The Discourse in favor of Astrology. 1538
Context
Astrology was still in good repute, and the line was not
sharply drawn between that and meteorology. Theologians like
Melanchthon believed in it and practiced it, and kings and
princes had their court astrologers whom they consulted before
any important undertaking. In his lectures and in a published
pamphlet on the subject, Servetus made some disrespectful
remarks about the medical scholars of the time, charging them
with ignorance for neglecting this important subject, and
calling them a plague of the world. His colleagues in the
faculty were furious, and had him haled before the Inquisitor
on a charge of heresy. When he was acquitted of this, they
prosecuted him before the Supreme Court for advocating the
practice of divination, which was forbidden on pain of death
by fire. The Court ordered Servetus to withdraw his pamphlet,
to pay his colleagues more respect, and to cease lecturing
on the subject. But he had now had enough of academic life,
and so he left Paris and entered upon the practice of medicine.
Some excerpts
“When I was lecturing publicly on astronomy at Paris
a certain physician1 interrupted my lectures and attempted
by two arguments to overthrow the entire subject, that part
which predicts from the stars as well as the other which observes
the celestial movements by the use of instruments. Clearly
he, the follower of another unskilled person who had been
his ill-infommd preceptor,2 thus displayed nothing less than
his ignorance so that both of them rashly condemned that of
which they were greatly ignorant. Yet, if it please the gods,
they announced themselves as philosophers and physicians,
although from this incident anyone may clearly realize that
they had withdrawn from their guides, Plato and Aristotle,
Hippocrates and Galen, because all of the latter were skillecl
in astrology of which the former not only confessed themselves
to be completely ignorant but which, as well, they ixnpudently
attacked. The latter contend that astrology is an intiniate
of philosophy, the former, a foe. And so first I shall mention
the testimonies of those authors favoring both parts of astrology3,and
then I shall conse to the arguments…”
1 Jean Tagault, Dean of the Paris medical Faculty
2 Pico della Mirandola, the Italian humanist and neo-Platonist
who opposed astrology in his Disputationes adversus astrologiam
3 That is, the observation of the stars, closely akin to astronomy
and vaguely related to meteorology; and judicial astrology
foretelling events largely of human character.
Prints
Michaelis Villanovani in quendam medicum apologetica disceptatio
pro-astrologia, Paris 1538. It was also reprinted by Henri
Tollin in 1880
Translations
English: was published by Charles David O'Malley, Michael
Servetus. A Translation of his Geographical, Medical and Astrological
Writings with Introductions and Notes, (Philadelphia: American
Philosophical Society, 1953),pp. 168-188
Spanish: by Ángel Alcalá, Discurso en pro la
Astrología, Madrid, 1981
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