1. of the movement of the heavens and the course of the stars.
2. how far one should approve astronomy.
3. argumenta and concluding speeches Against Astrology.
4. a different Against astrology.
5. from the seventh year, which is a gradual year.
1. of the movement of the heavens and the course of the stars.
(Cordatus No. 909. 910. and 523.)
Astronomy is the oldest science and has brought with it many arts. It was very well known to the ancients and especially to the Hebrews, who observed the course of the heavens very carefully. About them God spoke to the
Abraham [Gen. 15:5], "Look toward heaven and count the stars."
Heaven has a threefold movement. The first is the original one, by which it happens that the whole machine of the sky is undoubtedly turned around completely by the angels in twenty-four hours. In this short period of time, such a great mass is moved about a thousand miles. If
If the sun and the stars were made of iron, or of any other metal, they would soon melt in such an impetuous course. The second movement is that of the planets, and is carried out by individual spirits; the third is trembling, which one has recently invented and which is quite uncertain.
I praise the astronomy and the mathematics which deal with proofs, to the astrology I attribute nothing.
2. how far one should approve Astronomiam.
(The first paragraph in Cordatus No. 1183.)
Astronomy is not to be approved insofar as it predicts what will happen to everyone. But it is to be approved as a gift of God, if it remains within its limits. Chiromancy, however, is to be condemned. It is true that the soothsayers can predict what kind of death an ungodly person will die, for he [the devil] knows the counsels and thoughts of the ungodly, for he is the prince of the world. But there are twofold signs, of times and of events. The signs of the times are certain because they are from the Word.
There was a new astrologer who wanted to prove that the earth moved and circulated, not the sky or the firmament, the sun and the moon; as if someone sitting on a chariot or in a ship and being moved thought he was sitting still and at rest, but the earth and the trees circulated and moved. But now it is like this: whoever wants to be wise should not let others please him; he must make something of his own, which must be the very best, the way he does it. The fool wants to reverse the whole art of astronomy. But as the holy scripture indicates, Joshua called the sun to stand still, not the earth. Jos. 10, 12. 13.
(This paragraph at Cordatus No. 169.)
In the stars there is not a power, but a meaning. Therefore, we have a just complaint against the astrologers who attribute to them a power which God did not put into them, and that they usually interpret it in the worst way. This should rather have been
to the comets, which foreshadow only evil, with the exception of the star that appeared to the wise men [from the East], for this signified that the revelation of the Gospel was already present.
(This paragraph in Cordatus No. 1056.)
The passages of Scripture can be mocked, but not refuted. Our eloquent people, who now give public lectures, dare to say that the passage Jeremiah 10:2 is to be understood of the signs of the Gentiles. Moses also speaks of the signs of the heavens, and praises astronomy very little, and of the signs of the earth and of the sea; but the heathen were not so foolish as to fear the sun, or the moon, but the strange and marvelous appearances [portenta ac monstra] they reverenced as well as they feared them. And astronomy, for which they argue so assiduously, is not an art, because it has no foundations or proofs, but they indicate everything from the occurrence and the accidental events [ex eventu et casibus], and from what has happened once, they conclude that it will happen every time. What is true, they know; what is missing, they keep silent. Art exists (they are forced to confess that), but nobody has it. They do not have the experience (that is, to make a conclusion from many individual things to the general]), but some events and indeed very uncertain ones.
(This paragraph at Cordatus No. 1136.)
I have come so far and have brought astronomy so far that I believe it is nothing, although Philip thinks that the art is there, but one has no artists. This they have invented in the almanac [as] certain, that one should not put snow in summer, nor thunder in winter; that one should [not] 1) sow in spring and [not] 1) reap in autumn, that the farmers also know well.
1) The "not", which is in both places in the original, should probably be missing; because although the winter grain is sown in autumn and harvested in July, the sowing time is generally in spring and the harvest in autumn. In Bindseil II, 151 "not" is missing.
(This paragraph at Cordatus No. 1243.)
The astronomers are very unhappy, who impose on themselves from the celestial bodies sufferings that God does not interpret; therefore they always advertise defeated; for example, when they say that the people who are born in the balance after midnight become unhappy.
Astrologia is uncertain. Just as the predicaments in the Dialectica are fictitious words; so Astronomia has the fictitious Astrologiam: and as the ancient theologians knew nothing of the schoolteacher's imagination and theology; so the ancient astronomers knew nothing of Astrologia.
D. M. Luther had his Nativity, Ciceronis and many others printed at Nuremberg; there he said: I do not think anything of it, do not agree with them at all, but I would like them to give me this argument: Esau and Jacob are born of one father and one mother, at one time, and under the same star, and yet of a very repugnant nature, kind and mind. Summa, what happens from God and is his work, that is not to be attributed to the stars. Ah, heaven does not ask about this, just as our Lord God does not ask about heaven. The true Christian religion confutes and refutes such fairy tales and fables. The world, apart from religion, is Lucian and Epicurean, as Erasmus was: he disputed whether it would be useful and advisable for a philosopher and scholar to put himself under the yoke of matrimony and take a wife. Blessed is he who obeys God's word in faith!
Astrology is a fine art, but very uncertain, one finds no one who could indicate and prove something certain: it requires good interpretation and much thought, as our canons of Meissen are doing now, who want to defend their thing with interpretation.
When one of them showed D. M. Luther a nativity (as it is called), he said: It is a fine funny fantasy and pleases reason, because one always goes neatly from one line to the other. Therefore, the way of making and calculating nativity, and the like, is like the pontifical, since the outward ceremonies, ostentation
and order of reason, as the consecrated water, candles, organs, cymbals, singing, ringing and interpreting 2c. But it is not a true science and certain knowledge, and those who want to make a certain art and knowledge out of this thing are very much mistaken, since there is none; for it does not come from the nature of astronomy, which is an art; this is man's proposition.
That astrology is a certain knowledge and art, no one will persuade Philip yet. Philip has often tried and tried hard to persuade me to approve his opinion and to agree with him; but he has never been able to persuade me to do so, nor to get me to do so; I stand firm and firm on the opinion that the peasants have, with whom I hold that when there is a hot summer, it is followed by a cold winter. This whole business is against philosophy.
I have often talked to Philip about it, and told him my whole life, how it has gone one after the other, and how I have done it. I am a farmer's son, my father, grandfather and ancestor were real farmers. Then he said: I would have been a governor, mayor, home burger, and whatever other offices they have in the village, or some kind of chief servant over the others. After that, I said, my father went to Mansfeld and became a miner there; that's where I came from.
But that I have become a baccalaureate, a master, a monk 2c. is not written in the stars. But have I not brought great shame upon myself, that I have become a monk, that I have laid aside the little brown beret, and brought it to others? Which, indeed, made my father angry and hurt him; nevertheless, I fell into the pope's hair, and he fell into mine again, took a runaway nun as my wife, and fathered several children with her; who saw this in the stars? Who would have told me before that this would happen?
The astrologer 1) and stargazer reminds me like one who carries dice for sale and says: Behold, I have good dice, they cast
1) So Stangwald instead of: Astrologiä.
always twelve. Well, you often pointed out that when you get twelve, the art is right. But one does not see how often one has thrown 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 before. So do the astrologers; if it comes true once or twice, they cannot praise, extol and exalt the art enough; but of the other, which has failed so often, they remain silent.
Astronomiam I accept, and I like it because of its manifold use: for the dear David remembers in the Psalter, in the 19th Psalm, v. 2. ff, of the marvelous work and creature of God in the firmament of the heavens and the stars, and takes pleasure in it; as also Job remembers the Orionis, which is called Peter's or Jacob's staff, the seven-pointed star and the Gluckhenne 2c., Job 38, 31. The example of Esau and Jacob makes their whole art a jugglery, and to shame. They pave themselves with it all the time.
3rd argument" and final speeches against astrology.
1) The doctrine that deals with matter is uncertain; for matter is informal, shapeless, without form, and without some quality and skill. The astrologers' and stargazers' doctrine deals with matter; therefore it is uncertain.
2) Common prophecies and proclamations, where one proclaims something in general beforehand, how it should turn out, do not rhyme nor do they refer to individual and special things and persons, non competunt specialibus et individuis. But astrology and stargazing doctrine have common praedictiones and proclamations, which cannot be directed to individual things; therefore, stargazers and astrologers do wrong by drawing them to particular, individual, certain things and people.
3) If many of them are killed, shot or slain at the same time in a battle, they were not born and raised in the same star? And yet they all die at the same time in one hour, yes, often in a flash, especially from the gun. M. Luther answered and said: Philippus solvirt's so: Generalia cedere specialibus, gemeinere Rede und Anzeigung weichen.
particular and individual. Then D. M. Luther laughed and said to Philip: "Ergo, so you say yourselves and confess that your Astrologia teaches and understands only what is common: as Philip has often said to me before that it is a flat, straight force. And they say of an even clear force and effect, and that the star gives an affection, but does not require it: and be not their, the astrologers', opinion, that it must happen and proceed straight thus and not otherwise. Yes, said D. M. Luther, you say it and interpret it from certain people and places, and, what is even more and the greatest, you affirm it and proclaim it beforehand to this and that country that it will happen this way. Oh, what can I say? You are rough fellows, you presume much that is impossible for you.
But he, Philip, remained on his opinion, defended astrology, and spoke: They speak of matter, that thus could happen, and that matter would be skillful and capable for such a thing. Then D. M. Luther laughed out loud and said: "What else is this said, than if Greger Tischer came to me and said: "A table can be made out of the board, yes, a table or something else can be made out of it. But what is this said? What do you presume to say about all things so certainly, as if none of the things you say could be missing?
But what you say about matter is nothing, because it is without all quality and skill, and informis, has no form nor shape. This said D. M. Luther, when he spoke of the hour in which the fruit is conceived in the womb, after which they, the astrologers, use to make and erect the nativities and praedictiones. And refuted and disproved him, when he said: The seed would be the matter; which D. M. Luther denied, but said for constant and certain: It would be a substantia, a self-existent thing, not a matter, because the same would be informis, without all quality, would have no form nor shape.
I believe that M. P. Astrologia and astrology are the same as drinking a strong drink of wine or beer when I have thoughts.
4. against astrology.
In the first place, the Astrologia is regarded as such a trade as the Sophists de decem Praedicamentis realiter distinctis, essentially different from the ten words which they call Praedicamenta; since everything is false and fictitious, although such vanity whimsically agrees and rhymes with arguments, Solutionibus, and other trades, so that in so many hundred years, among so many sects, Thomists, Albertists, Scotists, nothing has been considered so true as the same. Secondly, they do not teach you what you should know most of all, but how long you should live: they do not say anything certain beforehand, neither time nor place: it is only a vain mystery: they only show the person, and often lack it. Third, God has set a certain end. Babylon otherwise said: I will remain seated. Rome said: I have been given the reign without end; item, Alexandro and the other empires and kingdoms. Aftrology teaches nothing of this, that such great empires should be, nor how long they would stand and remain. Fourth, it was invented and fabricated by the devil, so that people would be deterred from the state of marriage and all divine and human offices and states. For they say nothing good of the heavenly bodies, make consciences fear future misfortune, which is uncertain and in God's hands, and vex and torment the whole life by such suspicion and useless thoughts. Fifthly, God's creatures do violence and injustice, for God created them and set them in the firmament to illuminate the earth, that is, to make it joyful, and to be good signs of the years and times, as Genesis 1:10 and the 5th book of Moses say: "And God saw that it was good"; and: "Which the Lord thy God hath ordained unto all nations under the whole heaven.
But they, the stargazers, and those from the stars, want to prophesy and proclaim how one should fare, inventing that they darken and afflict the earth and are harmful. For all creatures of God are good, and created by God only for good use. But
Man makes them evil with his abuse. And they are signs, not monsters. The eclipses are monsters and monstra, like abortions.
D. M. Luther said about the foolishness of the Mathematicorum and Astrologorum, the stargazers, who had said about a flood or great waters, so Anno 1524 should come, which nevertheless did not happen; but the following 25th year the peasants were delayed, and became rebellious. Astrologus did not say a word about this. But he spoke of the mayor Hohndorf: he had a quarter of beer brought up to his house, and wanted to wait there for the flood, as if he would not have anything to drink when it came. But at the time of the wrath there was a conjunctive called sin and God's wrath, which was a different conjuncture than the one in the 24th year.
(Cordatus No. 864. 865.)
Believing the stars is idolatry against the first commandment. Ezekiel is against it...
If we strike the Turk away, Daniel will be gone and the Last Day will certainly be present.
5. Septimus annus Climactericus.
(Cordatus No. 1490.)
My Hans goes into the seventh year. This [every seventh year] is always a step year, that is such a one, which brings a change with itself. The seventh year always changes the people. For the first change is childhood, and in the second change, namely with the fourteenth year, they begin to see into the world, and it is the boyhood, in which the foundation of the arts is laid, in the one and twentieth the young men desire marriage, in the eighth and twentieth the young men are householders and fathers of families, but the men are in secular and ecclesiastical offices in the fifth and thirtieth years, until the second and fortieth years, then we are kings, and soon after we begin to gradually decline. Thus, the seventh year always brings a new situation its new] people, [new] customs. This has happened to me and happens to all, 1)
1) Annus climactericus, a gradual year, alternate year. The third and sixtieth is called "the great gradual year.