3
coming to life again. As the heavenly bodies were believed to be “animated”
entities, their motions were thought to exert a twofold influence on terrestrial
things, one physical and the other “moral”. Moral in the sense that they were
thought to produce “good” or ”bad” effects on human affairs. According to
Anthony Grafton, “Astrologers used the movements of the sun, the moon, the five
known planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, to predict and
explicate both the collective history of the human race and myriad individual
histories of health and disease.”
4
And as W. R. Newman and A. Grafton write,
“Astrology subordinated individuals and nations to larger, impersonal forces
embodied in the revolutions of the planets.”
5
The study of the “moral effects” of
planetary motions was the special task of astrology or “judicial astronomy.” The
term “judicial” here referred to the so-called “judgements” of the heavens. These
“judgements,” in as much as they emanated from their physical motions, were
thought to have the character of determinism or “fate” or “destiny.” In this natural
philosophy, fortuitous things happening in the sub-lunar world were attributed to
Fortune who was thought to control or govern them.
It should not surprise us that Machiavelli in his political writings resorted
rather crucially to the principles of both astronomy and medicine. That is to say,
as we shall see below, natural philosophy did underpin his political philosophy. In
what follows I shall first take up astronomy and then medicine.
Part 1: Astronomy.
Convention