A Kingdom of Stargazers: Astrology and Authority in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon

1. Prophecy, Knowledge, and Authority: Divining the Future and Expecting the End of Days

1 Prophecy, Knowledge, and Authority Divining the Future and Expecting the End of Days In the modern world we have all but banished the supernatural to the margins of intellect, to the realm of superstition. Yet during the Middle Ages the spiritual and supernatural worlds were of unquestioned importance to the vast majority of people. Soldiers entered the battlefield only after having been blessed for protection from harm and for salvation should they fall. Families preparing to buy property or arrange for the marriage of a child needed the spiritual guidance and approval of patron saints. The ravages of war, famine, and disease—perceived by some as the deeds of malevolent forces or punishment from an angry God—could be mitigated by praying to benevolent spiritual guardians and intercessors. For the clergy and others in the literate minority, the Bible and the writings of the Church fathers spoke of a vengeful God who had no qualms about punishing mankind for its sins, sometimes by spectacular means. They wrote, edited, analyzed, and disseminated these lessons to the illiterate majority of medieval Christendom. 22 Chapter 1 The decorative arts of cathedrals and churches, their stained-glass windows and stone sculptures, also illustrated the effects of leading a sinful life. The Last Judgment series of stained-glass windows in the fifteenthcentury Catalan Gothic church of Santa María del Mar in Barcelona, for instance, horrifically depict the torments of hell that awaited a sinful populace . Created by the master Severí Desmanes de Avignon, the images are chilling, as demons prod and push a group of damned souls, glowing red as hot coals, into the mouth of hell while directing their gazes to the congregants who might behold them.1 To soothe a wrathful God, mortals needed spiritual intercessors, beings who knew firsthand the temptations that humans faced and who resisted them successfully. After these holy people died, the surviving members of the Christian community recognized them as saints—individuals whose prior lives attested to humanity’s ability to overcome carnal enticements. During times of crisis, Christians remembered the pious actions of saints, invoking their protection and drawing inspiration for strength to press on. Saints were thus vital for the living world, responding “to the spiritual needs of a generation.”2 Saints were not the only ones who were able to act as intermediaries with the supernatural. Among the living, visionaries and magicians were blessed with extraordinary powers to see beyond the present moment, revisiting the past and even glimpsing the secrets of the future. Not everyone , of course, could claim such abilities, and those who were seen to be genuine visionaries occupied a special but precarious place within society, because the medieval general populace regarded them with both awe and fear. In short, these individuals were both part of and separate from their larger community. In Jewish and Christian reckoning, the ability to comprehend future events dated back to the biblical prophets. Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Ezra, 1. Xavier Barral i Altet, Vidrieras medievales de Cataluña (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans , 2000), 93–95. 2. See André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Middle Ages, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 7 n16; Vauchez, Saints, prophètes et visionnaires: Le pouvior surnaturel au Moyen Age (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999); and Richard Kieckhefer, “The Holy and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft, and Magic in Late Medieval Europe,” in Christendom and Its Discontents : Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500, ed. Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 310–37. Prophecy, Knowledge, and Authority 23 and Enoch of the Old Testament and Jesus and John of the New Testament were granted insight into the unfolding of the future. Their abilities , however, were understood to be a divine gift from God. The biblical prophets and Christian saints received their skills because of their holiness . Not surprisingly, the early Church fathers were especially careful to condemn sinister aspects of divination—those that relied on astrological or geomantic principles—to distinguish them from divinely inspired prophetic insight. This same concern persisted throughout the Middle Ages, as evidenced by the Church’s continued condemnation of divination achieved through occult practices. Indeed, the Church was forced to reckon with suspect practices even within monastic and clerical circles.3 By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ecclesiastical authorities had become so wary of the occult that any claims whatsoever to divinatory insight were inherently suspect. The theological...