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Refining the Astrologer's Art: Astrological Diagrams in Bodleian MS Canon. Misc. 24 and Cardano's Libelli Quinque (1547)

2011; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/002182861104200101

1753-8556

Monica Azzolini,

Historical Geography and Cartography

Sometime in 15 18, the Italian astrologer Luca Gaurico cast a chart for his prospective Imperial patron Maximilian I for the day of his sixtieth birthday (Figure 1).! Gaurico's political leanings up to that time had been quite different. After having established a privileged relationship with the Marquis of Mantua Francesco II Gonzaga, to whom he dedicated many of his prognostications, Gaurico seems to have aspired to a chair in the Parisian Studium, and he had written to Cardinal Ippolito d'Este to that effect.2 His aspirations, however, must have remained unfulfilled. Information about Guarico's whereabouts between 1513 and 1523 is scant, but we know that by 1524 he was back in Venice, editing books for the Giunti press and working for Francesco Maria I della Rovere, Duke of Urbino and general of the Venetian army, a powerful ally of Emperor Charles V who had inherited the throne in 1519, at Maximilian's death.3 Gaurico was certainly aware of Maximilian's penchant for astrology, and in 1518 he offered his services to him. no doubt in the hope of receiving some form of remuneration.Gaurico's chart is one of many that are preserved in Italian libraries and archives. To political historians, these charts often look obscure and irrelevant, and for this reason many of them are routinely ignored and remain unstudied.4 Such documents, however, are clearly relevant to the historian of science, as every one of these charts represents the position of the planets and the constellations of the zodiac in the sky at a given moment in time. Together with ephemerides and calendars, astrological charts therefore represent ways in which astronomical data were visualized on paper, either by numbers or symbols, or a combination of both.We would generally refer to these charts, somewhat misleadingly, as 'horoscopes', but in the Renaissance their names varied greatly to encompass a number of diverse and distinctive practices. The most common name used in the Renaissance is probably figura, often accompanied by other adjectives or explanatory terms, but thema and schema are not unusual, especially in the sixteenth century. Figura coeli, schema coeli I coelicum or thema coeli i coelicum are once again generic terms used to define a chart, while figura nativitatis, thema /schema natalis or genitura already point to a specific practice, namely the casting of a chart tracing the exact position of the planets at the time of someone's birth.5 This type of chart, arguably the most common, was cast in order to offer an interpretation of a person's life in its entirety, and was often (but not always) accompanied by interpretations of various lengths and level of detail. Other charts, which employed other astrological techniques such as revolutions and profections (on which more shortly), were often referred to by the names revolutio (or, as in Gaurico's example cited above, conversio), andprofectio.6Astrological charts map the position of the celestial bodies in relation to a precise time and place on Earth. Together with indicating the place of the five planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury) and the luminaries (the Sun and the Moon) in the zodiac (that portion of the sky six degrees above and below the ecliptic that is traditionally divided into twelve 'signs'), a chart, or figura coeli, is also divided into twelve 'houses'. Astrological houses are divisions of the ecliptic plane that depend on time and location. These houses are numbered counter-clockwise starting from the position of the eastern horizon, called the ascendant (which is taken as the cusp of the first house), moving to the nadir (the cusp of the fourth house), the western horizon (the cusp of the seventh house), the midheaven (the cusp of the tenth house on the meridian), and back to the ascendant. Astrologers traditionally associate each of these houses with an aspect of a person's life: the first house relates to life in general, the second to business and wealth, the third to brothers, the fourth to parents, etc. …