Antiquity, too, was on the side of astrology.
At the beginning of the thirteenth century this superstition suddenly
appeared in the foreground of Italian life. The Emperor Frederick II
always travelled with his astrologer Theodorus; and Ezzelino da Romano
with a large, well-paid court of such people, among them the famous
Guido Bonatto and the long-bearded Saracen, Paul of Baghdad. In all
important undertakings they fixed for him the day and the hour, and the
gigantic atrocities of which he was guilty may have been in part
practical inferences from their prophecies. Soon all scruples about
consulting the stars ceased. Not only princes, but free cities, had
their regular astrologers, and at the universities, from the fourteenth
to the sixteenth century, professors of this pseudo-science were
appointed, and lectured side by side with the astronomers. The Popes
commonly made no secret of their stargazing, though Pius II, who also
despised magic, omens, and the interpretation of dreams, is an
honorable exception. Even Leo X seems to have thought the flourishing
condition of astrology a credit to his pontificate, and Paul III never
held a Consistory till the stargazers had fixed the hour.
It may fairly be assumed that the better natures did not allow their
actions to be determined by the stars beyond a certain point, and that
there was a limit where conscience and religion made them pause.
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