It is true that Guicciardini writes in the year
1529: 'How happy are the astrologers, who are believed if they tell one
truth to a hundred lies, while other people lose all credit if they
tell one lie to a hundred truths.' But the contempt for astrology did
not necessarily lead to a return to the belief in Providence. It could
as easily lead to an indefinite fatalism.
In this respect, as in others, Italy was unable to make its own way
healthily through the ferment of the Renaissance, because the foreign
invasion and the Counter-Reformation came upon it in the middle.
Without such interfering causes its own strength would have enabled it
thoroughly to get rid of these fantastic illusions. Those who hold that
the onslaught of the strangers and the Catholic reactions were
necessities for which the Italian people was itself solely responsible,
will look on the spiritual bankruptcy which they produced as a just
retribution. But it is a pity that the rest of Europe had indirectly to
pay so large a part of the penalty.
The belief in omens seems a much more innocent matter than astrology.
The Middle Ages had everywhere inherited them in abundance from the
various pagan religions; and Italy did not differ in this respect from
other countries. What is characteristic of Italy is the support lent by
humanism to the popular superstition.
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