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+--- Thread: Stylistics of the "astrological" section (/thread-2543.html)
RE: Stylistics of the "astrological" section - davidjackson - 14-11-2018
Alfonso X truly believed that astrology affected us all. IIRC, in his Partidas (an early Civil Code) he permitted people of good standing to carry out astrological based fortune divination, whilst at the same time banning under pain of death other types of divination for being works of the devil. And Astronomy & Astrology were one of his seven liberal arts, the arts that a wise man must master.
And of course Alfonso's work was, although cutting edge, only translating from the Arabic. But these works were widely available to those of his courts, and people travelled from all over Europe to study, either in the Moorish open universities of Cordoba and Toledo, or at the Alfonsine court. So the influence of his works were felt throughout Europe.
But I would suggest that astrological divination underwent a quite a development from the 1270's to the mid 1400's. Although much of the verbal bunkum we now associated with astrology actually developed during the Renaissance period, in the 15th century we are seeing early birth charts and attempts by people who really should know better to "uncover the secrets best left to God". Alfonso was simply translating the magic of the Arabs, but once the basics were there Europeans started creating their own pseudoscience around this.
RE: Stylistics of the "astrological" section - ReneZ - 14-11-2018
The Libro de Astromagia of Alfonso reflects the work of Albumasar (9C), which itself incorporates other sources.Albumasar was translated to Latin by Abano (13C), but probably not using Alfonso' MSs.
This version of per-degree astrology or monomoeria was known and used for several centuries. It was reflected in frescoes in Padova, and printed in Augsburg in 1488. It was re-used by Agrippa in the 16th century.
Dee was familiar with both Agrippa and Abano.
The illustrations in the Voynich MS are different from all others, but those in the 1488 print are also very different from Alfonso's MS.
However, per-degree astrology was nothing unknown at the start of the 15th century.
It was used to predict a person's nature based on the date and time of birth (accurate to a few minutes) and it also varies somewhat with the geographic latitude of the place of birth.
RE: Stylistics of the "astrological" section - DONJCH - 15-11-2018
"One born on April 20 "will be humble and hardworking"."
I blew my drink out my nose because this was Adolf Hitler's birthday! As if we needed any more proof.