Syllabus
The course consists of two compulsory modules: A) General introduction, providing the necessary tools and proper language to address our topic, along with a historical framework; B) Approaching the topic and its entanglements through the selected relevant texts from the Latin milieu.
Module A. Sources for Medieval Cosmology
Week I, Introduction
Week: II-III Aristotle’s cosmology
Week IV, Astrology in the lands of Islam: Al-Kindi's circle and Abu Ma'shar
Week V, Al-Fārābī and Ibn Sinā: metaphysical and ontological models
Module B. Knowledge and Stars: astrology, theology and science in the Latin Middle Ages
Week VI-VII, Augustine, why we should not rely on the stars. Signa, heresy and free will
Week VIII-X, Albert the Great, theology and freedom: Speculum Astronomiae, The Mirror of Astronomy
Week XI-XII, Aquinas on astrological determinism: divination and superstition in the Summa Theologiae
Week XIII, Summary and Conclusions
Annotation
Is it possible to foresee our future, or to understand one’s nature according to the movement of celestial bodies? In other words, do the stars determine our destiny? Although nowadays we might be tempted to discard these questions as trivial and superstitious, ancient and medieval natural philosophy has long dealt with the problem of distinguishing descriptive and divinatory astrology, finding in questions such as astral determinism one of its more evident examples. This course examines fascination and repulsion for astrology in the Middle Ages.
Our point of departure will be Aristotle's cosmology and what has been defined as its ‘astrologization’ through the Alexandrian Ptolemy (c.90-168) and the Persian Albumasar (787-886). Although astral determinism was rejected in the defense of free will, the curiosity for how stars might affect human life was sound during the Middle Ages and grew stronger in the Renaissance, as the fortune of the Speculum astronomiae proves.
This course will tackle the concepts of determinism, destiny, and individual freedom as they were developed by the Arabs (Abu Masar, Al Farabi) and the Latins (Augustine, Albert of Cologne and Aquinas), starting from Antiquity to the end of the thirteenth century.