It has been called “the most singular centaur that religion and science have ever produced” (Franz Boll). Astrology as a cultural form has puzzled and fascinated generations of humankind. It reached its apogee in the European Renaissance, when it flourished in literature, political expression, medicine, art, and all the other areas of endeavor catalogued in this unique collection. Brill’s Companion to Renaissance Astrology brings together a wide array of expertise from around the globe to explain the method and matter of this cultural form, including the Arab and Classical heritage, the medieval tradition, the clash with organized religion, the influence on knowledge and the competition with newly emerging ways of knowing, summarizing the current state of research and suggesting new paths. Contributors include: Giuseppe Bezza, Dieter Blume, Claudia Brosseder, Brendan Dooley, William Eamon, Ornella Faracovi, Hiro Hirai, Wolfgang Hübner, Eileen Reeves, Steven Vanden Broecke, and Graziella Federici Vescovini.

It has been called "the most singular centaur that religion and science have ever produced" (Franz Boll). Astrology as a cultural form has puzzled and fascinated generations of humankind. It reached its apogee in the European Renaissance, when it flourished in literature, political expression, medicine, art, and all the other areas of endeavor catalogued in this unique collection. Brill's Companion to Renaissance Astrology brings together a wide array of expertise from around the globe to explain the method and matter of this cultural form, including the Arab and Classical heritage, the medieval tradition, the clash with organized religion, the influence on knowledge and the competition with newly emerging ways of knowing, summarizing the current state of research and suggesting new paths. Contributors include: Giuseppe Bezza, Dieter Blume, Claudia Brosseder, Brendan Dooley, William Eamon, Ornella Faracovi, Hiro Hirai, Wolfgang Hübner, Eileen Reeves, Steven Vanden Broecke, and Graziella Federici Vescovini.

This book explores the changing perspective of astrology from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era. It introduces a framework for understanding both its former centrality and its later removal from legitimate knowledge and practice. The discussion reconstructs the changing roles of astrology in Western science, theology, and culture from 1250 to 1500. The author considers both the how and the why. He analyzes and integrates a broad range of sources. This analysis shows that the history of astrology—in particular, the story of the protracted criticism and ultimate removal of astrology from the realm of legitimate knowledge and practice—is crucial for fully understanding the transition from premodern Aristotelian-Ptolemaic natural philosophy to modern Newtonian science. This removal, the author argues, was neither obvious nor unproblematic. Astrology was not some sort of magical nebulous hodge-podge of beliefs. Rather, astrology emerged in the 13th century as a richly mathematical system that served to integrate astronomy and natural philosophy, precisely the aim of the “New Science” of the 17th century. As such, it becomes a fundamentally important historical question to determine why this promising astrological synthesis was rejected in favor of a rather different mathematical natural philosophy—and one with a very different causal structure than Aristotle's.

Alphabetically arranged entries cover the history of astrology from ancient Mesopotamia to the 21st century. In addition to surveying the Western tradition, the book explores Islamic, Indian, East Asian, and Mesoamerican astrology. The field of astrology is growing rapidly, as historians recognize its centrality to the intellectual life of the past and sociologists and anthropologists treat its importance in a number of modern cultures. Despite the historical and cultural significance of the subject, most reference works on astrology focus on instructional techniques and are written by astrologers with little or no interest in the history of the topic. This book instead offers an objective treatment of astrology across world history from ancient Mesopotamia to the present. The book provides alphabetically arranged entries by expert contributors writing on such topics as horoscopes, court astrologers, Renaissance astrology, and comets. While it considers the Western tradition, it also treats Islamic, Indian, East Asian, and Mesoamerican astrology. In doing so, it explores the role of astrology in shaping science, literature, religion, art, and other defining cultural traditions. Sidebars offer excerpts from various historical texts, while entries provide suggestions for further reading.

Astrology has recently become a subject of interest to scholars of the highest calibre. However, the tendency has been to look at the social context of astrology, the attacks on astrologers and their craft, and on astrological iconography and symbolism; i.e., largely looking on astrology from the outside. The intention of this book is to do is to look at the subject from the inside: the ideas and techniques of astrologers themselves. In both Western and Eastern cultures astrology was regarded as a pure science by most scholars, mathematicians, physicians, philosophers and theologians, and was taught in schools and universities. The greatest astronomers of the period under consideration, al-Kindi, Thabit ibn Qurra, Abraham Ibn Ezra, Galileo and Kepler, also wrote about and practised astrology. What did astrologers write about astrology and how did they teach their subject and practise their craft? What changes occurred in astrological theory and practice over time and from one culture to another? What cosmological and philosophical frameworks did astrologers use to describe their practice? What role did diagrams, tables and illustrations play in astrological text-books? What was astrology's place in universities and academies? This book contains surveys of astrologers and their craft in Islamic, Jewish and Christian culture, and includes hitherto unpublished and unstudied astrological texts.

Connections between the Society of Jesus and astrology used to appear as unexpected at best. Astrology was never viewed favourably by the Church, especially in early modern times, and since Jesuits were strong defenders of Catholic orthodoxy, most historians assumed that their religious fervour would be matched by an equally strong rejection of astrology. This groundbreaking and compelling study brings to light new Jesuit scientific texts revealing a much more positive, practical, and nuanced attitude. What emerges forcefully is a totally new perspective into early modern Jesuit culture, science, and education, highlighting the element that has been long overlooked: astrology.

Astrology in the Middle Ages was considered a branch of the magical arts, one informed by Jewish and Muslim scientific knowledge in Muslim Spain. As such it was deeply troubling to some Church authorities. Using the stars and planets to divine the future ran counter to the orthodox Christian notion that human beings have free will, and some clerical authorities argued that it almost certainly entailed the summoning of spiritual forces considered diabolical. We know that occult beliefs and practices became widespread in the later Middle Ages, but there is much about the phenomenon that we do not understand. For instance, how deeply did occult beliefs penetrate courtly culture and what exactly did those in positions of power hope to gain by interacting with the occult? In A Kingdom of Stargazers, Michael A. Ryan examines the interest in astrology in the Iberian kingdom of Aragon, where ideas about magic and the occult were deeply intertwined with notions of power, authority, and providence. Ryan focuses on the reigns of Pere III (1336–1387) and his sons Joan I (1387–1395) and Martí I (1395–1410). Pere and Joan spent lavish amounts of money on astrological writings, and astrologers held great sway within their courts. When Martí I took the throne, however, he was determined to purge Joan's courtiers and return to religious orthodoxy. As Ryan shows, the appeal of astrology to those in power was clear: predicting the future through divination was a valuable tool for addressing the extraordinary problems—political, religious, demographic—plaguing Europe in the fourteenth century. Meanwhile, the kings' contemporaries within the noble, ecclesiastical, and mercantile elite had their own reasons for wanting to know what the future held, but their engagement with the occult was directly related to the amount of power and authority the monarch exhibited and applied. A Kingdom of Stargazers joins a growing body of scholarship that explores the mixing of religious and magical ideas in the late Middle Ages.