, again as evidence that the time of Antichrist was to be long delayed. Cited Smoller, History, Prophecy and the Stars, p. 60.

7 D’Ailly, Concordantia, chap. 60. 8 In order of publication, see: J. D. North, ‘Astrology and the Fortunes of Churches’,

Centaurus, 24 (1980), 181–211; Jean-Patrice Boudet, ‘Simon de Phares et les rapports entre astrologie et prophétie à la fin du Moyen Age’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome; Moyen Age, 102 (1990), 617–48; Jean-Patrice Boudet, ‘L’astrologie, la recherche de la

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for these kinds of speculation to come to astrological fruition. What were the medieval seeds of the astrological eschatology of Reformation Europe?

Roger Bacon and Antichrist

Those who have, nearly always in passing, considered the place of astrology in medieval apocalypticism have usually made a point of citing a key passage from Roger Bacon’s Opus Majus, written for Guy de Foulquois after his election as Pope Clement IV in 1265, and forwarded to him in 1266 or 1267.9 Bacon liked this statement so much that he used it twice: once in the preface or letter known as the Gasquet fragment, and again in Book 4, where it comes as the last sentence in what is, in the printed edition, a thirty-page defence of ‘true mathematicians and astronomers or astrologers who are philosophers’. To translate the Latin literally:

I do not wish to be presumptuous, but I know that if the church was willing to turn over the holy text and holy prophecies, as well as the prophecies of the Sibyl, and Merlin and Aquila and Sesto, Joachim and many others, as well as the histories and books of philosophers, and should order the consideration of the paths of astronomia, a suspicion or greater certainty would be found concerning the time of Antichrist. 10

maîtrise du temps et les spéculations sur la fin du monde au Moyen  ge et dans la première moitié du XVIe siècle’, in Le Temps, sa mesure et sa perception au Moyen Âge: Actes du colloque Orléans 12–13 avril 1991, ed. by Bernard Ribémont (Caen: Paradigme, 1992), pp. 19–35; Laura Smoller, ‘The Alfonsine Tables and the End of the World: Astrology and Apocalyptic Calculation in the Later Middle Ages’, in The Devil, Heresy and Witchcraft in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Jeffrey B. Russell, ed. by Alberto Ferreiro (Leiden: Brill, 1998). North considers Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Petro d’Abano, Cecco d’Ascoli, John Ashenden, Jean de Roquetaillade, Heinrich von Langenstein and a number of fifteenth-century writers culminating with Pico della Mirandola (d. 1494); Smoller the views of John of Paris (Queripel), John Ashenden, Pierre d’Ailly, Jean de Bruges and Pierre Turrel. For scientific chronology, which could also sometimes involved speculation as to when the world might end, see J. D. North, ‘Chronology and the Age of the World’, in Cosmology, History, and Theology, ed. by W. Yourgrau and A. D. Breck (New York: Plenum Press, 1977), pp. 307–33.

9 For the status of the ‘Preface’ and its relationship to Bacon’s major work, see Stewart Easton, Roger Bacon and His Search for a Universal Science (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), pp. 144–66. Bacon’s repeat of this statement is noted by Southern, ‘Aspects’, p. 172; Southern’s citation is cited by Emmerson, Antichrist, p. 14; Bernard McGinn, ‘Apocalypticism and Church Reform: 100–1500’, in McGinn and others, The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, II, 87. It is the only quote in North, ‘Fortunes of Churches’, p. 190; Smoller, ‘Alfonsine Tables’, p. 220.

10 The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, ed. by John Henry Bridges, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897), I, 268–69:

Nolo hic ponere os meum in coelum, sed scio quod si ecclesia vellet revolvere textum

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McGinn describes this as a call by Bacon for ‘increased apocalyptic education’.11 He also translates astronomia as ‘astronomy’, whereas the context makes it clear enough that Bacon was referring to what we would call astrology. This interpretation does not do justice to the importance that Bacon attached to astrology as part of such a programme. Although astrology is the last item mentioned in Bacon’s list of prophets and authorities, the preceding pages indicate that he considered it to be one of vital importance. On the other hand, Smoller suggests that Bacon makes this statement ‘exultantly’, as proof of the deductive power of conjunctionism.12 Besides misreading Bacon’s tone (‘Nolo hic ponere os meum in coelum’), this would seem to give too much prominence to astrology, which Bacon always felt should contribute to the great project of discovering and, if possible, evading the armies and stratagems of Antichrist. Astrology was essential—but so were geography, medicine and the other branches of natural philosophy, in the great task of building the church to resist the anticipated onslaught. In fact, nothing could be omitted simply because the stakes were so high.13

Astrology in Bacon’s Thought

Historians have been divided on the place which astrology should be accorded within Roger Bacon’s vast programme of knowledge.14 Some have seen it as the key element, driving all else before it. For Molland, Bacon was a harbinger of the Hermetic Renaissance, a crypto-Hermeticist in the style of Giordano Bruno.15 Most

sacrum et prophetias sacras, atque prophetias Sibyllae, et Merlini et Aquilae, et Sestonis, Joachim et multorum aliorum, insuper historias et libros philosophorum, atque juberet considerari vias astronomiae, inveniretur sufficiens suspicio vel magis certitudo de tempore Antichristi.

The passage is excerpted in translation in Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 156, which should ensure its ongoing circulation.

11 McGinn, ‘Apocalypticism and Church Reform’, p. 87. 12 Smoller, ‘Alfonsine Tables’, p. 220. 13 Bacon, Opus Majus, I, 301–02: ‘Et haec cognitio locorum mundi valde necessaria est

reipublicae fidelium et conversioni infidelium et ad obviandum infidelibus et Antichristo, et aliis’. Easton, Roger Bacon, p. 72 considers that the conviction that all the sciences are connected and mutually interdependent was Bacon’s ‘personal credo, and the key to his whole work’.

14 For review, see Jeremiah Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon on Astronomy–Astrology: The Sources of the ‘scientia experimentalis’, in Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, ed. by Jeremiah Hackett (Leiden: Brill, 1997).

15 George A. Molland, ‘Roger Bacon and the Hermetic Tradition in Medieval Science’, Vivarium, 31 (1993), 140–91; George A. Molland, ‘Roger Bacon as Magician’, Traditio, 30

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recently, Paul Sidelko has argued that Bacon’s particular enthusiasm for astrology was instrumental in his condemnation—though there is very little to suggest that Bacon was ever actually disciplined for anything, and even less to suggest what the cause might be.16 For some years it was considered that the Secreta secretorum had a central place in Bacon’s intellectual development. This has been challenged by Steven Williams who has argued for the relatively late dating of Bacon’s edition of the Secreta secretorum and his extensive, mostly astrological, commentary on it.17 Whatever the dating of Bacon’s Secreta, it seems undeniable that astrology was important to Bacon to an extent unmatched by his contemporaries in science.18 But he was not wholly uncritical in his examination either of prophecy, or of astrology. As Connell argues, Bacon was, on some points at least quite sceptical about the prophecies of Antichrist.19 Overall, the picture of Bacon as a magician is not very satisfying, even if marginally preferable to the older stereotype of Bacon the scientist. What appears to have driven Bacon to complete his heroic programme of research was not only his faith in the analytical power of astrology, but the moderate Joachimist sympathies of the Franciscan circles of Oxford and Paris in which he moved.

Bacon and Antichrist

If Bacon’s ideas are examined carefully, following the guide of Davide Bigalli, it is clear that he did not imagine that astrology provided a magic key to predict the coming of Antichrist. Astrology was scientific. Its hypotheses were not prescriptive but were interpretive. Having first established the respectability of astrology, Bacon goes on to explain its significance for the Christian prince, for the church and finally for ordinary people. Bacon believed that astrology could provide a means for the just Christian ruler to defend his realm in the all-too-likely event of political and religious upheavals that the coming of Antichrist would provoke. He argued that it

(1974), 445–60.

16 Paul L. Sidelko, ‘The Condemnation of Roger Bacon’, Journal of Medieval History, 22 (1996), 69–81.

17 Steven J. Williams, ‘Roger Bacon and his Edition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum’, Speculum, 69 (1994), 57–73.

18 James A. Weisheipl, ‘Science in the Thirteenth Century’, in History of the University of Oxford; Vol. I: The Early Oxford Schools, ed. by J. I. Catto (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). See also John D. North and A. C. Crombie, ‘Roger Bacon (1219–1292)’, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. by Charles Coulston Gillispie, 16 vols (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970–80), I, 377–85 (p. 382).

19 C. W. Connell, ‘Western Views of the Origin of the Tartars’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 3 (1973), 115–37.

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was essential that close attention be given to anything that might spare Christian blood in the church’s struggle against infidels and rebels, and above all in the future dangers of the time of Antichrist.20 Such dangers might easily be averted, with the grace of God, if prelates and princes undertook appropriate study and were more aggressive in hunting down the secrets of nature and art.21 This was tactical and strategic warfare and Bacon appears to have been all in favour of the medieval equivalent of biological and nuclear weapons. Such steps were justified on the basis that these means were already employed by eastern princes, who were known to rule their people through the advice of men skilled in both divination and certain branches of higher learning, such as astrology (astronomia) and experimental science, or the arts of magic.22 This is all pretty reprehensible, not least because it put Christian prelates and princes on a par with Antichrist himself, who was known to perform false miracles and signs through demonic trickery.23 Even for political reasons, it was not really sensible for Bacon to ally the science of astrology so blatantly to the more practical arts of magic.

As to when Antichrist would come, Bacon is notably circumspect, reflecting the climate of re-assessment and caution that followed the condemnation of Gerardo of Borgo San Donnino in 1256 and the failure of his prediction of the coming of Joachim of Fiore’s third status in 1260.24 Bacon considered that it was more than likely that the Tartars should be identified with the race of the stock of Gog and Magog who, according to Ethicus, were to break out from behind the Caspian gates to cause great devastation, and go on to meet Antichrist and call him God of Gods.25

20 Bacon, Opus Majus, II, 222: ‘Et hoc deberet ecclesia considerare contra infideles et

rebeles, ut parcatur sanguini Christiano, et maxime propter futura pericula in temporibus Antichristi, quibus cum Deo gratia facile esset obviare, si praelati et principes studium promoverent et secreta naturae et artis indagerent’.

21 Bacon, Opus Majus, II, 222: ‘Et hoc deberet ecclesia considerare contra infideles et rebeles, ut parcatur sanguini Christiano, et maxime propter futura pericula in temporibus Antichristi, quibus cum Deo gratia facile esset obviare, si praelati et principes studium promoverent et secreta naturae et artis indagerent’.

22 Bacon, Opus Majus, I, 368: ‘Nam principes ibi regunt populum per divinationes et scientias quae instruunt homines in futuris, sive sint partes philosophiae, ut astronomia et scientia experimentalis, sive artes magicae, quibus totum oriens est deditum et imbutum’.

23 On Antichrist and false miracles, see Emmerson, Antichrist; Augustine, Patrologia Latina, 41, 867. On Antichrist’s power to deceive and work ‘every kind of miracle and signs and lying portents’, see Augustine’s discussion of II Thessalonians 2. 1–12 in City of God, Book XX. xix: Augustine, De civitate Dei, ed. by T. E. Page and others, Loeb Classical Library, 7 vols (London: Heinemann, 1957), VI, ed. and trans. by William Chase Greene, esp. pp. 364–67.

24 On San Donnino and the ‘Eternal Gospel’, see Bernard McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985).

25 Bacon, Opus Majus, II, 234. ‘Dicit igitur Ethicus philosophus quod circa tempora Antichristi erit una gens de stirpe Gog et Magog contra ubera Aquilonis circa portum

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Bacon supports this by referring to Abū Macšar On the Great Conjunctions where it is stated that a leader shall come with a foul and magical law after the time of Mohammed, who will destroy the other laws for a time. But such a terrible evil would last for only a short time.26 Bacon also provides a lengthy—but rather inaccurate and heavily Christianized—version of Abū Macšar’s theory that new religions arise in the context of the change in triplicity in the pattern of ‘greatest’ conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter, which occur every 960 years, especially if the conjunction involves a change to a mobile sign.27 Bacon generates Albumasar’s thesis of religious change into a rising sequence of religions culminating in Christianity but threatened by a final, hostile religion that he identifies with Antichrist. Ultimately, however, Bacon decides that the actual time of Antichrist is not yet certain, although events such as the invasion of the Tartars suggested that it may be very soon, but other facts and research would be required to fix the date.

What other facts did Bacon have in mind? Bacon does not seem to have been the sort to fall victim to obsessive date-setting of the end-time, but he may well have considered that astrology, in partnership with prophecy and sacred scripture, provided the best hope for a more-or-less accurate prediction of the last days. This marriage of astrology, prophecy and science is what made his ideas on Antichrist so original and influential.

There is evidence that at least one attempt to astrologize the ideas of Joachim of Fiore were made at an early date, but such efforts were rare and unusual. As early as 1304–05, a certain ‘Dandalus,’ about whom nothing else is known, wrote an

Euxinum, pessima inter omnes nationes quae cum semine eorum pessimo recluso post portas Caspias Alexandri facient multam hujus mundi vastationem, et occurrent Antichristo et vocabant eum Deum Deorum’. For a similar statement, see also Bacon, Opus Majus, I, 365.

26 Bacon, Opus Majus, II, 234: ‘Et Albumazar in libro Conjunctionum verificat similiter hoc principium, dicens et ostendens quod veniet princeps cum lege foeda et magica post legem Machometi, qui destruet alias leges ad tempus. Sed parum durabit malitiae magnitudinem’.

27 Bacon, Opus Majus, I, 265: ‘Nam Albumazar octava differentia libri secundi de conjunctionibus dicit, quod mora sectae et regni et permutatio accidunt praecipue secundum quantitatem decem revolutionum Saturniarum, praecipue si Saturno conveniet mutatio ad signa mobilia’. Compare Abū Macšar, On Historical Astrology: The Book of Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions), ed. by Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett, 2 vols (Brill: Leiden, 2000), II: The Latin versions Albumansar, De magnis conjunctionibus, ed. and trans. by Charles Burnett, 1. 4. 4, pp. 29–29:

Dicamusque quia, cum Iupiter per naturam significet fidem, et diversitates legum in temporibus et in hominibus sectarum et in vicibus regnorum fiant ex complexionibus Saturni vel ex complexionibus ceterorum planetarum cum eo, necesse est ut aspiciamus Iovem, qui si fuerit in loco fidei ab abscendente coniunctionis que significat mutationem, et almubtez super locum fidei fuerit ei complexus, erit narratio in hoc secundum ipsum.

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astrological appendix to one of the earliest pseudonymous works attributed to Joachim, the Liber de Flore, called Horoscopus paparum.28 The work was attributed at one stage to ‘Rabanus de Anglia’ although the title claims that it was written neither by Rabanus or Dandalus, but was initially composed in Hebrew by ‘Nactahi’ and then translated into Latin by Dandalus of Lérida. John of Roquetaillade (de Rupescissa, d. 1362) wrote a commentary on it in which he referred to it as ‘libri Horoscopi nondum inventus’.29 Although this survives in only one medieval manuscript, this was sufficient to give Dandalus a reputation well into the seventeenth century as a prophet and seer.30 ‘Horoscopus’ was also known to Arnald of Villanova, who is probably the major source for Joachimist thought in Calabria though Arnald was thoroughly hostile to using any rational means to predict sacred things, such as the calculation of the final days.31 Joachim of Fiore himself displayed no interest whatever in astrological signs as components of his personal eschatological vision,32 not enough, at any rate, for the word ‘astrology’ to appear in the index to the fundamental studies of Marjorie Reeves.33

28 Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi, ed. by F. Stegmüller, 6 vols (Madrid: [n. publ.], 1940), III: Commentaria Auctores H-M, item 4091, pp. 240–41, lists it as: Ps-Rabanus de Anglia, Horoscopus paparum a Nicolao III (1277–1280) usque ad angelicum pastorem, a NACTAHI (NACTAHE, HECTABI, NECTANEBO) hebraice compositus, a DANDALO YLERDENSI (ILLARDENSI, DE Lérida) in Latinum translatus; compositus c. 1304, inc. ‘Etenim omnipotens opifex’. Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum, lists only the two seventeenth-century manuscripts, both in Rome: Biblioteca Vallicelliana, MS J 32, fols 55–106; Biblioteca Vallicelliana, MS J 33. Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969; repr. 2000), p. 523 lists three manuscripts: Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 138, fols 85–106, fourteenth century; and the two seventeenth-century manuscripts in Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana.

29 See also Vademecum, in Fasciculus rerum expetendarum ac fugiendarum, ed. by E. Brown, 2 vols (London: [n. pub.], 1690), II, 501.

30 In 1623, Dandalus was named by Gabriel Naudé among an impressive list of false prophets who should not attract the attention of his countrymen. Cited by Marjorie Reeves and Warwick Gould, Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 13.

31 Harold Lee, Marjorie Reeves and Giulio Silano, Western Mediterranean Prophecy: The School of Foachim of Fiore and the Fourteenth-Century Breviloquium (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989), p. 40.

32 Though see the claim of Symon de Phares that Joachim was an expert astrologer. Simon may have known of pseudonymous works, such as Horoscopus, which justified this opinion. Le Recueil des plus celebres astrologues de Simon de Phares, ed. by Jean-Patrice Boudet, 2 vols (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1997), I: Édition critique, 398.

33 Reeves, Influence of Prophecy; Marjorie Reeves, ‘Some Popular Prophecies from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries’, Popular Belief and Practice, ed. by G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 107–34; Marjorie Reeves and B. Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

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By the thirteenth century, however, Joachim’s ideas were being subjected to the pressure of ever-increasing theological and scientific scrutiny.34 Not only were his ideas raked over to allow the identification of particular historical figures and political events, but also to facilitate the calculation of the date of the coming of Antichrist and the end. This is the context in which Roger Bacon was writing. And while it is probably going too far to identify Bacon himself as a Joachimist—he is much too quirky and temperamental for that—he does show awareness of Joachim’s authority as a prophet and of the expectation that 1260 might be a date of particular significance.35 While it might seem to be only a matter of time before someone attempted a more thorough marriage of Joachimism with astrology, there were some formidable theological hurdles to cross before this could happen.

By the central Middle Ages, while some conservative theologians continued to proscribe all forms of astrology, there was little resistance to its major tenets, particularly in relation to natural events. Augustine was the key authority, but even he had allowed that astronomia consisted of both licit and illicit branches.36 The general ambiguity is nicely conveyed by Isidore of Seville in his definition and comments on Lucifer, the evening star, which he describes as a type of Antichrist, who rises up in the evening over the sons of the earth, just as the blindness of the succeeding night obscures the carnal mind, but which is then overthrown by Christ in his manifestation at the morning star.37 The stars could act as the representatives of both Christ and Antichrist, according to the wisdom of the one investigating them.

In the thirteenth century, there were at least three techniques that could be employed by scientific astrologers to consider the events of the final days, namely: astral omens, the Platonic Year and ‘conjunctionism’. The latter is also referred to by historians of astrology as the ‘doctrine of the great conjunctions’ or ‘historical astrology’. These three forms of astrological divination overlap to some extent. In addition, the Book of Revelation and ancient astrology shared a symbolic and 1972).

34 Reviewed by Roberto Rusconi, ‘Antichrist and Antichrists’, in McGinn and others, The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, II, 287–325.

35 Davide Bigalli, I Tartari e l’apocalisse. Ricerche sull’astrologia in Adamo Marsh e Ruggero Bacone (Firenze: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1971); Stewart C. Easton, Roger Bacon and his Search for a Universal Science (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952); Marjorie Reeves, Influence of Prophecy, pp. 46–49 considers Easton ‘argues too easily’ that Bacon was a Joachimist.

36 The major patristic authority objecting to the practice is Augustine, see especially De civitate Dei, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 47 and 48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), p. 652. The best recent review of the theological debate about astrology in the Middle Ages is Smoller, History, Prophecy and the Stars, chap. 2, though the elegant survey of Theodore Wedel, Mediaeval Attitude toward Astrology, Yale Studies in English, 60 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1920) remains of value.

37 Isidore Hispaliensis, De nature rerum liber, ed. by Gustavus Becker. (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1967), X.

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numerological language they inherited from the Chaldean sources of both ancient astrology and Judaeo-Christian apocalyptic.38 It might therefore be argued that the rise of astrological prophecy in the late medieval and early modern period represents nothing more than the natural rejoining of the divided streams of prophetic interpretation. Of these traditions, there is space in this article to consider only one, namely conjunctionism and, in particular, the conjunctionism described in Abū Macšar’s Book of Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions).

Conjunctionism

In the Latin west, translations of Abū Macšar’s Book of Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions) was the most important source for knowledge of conjunctionism, that is the astrological theory that events in human history were influenced by the periodical cycles of conjunctions of the major planets.39 Written sometime before 197/813, Macšar’s Book of Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions was first translated in the second quarter of the twelfth century where it was generally known under the title De magnis coniunctionibus. It was printed in 1489 and 1515 and published again some 485 years later, only a few months before the Leeds International Medieval Congress at which this paper was presented.40 Historical astrology was also disseminated through rather less challenging tracts, such as John of Seville’s Quadripartitum and De ratione circuli, which are discussed by North.41 It is conjunctionism that allowed for the casting of horoscopes for such significant moments as the nativity, crucifixion and second coming, the coming of Antichrist and the end of the world. While horoscopes of Antichrist do not seem to have survived, horoscopes of other events in Christian history are not uncommon, and there was no theoretical impediment to the practice.42

The basic theory of Abū Macšar’s great treatise is not complicated and relies on the happy accident that the period between successive conjunctions of the two largest planets, Saturn and Jupiter, is about twenty years.43 In addition, each

38 As suggested by Adela Yarbro Collins, Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and

Christian Apocalypticism (Leiden: Brill, 1997), chap. 3. 39 For the place of Abū Macšar in Arabic astrology, see ‘Astrology’, in Religion, Learning

and Science in the cAbbasid Period, ed. by M. J. L. Young, J. D. Latham and R. B. Serjeant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 290–300.

40 Abū Macšar, On Historical Astrology, II. 41 North, ‘Fortunes of Churches’, p. 189. 42 Medieval horoscopes are very rare. See J. D. North, Horoscopes and History (London:

Warburg Institute, 1986) for a collection of surviving examples. I have not seen a contemporary horoscope of the birth of Antichrist.

43 The explanation in Abū Macšar, On Historical Astrology, II, 582–83 is short and clear

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successive major conjunction tends to occur about 120° of longitude, or three signs of the zodiac, further along the zodiac than the last. According to an ancient tradition, the twelve signs of the zodiac are broken up into four triplicities, or groups of three zodiac signs usually identified as airy, fiery, watery and earthy, within which each sign is linked to the two others which are 120° apart from it.44 This leads to the astrologically significant effect that successive conjunctions of the two major planets tend to occur in the same triplicity where it will recur, although falling in a different sign within the triplicity, for about 240 years before shifting to a new one. After 960 years, the whole process begins again. Although the astronomical movements of the two planets are not quite as neat as this, the whole process provided a powerful symbolic system for analysing long spans of time and linking them to historical changes in cycles of 20-, 240- and 960-year periods.45

Although religion is central to the matters given consideration in On the Great Conjunctions, Abū Macšar does not provide a crib to date the coming of Antichrist. To state the obvious, Abū Macšar wrote for an Islamic audience for whom the idea of a single hostile opponent of Christ or the Prophet was not a familiar one and for whom the birth and death of Jesus Christ and the rise of Christianity were not the culmination of religious history. It was possible for translators to make superficial compensation for this. For example, where the Arabic refers to the Prophet (Upon him be peace!), the Latin has instead ‘super quem sit maledictio’.46 It was harder to get around the fact that Abū Macšar makes only two references to Christianity in the entire book, neither of them very complimentary—though Bacon does try.47

On the other hand, Abū Macšar did understand and cater for an age wracked by religious sectarianism, false prophets, heresy and schism, just the sort of effects that and draws on the more technical explanation in North, ‘Fortunes of Churches’, pp. 185–87 including his useful diagram. See also Edward S. Kennedy, ‘Ramifications of the World-Year Concept in Islamic Astrology’, Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of the History of Science (1962), 358–59.

44 Evidence of the ‘Chaldean’ origin of triplicities is discussed by Francesca Rochberg-Hatton, ‘New Evidence for the History of Astrology’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 43, 2 (1984), 115–40. According to standard texts, such as the Ysagog Minor, the Latin verson of Abū Macšar’s Abbreviation of the Introduction to Astrology, ed. by Charles Burnett, Keiji Yamamoto and Michio Yano (Leiden: Brill, 1994), p. 102.

45 As North points out, ‘Fortunes of Churches’, p. 186. 46 Abū Macšar, On Historical Astrology, II, 8, 2, 96. 47 For example, the Arabic original of Abū Macšar, On Historical Astrology: The Book of

Religions and Dynasties (On the Great Conjunctions), ed. by Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2000), I: The Arabic Original, ed. and trans. by Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett, I, 4, 45: ‘If the mixer with [Jupiter, the indicator of faith] is Mercury, it indicates Christianity, and every faith containing antipathy, doubt and trouble’. Bacon, Opus Majus, I, 257 gushes: ‘Et dicunt, quod lex Mercurales est difficilior ad credendum quam aliae, et habet multas difficultates supra humanum intellectum’.

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were supposed to accompany the coming of Antichrist. Bacon accomplishes a significant feat when he manages to rework Abū Macšar’s fluidly articulated cycles of religious conflict, into a series which culminates with Christianity defeating Islam, the conversion of the Jews and anticipating the rise of the last religion, that of Antichrist.48 He is particular energetic in his re-interpretation of the text when he insists that a passage in Book Two, Chapter Eight, which calculates the duration of a particular sect, implies that the law of Mohammed can not last more than 693 years. Bacon believed that the year in which he was writing was the Arabic year 665, marking 665 years from the time of Mohammed, which suggested that this sect would soon, by the grace of God, be destroyed.49 Also, that these figures were clearly in agreement with the Book of Revelation, which states in one version of the Vulgate that the number of the beast is 663, which is only 30 less than the figure provided by Albumasar.50 The deficiency can only mean that ‘God willed that this matter should not be completely explained, but hidden to a certain extent, like other matters which are written about in the Apocalypse’.51 But a little later, the same claim is stated again, even more strongly, that after the law of Mohammed no other religion would rise except the law of Antichrist, and this was confirmed by astronomers.52 Needless to say, it is unlike that Abū Macšar has any intention of providing a Christian scholar with the means to calculate the downfall of Islam.

Why was Bacon so keen to establish a date for the end of Islam? All is made

48 As part of the long-running debate about the authorship of the Speculum astronomie, at one time credited to Bacon, see J. Agrimi and C. Crisciani, ‘Albumazar nell’astrologia di Ruggero Bacone’, ACME, 25 (1972), 315–38.

49 The hijra (AD 622) marks the flight of Mohammed from Mecca and the traditional date of the beginning of the Muslim era. This would imply Bacon was writing in 1287, although the Opus majus was completed by 1266 or 1267. Presumably Bacon made a mistake in his calculation of the Arabic year.

50 Bacon, Opus Majus, I, 266: Nam secundum quod Albumazar dicit viii capitulo secundi libri, non potest lex Mahometi durare ultra sexcentos nonaginta tres [693] annos [. . .] Et nunc est annus Arabum sexcentesimus sexagesimus quintus [665] a tempore Mahometi, et ideo cito destruetur per gratiam Dei [. . .] Et huic sententiae concordate Apocalypsis xiii capitulo. Nam dicit quod numerus bestiae est 663, qui numerus est minor praedicto per xxx annos.

Compare Abū Macšar, On Historical Astrology, I, 2, 8, pp. 124–25 (Arabic and English translation); II, 83 (Latin).

51 Bacon, Opus Majus, I, 266: ‘Et hic forsan voluit Deus, quod non exprimeretur totaliter, sed aliquantulum occultaretur, sicut caetera quae in Apocalypsi scribuntur’. Ashenden comes to repeat this suggestion in his tract on the conjunction of 1365, where it is noted by North, ‘Fortunes of Churches’, p. 195.

52 Bacon, Opus Majus, I, 268: ‘Et [. . .] post legem Mahometi non credimus quod aliqua secta veniet nisi lex Antichristi, et astronomi similiter concordant in hoc’.

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plain when we examine Bacon’s earlier argument, again drawn from Abū Macšar’s On the Great Conjunctions,53 on the basis of which Bacon maintained that there could only be six ‘laws’ or religions, and the last would only arise when the law of Mohammed was crushed. This final episode in the history of religion would arise as a consequence of a ‘greatest’ conjunction that occurred when Jupiter, the major determiner in matters of religion, was mixed in its influence with the moon. This religion, according to Bacon, would be that of Antichrist:

After the law of Mohammed, we do not believe that any other law will come except the law of Antichrist, and astronomers likewise agree in this, that there is some powerful one who will establish a foul and magical law after Mohammed which law will suspend all others.54

Bacon then asserts that this danger was sufficiently plain for the church to take precautionary measures in preparation for the coming of Antichrist.

Despite his inventiveness, Bacon never really does any more than play with the idea of conjunctionism. He does not go on to produce astrological history and/or prophecy of his own.55 Fully developed astrological histories, which account for the rise and fall of an entire people, are not common, though it is interesting, in the light of Roger Bacon’s fears about the use to which the Tartars were putting astrology, that an astrological history based on the career of Genghis Khan (d. 1227) does survive—albeit one created in the seventeenth century.56 But it is clear that they could also be potent political propaganda. In its original form, for example, the lost Arabic text of Māŝā’allāh’s Thousands predicted the downfall of the Abbasid dynasty and the restoration of Iranian rule in 200/815.57 In Muslim Spain, political and historical astrology, based on the interpretation of conjunctions and celestial

53 Abū Macšar, On Historical Astrology, I, 1, 4, pp. 44–45 (Arabic and English translation);

II, 28–29 (Latin). 54 Bacon, Opus Majus, I, 268. 55 Though he does claim (The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon, trans. by Robert Belle Burke

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928), p. 400) that the dreadful comet of 1264 was generated by the force of Mars and was clearly a factor in the wars of England, Spain, Italy and other countries, which happened about that time. ‘Oh, how great an advantage might have been secured to the Church of God, if the characteristics of the heavens in those times had been discerned beforehand by scientists, and understood by prelates and princes, and transferred to a zeal for peace.’

56 ‘An Astrological History Based on the Career of Genghis Khan’, in Edward S. Kennedy, Astronomy and Astrology in the Medieval Islamic World (Aldershot: Variorum, 1998), paper XVII. This tract was written by Iranshah, probably in 1663, a year which saw the transfer from the watery to the fiery triplicity.

57 David Pingree, The Thousands of Abū Macšar (London: Warburg Institute, 1968).

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omens, was actively practised—although not without some theological censure.58 According to Samsó, the practice of astrological history provides evidence for the early diffusion, by the tenth century, of Abū Ma¿šhar’s Kitāb al-Ulūf, which is the major source for this type of astrology in the west.59

The case of Spain is particularly interesting, because it seems clear that the Latin astrological tradition, based on Aratus, Dorotheus of Sidon and the like persisted here, at least if we accept the evidence of Isidore of Seville.60 Isidore, however, did not know of a tradition of astrological history, which was only developed after his death. An appreciation of the doctrine of great conjunctions was sufficiently well developed for astrologers in Cordova to consider that the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 397/1006–07, which involved a change of triplicity, indicated the demise of the Caliphate and the beginning of the rise of Western Christian rulers in Spain.61 Samsó points out that the astrology used to make this interpretation, at least as it survives in the available manuscript, is rather crude, and is an indication of the separate and regional identity of Muslim Spain.62

The evidence for the influence of conjunctionism elsewhere in Latin Europe is less clear-cut. Almost as soon as copies of the new translations of Abū Macšar On the Great Conjunctions arrived in the west, there is evidence that attempts were made to use it to interpret contemporary political and religious events. One centre for the dissemination of the new learning was the School of Chartres where there appears to have been a particular interest in astrology.63 One manuscript, now destroyed, included analysis of a great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter as well as notes dated from 1137 to 1141 that Burnett suggests might indicate that the book

58 ‘The Early Development of Astrology in al-Andalus’, in Julio Samsó, Islamic Astronomy

and Medieval Spain (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994), paper IV (first publ. in Journal for the History of Arabic Science, 3 (1979), 228–43).

59 For an account of the diffusion of this key text, see Pingree, The Thousands of Abū Ma¿šhar, and Charles S. F. Burnett, ‘The Legend of the Three Hermes and Abū Ma¿šhar’s Kitāb al-Ulūf in the Latin Middle Ages’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 39 (1976), 231–34.

60 J. Fontaine, ‘Isidore of Seville et l’astrologie’, Révue des études latines, 31 (1953), 271–300.

61 Samsó, ‘The Early Development’, pp. 230–31; and Juan Vernet, ‘Astrología y política en la Córdoba del siglo X’, Revista del Instituto de Estudios Islamicos en Madrid, 15 (1970), 91–100.

62 ‘Andalusian Astronomy: Its Main Characteristics and Influence in the Latin West’, in Samsó, Islamic Astronomy and Medieval Spain, paper I, pp. 1–23.

63 Charles Burnett, ‘The Contents and Affiliation of the Scientific Manuscripts Written at, or Bought to Chartres, in the Time of John of Salisbury’, in The World of John of Salisbury, ed. by Michael Wilks (Oxford: Blackwell, for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1984), p. 132.

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belonged to a practising astrologer.64 Some very interesting additional notes on copies of the Latin versions of On the Great Conjunctions provide further testimony to the allure of these kinds of predictions.65 One comment which links a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 1225 to the destabilization of the Emperor Frederick and his deposition by the pope (not till 1245—but delayed reactions were no problem in this branch of astrology) would suggest that at least one astrologer was drawn to the same events which inspired some of the feistiest apocalyptic prophecy of the Middle Ages.66

Nevertheless, despite the obvious attraction of the theory, and the hard work done by Bacon to Christianize it for use by his contemporaries, we do not see a rush of horoscopes of the last days.

The Theological Reception of Conjunctionism

It is difficult to assess the impact of Bacon’s proposal that the sciences be employed to assist in the search for Antichrist. It may have struck a chord with one or two fellow Franciscans who shared his excitement with mathematics, but he does not seem to have been taken seriously. In both Paris and Oxford, the intellectual climate was not hospitable to collaboration between specialists in sacred (theologi) and scientific learning (physici). Throughout the thirteenth century there was ongoing tension between the faculties, with extremists deploring the use of libri naturales for theological questions, and radicals subjected to periodic purges.67 This culminated in 1270 and 1277 with the Paris and Oxford condemnations of Bishop Stephen Tempier and Robert Kilwardby which included, in one form or another, a good many astrological propositions—all now proscribed.68 Curiously, one doctrine that was not

64 Burnett, ‘The Contents and Affiliation’, p. 135. Haskins noted the date 1135 on fol. 116:

‘In hoc anno quando erant anni a nativitate Christi MCXXXV in kal. Iulii fuit Venus incensa in Cancro’. The incipit suggests that the text concerned the interpretation of the great conjunctions: ‘Incipit de planetarum coniunctione. Si Saturnus et Iuppiter’.

65 For a short text, including comments on conjunctions from 2509 (the founding of Rome) to 1225 (the deposition of Frederick by Innocent IV), see Abū Macšar, On Historical Astrology, II, 348–51.

66 Abū Macšar, On Historical Astrology, II, 351: ‘Et, quia anno Christ 1225 fuit coniunctio Saturni et Iovis in primo gradu Aquarii, significaviit cessationem imperii apud Teutonicos’.

67 For an introduction to the literature, see Monika Asztalos, ‘The Faculty of Theology’, in A History of the University in Europe, ed. by Walter Rüegg, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), I: Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hilde de Ridder-Symoens, pp. 420–33.

68 Chartularium Univesitatis Parisiensis, ed. by H. Denifle and E. Châtelain, 4 vols (Paris: Delalain, 1889–97), I, 486–87 (for the errors of 1270); I, 543–58 (for the errors of 1277); Jeremiah Hackett, ‘Roger Bacon, Aristotle, and the Parisian condemnations of 1270, 1277’,

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proscribed was conjunctionism. Perhaps it was just an oversight, or perhaps it was not implicated in heretical teachings to the extent of the outlawed doctrine of the Platonic Year.

Responses to astrology can be divided into liberal and conservative responses. According to Paola Zambelli, it was in order to avert a conservative backlash against Arabic science and philosophy that a group of Dominicans, including Albertus Magnus, sought to produce a list of works which might be approved for study.69 The resulting report, which was soon attributed to Albertus Magnus, circulated under the title, the Speculum Astronomie. The views of Albertus Magnus can be profitably compared with the more fully analysed views of Aquinas, but both the great Dominican synthesizers accepted that the celestial bodies inclined but could not compel the soul and the will of man, who was created in freedom, after the image of God.70 Albert goes further than stricter commentators in allowing that the stars may also affect human politics, even to the extent of determining the outcomes of battles.71

The Speculum is essentially an annotated bibliography that indicated which works of science and philosophy were licit, and which should be proscribed. In general it is liberal, except that it is thoroughgoing in its condemnation of image magic and necromancy. Books on historical astrology are considered in the section

Vivarium, 35 (1997), 129–320.

69 Paola Zambelli, The ‘Speculum Astronomiae’ and its Enigma: Astrology, Theology and Science in Albertus Magnus and his Contemporaries (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1992). For Albertus on astrology, see Betsy B. Price, ‘The Physical Astronomy and Astrology of Albertus Magnus’, in Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays 1980, ed. by James A. Weisheipl (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980), pp. 155–85.

70 Albertus Magnus, Summa theologiae, in Opera omnia, ed. by Petrus Jammy (Paris, 1651), XVII–XVIII:

Talis enim stellarum qualitas trahere potest corpora et mutare animos etiam plantarum et brutorum, sed animam et voluntatem hominis, quae ad imaginem Dei in libertate sui constitua est, domina est surorum actuum et suarum electionum nec mutare nec trahere postest coactiva coactione, licet forte eatenus qua anima inclinatur ad corpus secundum potentias quae affiguntur organis (sicut sunt potentiae animae sensibilis et animae vegetabilis) anima humana inclinative, non coactive a tali qualititate trahi possit.

Quoted in Zambelli, The ‘Speculum Astronomiae’ and its Enigma: Astrology,Theology and Science in Albertus Magnus and his Contemporaries, p. 165; for Aquinas see Thomas Litt, Les corps céleste dans l’univers de Saint Thomas d’Aquin(Leuven: Nauwelaerts, 1963).

71 Albertus Magnus, De quatuor coaequaevis cit., tr. III. Q. 8, a. 1; in Jammy, Opera omnia, XIX, pl. 75a: ‘astra habent virtutem in transmutatione elementorum et in mutatione complexionum et in motibus hominum et insuper etiam in habitibus inclinantibus ad opera et etiam in eventibus praeliorum’. Cited by Zambelli, The ‘Speculum Astronomiae’, p. 165.

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on ‘revolutions’: the branch of astrology which includes conjunctions and eclipses and revolutions of the years of the world, that is predictions for the course of the year based on the positions of the heavens when the sun enters the first minute of Aries, and finally mutations, or astrological weather prediction. This branch of astrology was not regarded as reprehensible to the degree associated with the interpretation of birth charts (nativities) or judicial questions, both of which related to the specific circumstances of individuals. God, it is understood, uses the stars ‘sicut per instrumenta’ to bring about desired changes in the world of men, rich and poor, in war or in peace, or to bring about earthquakes, falling stars and other prodigies.72

Predictions relating to religious change arise from the doctrine of great conjunctions. On this matter the Speculum Astronomie is particularly enthusiastic about the spiritual benefits of Albumasar’s discussion of the properties of the ninth house, the house of faith, a suggestion likely to have come from the Opus Majus. This doctrine is described as especially elegant and particular praise is given for Albumasar’s discussion of the astrological signs of the birth of Jesus Christ in Virgo.73 This does not imply that Christ was subject to the heavens, but only that he chose not to exclude himself from the great celestial signboard, demonstrating that he was truly human. 74

The figure of Antichrist is not named, but in the next section, there is further defence of the use of astrology to predict religious change, including the appearance of some great prophet or heretic, or the rising of a horrible universal schism. If the heavens foretell such things, what has this got to do with free will? Surely it is not in the power of individuals to change such things?75 In other words, the compiler (or

72 Zambelli, The ‘Speculum Astronomiae’, [chap.] VII, p. 228: ‘[Hic] indicatur quid

operatur Deus gloriosus et sublimis in eodem anno per stellas sicut per instrumenta super divites quorundam climatum et in universitatem vulgi eorum ex gravitate vel levitate annonae, ex guerra vel pace, ex terraemotu et diluviis, ex scintillis et prodigiis terribilibus, et caeteris esse quae accidunt in hoc mundo’.

73 On the transmission of the idea that the Assumption was prefigured by the first decan of the sign of Virgo, see R. Lemay, ‘Fautes et contresens dans les traductions arabo-latines médiévales: l’Introductorium in astronomium d’Abou ma’shar de Balkh’, Revue de synthèse, 89 (1968), 119–20; Jean-Patrice Boudet, Lire dans le ciel: la bibliothèque de Simon de Phares, astrologue de XVe siècle (Bruxelles: Centre d’étude des manuscrits, 1994), p. 73.

74 Zambelli, The ‘Speculum Astronomiae’, [chap.] XII, pp. 255–57: Si enim ex figura revolutionis annis, aut eclipsis, aut coniunctionis, quae significat sectam, significatur terraemotus sive diluvium, aut scintillae, aut super divites et universitate vulgi guerra vel pax, fama sive mortalitas, caeterum apparitio alicuius magni prophetae sive haeretici, aut ortus horrendi schismatis univeralis vel particularis, secundum quod providit Deus altissimum, quid ad arbitrium liberum? Numquid est in potestate hominis talia immutare?

75 Zambelli, The ‘Speculum Astronomiae’, [chap.] XIII, p. 256: ‘Si enim ex figura

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compilers) of the Speculum astronomie accepted implicitly the capacity of astrology to predict the rise of prophets or heresiarchs by means of the doctrine of conjunctionism. The intermediate source may well be Roger Bacon.

If we consider the compilers of the Speculum Astronomie, however anachronistically, to be the ‘left wing’, it should not be surprising to find that a conservative camp was also involved in the campaign. Around 1300, a number of tracts were written which include discussion of the general principle that the time of Antichrist might be open to verification by human reason, with the claims of astrology being assessed as part of the ongoing debate about the relative weight of faith and reason in the business of revelation. The earliest of these tracts would appear to be Arnald of Villanova’s De tempore adventus Antichristi, written between 1297–1300, in which Arnald predicted that Antichrist would come in 1378.76 In arriving at this figure, Arnald had to overcome a series of problems including the objections raised in scripture to the naming of times and also what he perceived to be the counter-claims of ‘astrologi’ that the end of the world could not occur until certain astronomical conditions were fulfilled. He shows a very imperfect knowledge of what these might be, merely referring to the supposed retardation of the eighth sphere which could not be completed in less than 36,000 years.77 Arnald does not seem to have been aware of more technical studies of historical astrology such as Abū Macšar On The Great Conjunctions or Māŝā’allāh’s Revolutions, or at least he does not refer to them here, and though this is surprising given his medical expertise, it is in accord with his other writings.78

Arnald of Villanova showed particular hostility to astrological predictions of the date of Antichrist. While he believed that God has provided numerological clues in scripture, particularly in Daniel, that allowed him to predict that Antichrist was almost certain to arrive in the next century, Arnald would not not allow that prediction of such sacred things could be made using the natural sciences. In fact, he finds it useful to suggest that when the Lord discouraged his apostles about naming the time for his return (Act 1. 6) he was really only referring to scientific predictions; date setting from scriptural clues was perfectly fine. Arnald insisted that it was impossible to predict the time of the coming of Antichrist through human conjecture revolutionis anni, aut eclipsis, aut coniunctioneis, quae significat sectam, significatur terraemotus sive diluvium’.

76 Arnald of Villanova, Tractatus de tempore adventus Antichristi, cxxix–clix, in Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII: Funde und Forschungen, ed. by Heinrich Finke, 14 vols (Münster: Aschendorffsche Buchhandlung, 1902), V: Die eschatologischen und kirchenpolitischen Tractate Arnalds von Villanovo.

77 For the Platonic/Hipparchan Great Year, see Godefroi de Callataÿ, Annus Platonicus (Louvain-la-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain, 1996).

78 Arnald does not appear to have written on astrological medicine, and the one work attributed to him, De medicina secundum astrologiam danda, is probably apocryphal; Boudet, Lire dans le Ciel, no. 23, item 46.

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or to precede by way of natural reason, or astronomical speculation.79 Astrologers who think otherwise should realize that if God wanted the world to end in (just say) the year predicted by Arnald, namely 1378, He could do this very easily by speeding up the movement of the eighth sphere so that its revolutions were completed in a trice.80 For just as the world was created by supernatural means, so will its destruction be completed by supernatural means. Nevertheless, Arnald does argue that three critical signs would herald the crisis forthcoming in the fourteenth century: the coming of Antichrist, various astronomical phenomena and the appearance, in the heavens, of the returned Christ.81

Two other tracts, although they denounce Arnald’s presumption in setting a date for the coming of Antichrist, were no less hostile to the principle that astrology might be used to verify God’s timetable. In 1300, John of Paris wrote against Arnald of Villanova, this time asserting that there was no way to set a certain date whether

79 Arnald of Vilanova. Tractatus de tempore adventus Antichristi, CXXIX-CLIX, in Finke, Aus

den Tagen Bonifaz VIII, V, tr. CLVIII: Tercia, quod impossibile est prenoscere tempora illa coniecturis humanis, sive procedant per naturales rationes, sive per astronomicas speculationes, sive per quascumque alias philosophorum considerationes aut magorum vel divinorum figmenta, test domino, qui apostolis de hoc eum interrogantibus ex curiositate humana respondit: ‘Non est vestrum nosse tempora vel momenta, que pater posuit in sua potestate’. (Act. 1. 7).

80 Arnald of Vilanova. Tractatus de tempore adventus Antichristi, in Finke, Aus den Tagen Bonifaz VIII, V, tr. CXXXIV:

Astrologi vero, qui probant, quod motus retardationies octave sphere compleri nequit in paucioribus annis quam in XXXVI millibus, debent scire, quod suam potentiam et sapientiam Deus non alligavit naturalibus causis. Set sicut in productione mundi fuit naturalibus causis, sic et in consummatione huius seculi supernaturaliter operabitur. Et si totius retardationis revolutio necessaria foret, ut asserunt, ad univeralem perfectionem, nichilominus Deus est potens motum orbium velocitare, quantum placuerit, et revolutionem complere brevissimo tempore, ita ut revolutiones L vel centum annorum compleantur in uno anno vel dimidio, quod utique futurum esse circa finem mundi scriptura testatur Petri ultimo dicens: ‘Adveniet dies domini sicut fur’.

Though actually, if this was the Creator’s preferred method—it is hard to think that speeding up the orbits of the celestial bodies would be a particularly sneaky way to go about it.

81 De tempore Antichrist, Città del Vaticano, Bibl. Apost. Vat., MS Vat. Lat. 3824, fol. 59r; cited by Harold Lee, ‘Scrutamini Scripturas: Joachimist Themes and Figurae in the Early Religious Writings of Arnald of Villanova’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 37 (1974), 33–56; and Harold Lee, Marjorie Reeves, and Giulio Silano, Western Mediterranean Prophecy: The School of Joachim of Fiore and the Fourteenth-Century Breviloquium (Toronto : Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989), p. 28. Lee supports dating the De tempore to around 1288–90. Smoller, ‘Alfonsine Tables’, pp. 215–16, notes Arnald’s reluctance to accept calculations of the end based on motion of the eighth sphere.

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relying on scripture, prophecy such as that of Joachim, or astrology.82 Even more rigorous was the denunciation by Henry of Harclay (c. 1270–1317), the anti-Dominican chancellor of the University of Oxford who also attacks Villanova and John of Paris.83 Arnald, he jibed, was not only wrong in trying to provide a date for the last days, he had simply pinched the idea from the Jews.84 Henry does rather better than either Arnald or John, because he seems to have taken up Roger Bacon’s suggestions about how a date for the arrival of Antichrist might be computed on the basis of the supposed 603 years allowed for the rule of Mohammed and the number of the beast in Revelation. He rebuts both the notions that a maximum conjunction dominated by the moon signifies the coming of Antichrist, as well as the Great Year. ‘It seems amazing to me’, he sneers, ‘that otherwise intelligent men should support this opinion.’85

Henry of Harclay may well have been reading the national mood in insisting on a strict separation of astrology and prophecy. In England there was resistance not only to astrological predictions of Antichrist’s coming, but also to those of the Joachimists. The vast Summa de accidentibus mundi of John Ashenden was written partly to validate the licit use of conjunctionism and repudiate the illicit speculation of the Joachimists, which, he proudly pointed out in another place, were not based on astrology.86 Indeed, in an addition to his treatise on the conjunctions of 1365, Ashenden recalculated the figures supplied by Bacon for the fall of Islam. As Snedegar notes, Ashenden observed that Islam should have ceased to be either in the year 1315 (622 + 693), if the figure supplied for Albumasar by Bacon was adopted, or 1288 (622 + 666), if the more commonly encountered number of the beast in Revelation (Rev. 13. 18) was given as an alternative. But since Islam had not fallen, Albumasar’s authority was not to be trusted.87 Ashenden may as well have held his breath, as the saying goes, to cool his porridge, for the last decades of the fourteenth century witness an increasing resort to astrology for prophetic purposes, culminating with the theories of Pierre d’Ailly.

82 For the argument of John of Paris, see Smoller, ‘Alfonsine Tables’, and refs. 83 Franz Pelster, ‘Die Quaestio Heinrichs von Harclay über die zweite Ankunft Christi und

die Erwartung des baldigen Weltendes zu Anfang des XIV. Jahrhunderts’, Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà, 1 (1951), 32–46.

84 Pelster, ‘Die Quaestio Heinrichs von Harclay’, p. 62. 85 Pelster, ‘Die Quaestio Heinrichs von Harclay’, p. 79: ‘Sed et hoc est mirandum michi

quod viri alias intelligentes nituntur istam opinionem de duracione secte Machometi etc’. 86 For Ashenden on prophecy and astrology, see Keith Voltaire Snedegar, ‘John Ashenden

and the Scientia Astrorum Mertonensii, with an edition of Ashenden’s Pronosticationes’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1988), pp. 248–59. Snedegar discusses Harclay’s refutation of the treatises of Arnald of Villanova and John Quidort (John of Paris) and typically hard-line views of John Wyclif, who also attacked the Great Year.

87 Snedegar, ‘John Ashenden’, p. 257 and Pronosticationes, IIIb, pp. 531–46.

Astrology and Antichrist 535

Conclusion

What conclusions can be made concerning the use of conjunctionism and other forms of astrology to make predictions about the coming of Antichrist in the Middle Ages? In the first place it is evident that from the time of its arrival in Europe in the first quarter of the twelfth century, there were attempts to use Abū Macšar’s On the Great Conjunctions to underpin forecasts about political and religious matters. Secondly, in the later part of the twelfth century, the rise of a heightened eschatological consciousness, particularly where there was an intersection of Franciscan scholars with scientific training who were also sympathetic to Joachimism, led to a limited number of direct attempts to predict the coming of Antichrist using conjunctionism. Thirdly, Roger Bacon can be considered the most important figure in facilitating the use of astrology for religious predictions. This is because he provided a Christianized interpretation of the conjunctionism of Abū Macšar that, although it did considerable violence to the intention of the original, provided a relatively simple formula for the prediction of the coming of Antichrist. Nevertheless, Bacon’s suggestions were not taken up to any great extent by the practising astrologers of the later Middle Ages.

Why was there such resistance to the employment of conjunctionism for religious purposes, in marked contrast to the history of the same theory in the Islamic world? One possible reason is that the reading of Abū Macšar provided by Bacon was not very good astrology, in the sense understood by those experts who used Abū Macšar’s other work for purposes such as weather prediction. And although Bacon had been careful not to provide a particular date for the coming of Antichrist, it was also, as John Ashenden was later to point out, easy to disprove once the nominated years had come and gone. On the other hand the failure of a predicted date was rarely an insuperable problem for a determined millennialist. In this case, Bacon’s favoured predictions do not seem to have gathered any heat.

The main factor restraining the development of astrological theory for religious predictions was theological and academic opposition to the practice. And whereas church objections to astrology were not sufficient to prevent the rise of a flourishing industry of astrological predictions for secular affairs, particularly in the courts of northern Europe, it did act as an effective break on religious predictions of more weighty events, such as the coming of Antichrist. Casting a figure for the coming of Antichrist remained perfectly possible on the basis of well-known astrological theory, but it does not appear to have been done. From one point of view, there was nothing impious about this activity. As long as the cosmos was considered to be a reflection of God’s orderly universe, then the heavens might be anticipated to show signs of both Christ’s return—and that of his opponent. The stars were, as the Speculum Astronomie put it, no more than His instruments. But astrologers appear to have resisted the temptation to put God to the test.

University of Newcastle, New South Wales