CHAPTER 1

panic. The new prophecies were not based on Revelation, but on the stars, for meanwhile astrology, nurtured by Arabs in Spain, had regained lost ground in Europe. Through the secret letters of an astrologer who signed himself John of Toledo, the world learned in 1179 that a terrible catastrophe would occur in 1186 when all the planets would unite under the sign of the Scales. This conjunction under a "stormy" sign made it inevitable that a terrible storm followed by an earthquake would occur in September of the fatal year.
The letters of John of Toledo made a great impression on Europe and Asia. In Germany, people began to dig shelters, in Persia and Mesopotamia they repaired their cellars, in Constan- tinople the Byzantine Emperor caused the windows of his palace to be walled up, in England the Archbishop of Canterbury pro- claimed a national fast of atonement. And, in fact, the astro- nomical part of the prediction did take place. John of Toledo
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16. The 17th century combined great technical process with crude
superstition. Erfurt prophecy about a bad harvest (1627) based on
"celestial signs".
SHORT HISTORY OF THE ART OF PROPHECY
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was clearly an astronomer or at least a scholar well-versed in the astronomical tables of Ammonius. But the astrological conse- quences failed to materialise: the Emperor of Byzantium could once again open his windows — there was neither storm nor rain. Later it was given out that John of Toledo's prophecy had been purely symbolic, for he had really been referring to the Hunnish invasion.^ The ways of astrologers often pass human understanding, and this is by no means the most striking example of their versatility.
This failure of a world-shaking astrological prophecy to materialise left no lasting disillusionment in its wake, largely because the astronomical part of the prediction had been ful- filled. The fact that a planetary conjunction could be forecast so accurately seven years before the event, redounded so much to the astrologers' credit that they were acclaimed by European courts, by the Pope, and even by the universities. In Italy, in particular, chairs of astrology were endowed, and only when astrologers forgot themselves so far as to make prophecies involving Church dogma, were some of them prosecuted. In 1327, Cocco d'Ascoti was burned at the stake for just that offence.
Despite such setbacks, the end of the Middle Ages became a period of triumph for astrology, which was then looked upon as the most useful of all sciences, and as the fountain-head of alchemy. The Greeks had long before associated the planets with certain metals and precious stones, and astrologers were increasingly turning their hands to the art of making gold out of base metals. Astrology also played a paramount role in n.'Thlebotomic" figure. Every medicme, and any doctor who p^^t of the body is related to a failed to consult the stars before sign of the Zodiac. The stars show a serious operation was open to when a patient must be operated charges of wilful neglect. on or have his blood let.
1 Paul Couderc: L'Astrologie (Paris 1951) p. 97.
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