Medieval world[edit]

Hindu[edit]
The main texts upon which classical Indian astrology is based are early medieval
compilations, notably the B?hat Parasara Horasastra, and Saravali by Kalya?avar
ma. The Horashastra is a composite work of 71 chapters, of which the first part
(chapters 1 51) dates to the 7th to early 8th centuries and the second part (chapt
ers 52 71) to the later 8th century. The Saravali likewise dates to around 800 CE.
[49] English translations of these texts were published by N.N. Krishna Rau and
V.B. Choudhari in 1963 and 1961, respectively.
Islamic[edit]
Main article: Astrology in medieval Islam
Image of a Latin astrological text
Latin translation of Abu Ma?shar's De Magnis Coniunctionibus ('Of the great conj
unctions'), Venice, 1515
Astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars[50] following the collapse of Alexand
ria to the Arabs in the 7th century, and the founding of the Abbasid empire in t
he 8th. The second Abbasid caliph, Al Mansur (754 775) founded the city of Baghdad
to act as a centre of learning, and included in its design a library-translatio
n centre known as Bayt al-Hikma 'House of Wisdom', which continued to receive de
velopment from his heirs and was to provide a major impetus for Arabic-Persian t
ranslations of Hellenistic astrological texts. The early translators included Ma
shallah, who helped to elect the time for the foundation of Baghdad,[51] and Sah
l ibn Bishr, (a.k.a. Zael), whose texts were directly influential upon later Eur
opean astrologers such as Guido Bonatti in the 13th century, and William Lilly i
n the 17th century.[52] Knowledge of Arabic texts started to become imported int
o Europe during the Latin translations of the 12th century.
Europe[edit]
Dante Alighieri meets the Emperor Justinian in the Sphere of Mercury, in Canto 5
of the Paradiso
See also: Christian views on astrology
The first astrological book published in Europe was the Liber Planetis et Mundi
Climatibus ("Book of the Planets and Regions of the World"), which appeared betw
een 1010 and 1027 AD, and may have been authored by Gerbert of Aurillac.[53] Pto
lemy's second century AD Tetrabiblos was translated into Latin by Plato of Tivol
i in 1138.[53] The Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in pro
posing that the stars ruled the imperfect 'sublunary' body, while attempting to
reconcile astrology with Christianity by stating that God ruled the soul.[54] Th
e thirteenth century mathematician Campanus of Novara is said to have devised a
system of astrological houses that divides the prime vertical into 'houses' of e
qual 30 arcs,[55] though the system was used earlier in the East.[56] The thirtee
nth century astronomer Guido Bonatti wrote a textbook, the Liber Astronomicus, a
copy of which King Henry VII of England owned at the end of the fifteenth centu
ry.[55]
In Paradiso, the final part of the Divine Comedy, the Italian poet Dante Alighie
ri referred "in countless details"[57] to the astrological planets, though he ad
apted traditional astrology to suit his Christian viewpoint,[57] for example usi
ng astrological thinking in his prophecies of the reform of Christendom.[58]
Medieval objections[edit]
The medieval theologian Isidore of Seville criticised the predictive part of ast
rology
In the seventh century, Isidore of Seville argued in his Etymologiae that astron
omy described the movements of the heavens, while astrology had two parts: one w
as scientific, describing the movements of the sun, the moon and the stars, whil
e the other, making predictions, was theologically erroneous.[59][60] In contras

t, John Gower in the fourteenth century defined astrology as essentially limited

to the making of predictions.[59][61] The influence of the stars was in turn di
vided into natural astrology, with for example effects on tides and the growth o
f plants, and judicial astrology, with supposedly predictable effects on people.
[62][63] The fourteenth century sceptic Nicole Oresme however included astronomy
as a part of astrology in his Livre de divinacions.[64] Oresme argued that curr
ent approaches to prediction of events such as plagues, wars, and weather were i
nappropriate, but that such prediction was a valid field of inquiry. However, he
attacked the use of astrology to choose the timing of actions (so-called interr
ogation and election) as wholly false, and rejected the determination of human a
ction by the stars on grounds of free will.[64][65] The friar Laurens Pignon (c.
1368 1449)[66] similarly rejected all forms of divination and determinism, includ
ing by the stars, in his 1411 Contre les Devineurs.[67] This was in opposition t
o the tradition carried by the Arab astronomer Albumasar (787-886) whose Introdu
ctorium in Astronomiam and De Magnis Coniunctionibus argued the view that both i
ndividual actions and larger scale history are determined by the stars.[68]