Culture and Cosmos is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the history of
astrology and cultural astronomy published by the
Sophia Centre Press in
partnership with the Sophia
Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, Faculty of Humanitiies and the
Performing Arts, at the University
of Wales Trinity Saint David
We are currently seeking submissions for future volumes of Culture and Cosmos.
We are currently seeking submissions for future volumes of Culture and Cosmos.
Volume 3, No. 2
The Polemics on Astrology 1489-1524
Remo Catani
Abstract
This article first examines astrologers' protestations at growing religious hostility in the 1490s and the involvement of Ficino, Pico and Savonarola in Florence. It then charts the reactions to Pico's Disputationes both in the anti-astrological camp's enthusiastic endorsement, and especially in the riposte of professional astrologers across Europe, whose piece-meal replies, intensified by the approaching conjunction of 1524, include a call for internal reform through a rejection of Arabic methods. Pico's technical and empirical secondary arguments emerge as more effective than the physical and moral primary ones and reveal his singular understanding of practitioners' mentality.
