Astronomy in the Bible Astrology

Astronomy

(From Gr. astron, star; nemein, to distribute).

A science of prehistoric antiquity, originating in the elementary needs of mankind. It is divided into two main branches, distinguished as astrometry and astrophysics; the former concerned with determining the places of the investigation of the heavenly bodies, the latter, with the investigation of their chemical and physical nature. But the division is of a quite recent date. The possibilities of antique science stopped short at fixing the apparent positions of the objects on the sphere. Nor was any attempt made to rationalize the observed facts until Greeks laboriously built up a speculative system, which was finally displaced by vast fabric of gravitational theory. Descriptive astronomy, meanwhile took its rise from the invention of the telescope, and the facilities thus afforded for the close scrutiny of the denizens of the sky; while practical astronomy gained continually in refinement with the improvement of optical and mechanical arts. At the present time, astrophysics may be said to have absorbed descriptive astronomy, and astrometry necessarily includes practical research. But mathematical astronomy, grounded on the law of gravitation keeps its place apart, though depending for the perfecting of its theories and the widening of its scope upon advances along the old, and explorations in new, directions.

PREHISTORIC ASTRONOMY

Formal systems of astronomical knowledge were early established by the Chinese, Indians, Egyptians, and BabyIonians. The Chinese were acquainted, probably in the third millenium B.C., with the cycle of nineteen years (rediscovered in 632 B.C. by Meton at Athens) by which, since it comprised just 235 lunations, the solar and lunar years were harmonized; they recorded cometary apparitions, observed eclipses, and employed effective measuring apparatus. European methods were introduced at Pekin by Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century. Indian astronomy contained few original elements. It assigned particular prominence to the lunar zodiac, called the nakshatras, or mansions of the moon, variously reckoned at twenty-seven or twenty-eight; and these, which were probably a loan from Chaldea, served mainly for superstitious purposes. In Egypt, on the other hand, considerable technical skill was attained and a constellational system of obscure derivation, came in use. The Babylonians alone, among the nations of the fore-time, succeeded in laying the foundations of a progressive science. Through the medium of the Greeks, they transmitted to the West their entire scheme of uranography, our familiar constellations having been substantially designed on the plain of Shinar about 2800 B.C. Here, too, at a remote epoch, the "Saros" became known. This is a cycle of eighteen years and ten or eleven days, which affords the means of predicting the recurrence of eclipses. The changing situations of the planets among the stars were, moreover, diligently recorded, and accurate acquaintance was secured with the movements of the sun and moon. The interpretation in 1889, by Fathers Epping and Strassmaier, of a collection of inscribed tablets preserved in the British Museum vividly illuminated the methods of official Babylonian astronomy in the second century B.C. They were perfectly effectual for the purpose chiefly in view, which was the preparation of yearly ephemerides announcing expected celestial events, and tracing in advance the paths of the heavenly bodies. Further analysis in 1899 by Father Kugler, S.J., of the tabulated data employed in computing the moon's place, disclosed the striking fact that the four lunar periods -- the synodic, sidereal, anomalistic, and draconitic months -- were substantially adopted by Hipparchus from his Chaldean predecessors.

GREEK ASTRONOMY

Astronomy, however, no sooner became a distinctively Greek science than it underwent a memorable transformation. Attempts began to be made to render the appearances of the sky intelligible. They were, indeed, greatly hampered by the assumption that movement in space must be conducted uniformly in circles, round an immobile earth; yet the problem was ostensibly solved by Appollonius of Perga (250-220 B.C.), and his solution, applied by Hipparchus to explain the movements of the sun and moon, was extended by Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy) to the planets. This was the celebrated theory of eccentrics and epicycles, which, by the ingenuity of its elaboration, held its own among civilized men during fourteen centuries. Hipparchus, the greatest of ancient astronomers, observed at Rhodes (146-126 B.C.), but is considered as belonging to the Alexandrian school. He invented trignometry, and constructed a catalogue of 1080 stars, incited, according to Pliny's statement, by a temporary stellar outburst in Scorpio (134 B.C.). Comparing, as work progressed, his own results with those obtained 150 years earlier by Timocharis and Aristyllus, he detected the slow retrogression among the stars of the point of intersection of the celestial equator with the ecliptic, which constitutes the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes. The circuit is completed in 25,800 years; hence the tropical year, by which the seasons are regulated, is shorter than the sidereal year by just twenty-one minutes, the equinox shifting backward to meet the sun by the annual amount of 50.25 inches. Greek astronomy was embodied in Ptolerny's "Almagest" (the name is of mixed Greek and Arabic derivation), composed at Alexandria about the middle of the second century A. D. It was based upon the geocentric principle. The starry spere, with its contents, was supposed to resolve, once in twenty-four hours, about the fixed terrestrial globe, while the sun and moon, and the five planets, besides sharing the common movement, described variously conditioned orbits round the same centre. The body of doctrine it inculcated made part of the universal stock of knowledge until the sixteenth century. The formidable task of demonstrating its falsity, and of replacing it with a system corresponding to the true relations of the world, was undertaken by the active and exemplary ecclesiastic, Nicholas Copernicus, Canon of Frauenburg (1473-1543). The treatise in which it was accomplished, entitled "De Revolutione Orbium Coelestium", saw the light only when its author lay dying; but a dedication to Pope Paul III bespoke the protection of the Holy See for the new and philosophically subversive views which it propounded. Denounced as impious by Luther and Melanchton, they were, in fact, favourably received at Rome until theological discredit was brought upon them by the wild speculations of Giorano Bruno (1548-1600), and the imprudent utterances of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).

DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY

Descriptive astronomy may be said to have originated with the invention of the telescope by Hans Lippershey in 1608. Its application to the scrutiny of the heavenly bodies, by Galileo and others, led at once to a crowd of striking discoveries. Jupiter's satellites, the phases of Venus, the mountains of the moon, the spots on the sun, Saturn's unique appendages, all descried with a little instrument resembling a uniocular opera-glass, formed, each in its way, a significant and surprising revelation; and the perception of the stellar composition of the Milky Way represented the first step in sidereal exploration. Johann Kepler (1571-1630) invented in 1611, and Father Scheiner of Ingolstadt (1575-1650) first employed, the modern refracting telescope; and the farther course of discovery corresponded closely to the development of its powers. Christian Huygens (1629-95) resolved, in 1656, the ansae of Saturn into a ring, divided into two by Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625-1712) in 1675. Titan, the Iargest of Saturn's moons, was detected by Huygens in 1655, and four additional members of the family by 1684. The Andremeda nebula was brought to notice by Simon Marius in 1612, the Orion nebula by J.B. Cysatus, a Swiss Jesuit, in 1618; and some few variable and multiple stars were recognized.

THEORETICAL ASTRONOMY

The theoretical, however, far outweighed the practical achievements of the seventeenth century. Kepler published the first two of the "Three Laws" in 1609, the third in 1619. The import of these great generalizations is:

* that the planets describe ellipses of which the sun occupies one focus;

* that the straight line joining each planet with the sun (its radius vector) sweeps out equal areas in equal times;

* that the squares of the planetary periods are severally proportional to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun.

The geometrical plan of movement in the solar system was thus laid down with marvellous intuition. But it was reserved for Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) to expound its significance by showing that the same uniformly acting force regulates celestial revolulions, and compels heavy bodies to fall towards the earth's surface. The law of gravity, published in 1687 in "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathamatica" is to the following effect: every particle of matter attracts every other with a force directly proportional to their masses, and inversely proportional to the squares of their distances apart. Its validlty was tested by comparing the amount of the moon's orbital deflection in a second with the orbital deflection in a second with the rate at which an apple (say) drops in an orchard. Allowance being made for the distance of the moon, the two velocities proved to tally perfectly, and the identity of terrestrial gravity with the force controlling the revolutions of the heavenly established. But this was only a beginning. The colossal work remained to be accomplished of calclulaIting the consequences of the law, in the minute details of its working, and of comparing them with the heavens. It was carried foreward first by Newton himself, and in the ensuing century, by Euler, Clairaut, d' Alembert, Lagrange, and Laplace. Urbain Leverrier (1811- 77) inherited from these men of genius a task never likely to be completed; and the intricacies of lunar theory have been shown, by the researches of John Cough Adams (1819-92), of Hansen and Delaunay, of Professors Hlll and Newcomb, and many more, to be fraught with issues of unexpected and varied interest.

DISCOVERIES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

The extraordinary improvement of reflecting telescopes by Sir William Herschel (1738-1822) opened a fresh epoch of discovery. His recognition of the planet Uranus (13 March 1781) as a non-stellar object of old to the solar system; two Uranian moons, Oberon and Titania, were detected by him 11 January 1787, and the innermost Saturnian pair, Enceladus and Mimas, 28 August and 17 September of the same year. Saturn was, in 1906, known to possess ten satellites. Hyperion was descried by W.C. Bond at the observatory of Harvard College 16 September, 1848, and Professor W.H. Pickering, of the same establishment, discovered by laborious photographic researches, Phoebe in 1898, and Themis in 1905. In point of fact, an indefinite number of satellites are agglomerated in the rings of Saturn. Their constitution by separately revolving, small bodies, theoretically demonstrated by J. Clerk Maxwell in 1857, was spectroscopically confirmed by the late Professor Keeler in 1895. The system includes a dusky inner member, detected by Bond, 15 November, 1850. The discovery of the planet Neptune, 23 Sepember, 1846, was a mathematical, not an observational feat. Leverrier and Adams independently divined the existence of a massive body, revolving outside Uranus, and exercising over its movements disturbances the analysis of which led to its capture. Its solitary moon was noted by William Lassell of Liverpool in October, 1846; and he added, in 1851, two inner satellites to the remarkable system Uranus. With the great Washington refractor, 26 inches in aperture, Professor Asaph Hall discerned, 16 and 17 August,1877, Deimos and Phobos, the swiftly circling moonlets Mars; the Lick 36-ich enabled Professor Barnard to perceive, 9 September, 1892, the evasive inner satellite of Jupiter; and two exterior attendants on the same planet were photographically detected by Professor Perrine in 1904-05. The distances of the planets are visibly regulated by a method. They increase by an ordered progression, announced by Titius of Wittenberg in 1772, and since designated as "Bode's Law". But their succession was quickly seen to be interrupted by a huge gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter; and the conjecture was hazarded that here a new planet might be found to revolve. It was verified by the discovery of an army of asteiods. Ceres, their leader, was captured at Palermo, 1 January, 1801, by Giuseppe Piazzi, a Theatine monk (1746-1826); Pallas, in 1802 by Olbers (1758-1840), and Juno and Vesta in 1804 and 1807, by Harding and Olbers respectively. The original quartette of minor planets began in 1845 to be reinforced with companions, the known number of which now approximates to 600, and may be indefinitely increased. Their discovery has been immensely facilitated by Professor Max Wolf's introduction, in 1891, of the photographic method of discriminating them from stars through the effects of their motion on sensitive plates.

The solar system, as at present known, consists of four interior planets, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars; four exterior; and relatively colossal planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the diffuse crowd of pygmy globes called asteroids, or minor planets, and an outlying array of comets with their attentant meteor-systems. All the planets rotate on their axes, though in very different periods. That of Mercury was determined by Signor Schiaparelli of Milan in 1889 to be 88 days, the identical time of his revolution round the sun, and Venus was, in the following year, shown by him to be, in all likelihood, similarly conditioned, the common period of rotation and circulation being, in her case, 225 days. This irnplies that both planets keep the same hemisphere always turned towards the sun, as the moon does towards the earth; nor can we doubt that the friction of tidal waves was, on the three bodies, the agency by which the observed synchronisrn was brought about. All the planets travel round the sun from west to east or counter clock-wise and most of the satellites move in the same direction round their primaries. But there are exceptions. Phoebe, Saturn's remotest moon, circulates oppositely to the other members of the system; the four moon of Uranus are retrograde, their plane of movement being inclined at more than a right angle to the ecliptic; and the satellite of Neptune travels quite definitely backward. These anomalies are of profound import to the theories of planetary origin. The "canals" of Mars were recognized by Schiaparelli in August 1877, he caught sight of some of them duplicted two years later. Their photographic registration at the Lowell observatory in 1905 proves them to be no optical illusion, but their nature remains enigmatical.

COMETS AND METEORS

The predicted return of Halley's comet in 1759 afforded the first proof that bodies of the kind are permanently attached to the sun. They accompany its march through space, traversing, in either direction indifferently, highly eccentric orbits inclined ecliptic. They are accordingly subject to violent, even subversive disturbances from planets. Jupiter, in particular, sways the movements of a group of over thirty "captured" comets, which had their periods curtailed, and their primitive velocities reduced by his influence. Schiaparelli announced in 1866 that the August shooting-stars, or Perseids, pursue the same orbit with a bright comet visible in 1862; and equally striking accordances of movement between three other comets and the Leonid, Lyraid, and Andromede meteor-swarms were soon afterwards established by Leverrior and Weiss. The obvious inference is that meteors are the disintegration-products of their cometary fellow-travellers. A theory of comets' tails, based upon the varying efficacy of electrical repulsion upon chemically different kinds of matter, was announced by Theodor Brédikhine of Moscow in 1882, and gave a satisfactory account of the appearances it was invented to explain. Latterly, however, the authority of Arrhenius of Stockholm has lent vogue to a "light-pressure" hypothesis, according to which, cometary appendages are formed of particles driven from the sun by the mechanical stress of his radiations. But the singular and rapid changes photograpically disclosed as taking place in the tails of comets, remain unassociated with any known cause.

SIDEREAL ASTRONOMY

Sir William Herschel's discovery, in 1802, of binary stars, imperfectly anticipated by Father Christian Mayer in 1778, was one of far-reaching scope. It virtually proved the realm of gravity to include sidereal regions; and the relations it intimated have since proved to be much more widely prevalent than could have been imagined beforehand. Mutually circling stars exist in such profusion as probably to amount to one in three or four of those unaccompanied. They are of limitless variety, some of the systems by them being exceedingly close and rapid, while others describe, in millennial periods, vastly extended orbits. Many, too, comprise three or more members; and the multiple stars thus constituted merge, by progressive increments of complexity, into actual clusters, globular and irregular. The latter class exemplified by the Pleiades and Hyades, by the Beehive cluster in Cancer, just visible to the naked eye, and by the double cluster in Perseus which makes a splendid show with an opera-glass. Globular clusters are compressed "balls" of minute stars, of which more than one hundred have been catalogued. The scale on which these marvellous systems are constructed remains conjectual, since their distances from the earth are entirely unknown. Variable stars are met with in the utmost diversity. Some are temporary apparitions which spring up from invisibility often to an astonishing pitch of spendor, then sink back more slowly to quasi-extinction. Nova Persei, which blazed 22 February, 1901, and was photographically studied by Father Sidgreaves at Stonyhurst, is the most noteworthy recent instance of the phenomenon. Stars, the vicissitudes of which are comprised in cycles of seven to twenty months, or more, are called "long-period variables". About 400 had been recorded down to 1906. They not uncommonly attain, at maximum, to 1,000 times their minimum brightness. Mira, the "wonderful" star in the Whale, discovered by David Fabricius in 1596, is the examplar of the class. The fluctuations of "short-period variables" take place in a few days or hours, and with far more punctuality. A certain proportion of them are "eclipsing stars" (about 35 have so far been recognized as such), which owe their regularly recurring failures of light to the interposition of large satellites. Algol in Perseus, the variations of which were perceived by Montanari in 1669, is the best-known specimen. Hundreds of rapid variables have been recently detected among the components of glabular clusters; but their course of change is of a totally different nature from that of eclipsing stars. Edmund Halley (1656-1742), the second Astronomer Royal, announced in 1718 that the stars, far from being fixed, move onward, each on its own account, across the sky. He arrived at this conclusion by comparing modern with antique observations; and stellar "proper motions" now constitute a wide and expansive field of research. A preliminary attempt to regularize them was made by Herschel's determination, in 1783, of the sun's line of travel. His success depended upon the fact that the apparent displacements of the stars include a common element, transferred by perpective from the solar advance. Their individual, or "peculiar" movements, however, show no certain trace of method. A good many stars, too, have been ascertained to travel at rates probably uncontrollable by the gravitational power of the entire sidereral system. Arcturus, with its portentous velocity of 250 miles a second, is one of these "runaway" stars. The sun's pace of about 12 miles a second, seems, by comparison, extremely sedate; and it is probably only half the average stellar speed. The apex of the sun's way, or the towards which its movement at present tends, is located by the best recent investigations near the bright star Vega.

DISTANCES OF THE SUN AND STARS

The distances of the heavenly bodies can only be determined (speaking generally) by measuring their parallaxes, in other words, their apparent changes of position when seen from different points of view. That of the sun is simply the angle subtended at his distance by the earth's semi-diameter. Efforts were made with indifferent success to fix its value by the transits of Venus in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The asteroids have proved more efficient auxiliaries and through the mediation of Iris, Sappho, and Victoria, in 1889-89, Sir David Gill assigned to the great unit of space a length of 92,800,000 miles, which the photographic measures of Eros, in 1900-01, bid fair to ratify. The stars, however, are so vastly remote that the only chance of detecting their perspective displacements is by observing them at intervals of six months, from opposite extremities of a base-line nearly 186,000 miles in extent. Thus, the annual parallax of a star means the angle under which the semi-diameter of the earth's orbit would be seen if viewed frorn its situation. This angle is in all cases, extremely minute, and in most cases, altogether evanescent; so that, from only about eighty stars (as at present known), the terrestrial orbit would appear to have sensible dimensions. Our nearest stellar neighbour is the splendid southern binary, Alpha Centauri; yet its distance is such that light needs four and one-third years to perform the journey thence. Thomas Henderson (1798-1844) announced his detection of its parallax in 1839, just after Bessel of Konigsberg (1784-1846) had obtained a similar, but smaller result for an insignificant double star designated 61 Cygni.

CELESTIAL PHOTOGRAPHY

The second half of the nineteenth century was signalized by a revolutionary change in the methods and purposes of astronomy. Experiments in lunar photography, begun in 1840 by J.W. Draper of New York, were continued in the fifties by W.C. Bond, Warren de la Rue, and Lewis M. Rutherfund. The first daguerreoype of the sun was secured at Paris in 1845, and traces of the solar corona appeared on a sensitized plate exposed at Konigsberg during the total eclipse of 28 July, 1851. But the epoch of effective solar photography opened with the Spanish eclipse of 18 July, 1860, when the pictures successively obtained by Father Angelo Secchi, S.J., and Waren de la Rue demonstrated the solar status of the crimson protuberances by rendering manifest the advance of the moon in front of them. At subsequent eclipses, the leading task of the camera has been the portrayal of the corona; and its importance was enhanced when A.C. Ranyard pointed out, in 1879, the correspondence of changes in its form with alterations of sunspots was published in 1851 by Schwabe of Dessau; and among the numerous associated phenomena of change, none are better ascertained than those affecting the shape of the silvery aureola seen to encompass the sun when the moon cuts off the glare of direct sunlight. At spot maxima the aureola spreads its beamy radiance round the disc. But at times of minimum, it consists mainly of two great wings, extended in the sun's equatorial plane. A multitude of photographs, taken during the eclipses of 1898, 1900, 1901 and 1905, attest with certainty the punctual recurrence of these unexplained vicissitudes. The fundamental condition for the progress of sidereal photography is the use of long exposures; since most of the objects to be delineated emit light so feebly that its chemical effects must accumulate before they become sensible. But long exposures were impracticable until Sir William Huggins, in 1876, adopted the dry-plate process; and this date, accordingly, marks the beginning of the wide-spreading serviceableness of the camera to astronomy. In nebular investigations above all, it far outranges the telescope. Halley described in 1716 six nebulae, which he held to be composed of a lucid medium collected from space. The Abbé Lacaille (1713-62) brought back with him from the Cape, in 1754, a list of forty-two such objects; and Charles Messier (1730-1817) enumerated in 1781, 103 nebulae and clusters. But this harvest was scanty indeed compared with the lavish yield of Herschel's explorations. Between 1786 and 1802 he communicated to the Royal Society catalogues of 2500 nebulae; he distinguished their special forms, classified them in order of brightness, and elaborated a theory of stellar development from nebulae, illustrated by selected instances of progressive condensation. The next considerable step towards a closer acquaintance with nebulae was made by Lord Rosse in 1845, when the prodigious light-grasp of his six-foot reflector afforded him the discovery of the great "Whirlpool" structure in Canes Venatici. It proved to be typical of the entire class of spiral nebulae, the large prevalence of which has been one of the revelations of photography. The superiority in nebula-portraiture of the chemical to the eye-and-hand method was strikingly manifested in a photograph of the Orion nebula taken b Dr. A. A. Common, 30 January, 1883. Its efficacy for discovery became evident through the disclosure, on plates exposed by Paul and Prosper Henry, and by Isaac Roberts in 1885- 86, of complex nebulous formations in the Pleides, almost wholly invisible optically. Professor Keeler (1857-1900) estimated at 120,000 the number of nebulae which the Crossley reflector of the Lick observatory would capable of recording in both hemispheres with an hour's exposure, while telescopically constructed catalogues include less than 10,000. But it is through the combination of photography with spectroscopy, constituting the spectrographic mode of research, that astrophysics has achieved its most signal triumphs.

ASTROPHYSICS

The fundamental principle of spectrum analysis, enunciated by Gustav Kirchhoff (1824-87), depends upon the equivalence of emission and absorption. This means that, if white light be transmitted through glowing vapours, they arrest just those minute sections of it with which they themselves shine. And if the source of the white light be hotter than the arresting vapour, there results a prismatic spectrum, interrupted by dark lines, distinctive of the chemical nature of the susbtance originating them. Now this is exactly the case of the sun and stars. The white radiance emanating from their photopheres is found, when dispersed into a spectrum, to be crossed by numerous dusky rays indicating absorption by gaseous strata, to the composition of which Kirchhoff's principle supplies the clue. Kirchhoff himself identified in 1861, as prominent solar constituents, sodium, iron magnesium, calcium, and chromium; by A.J. Angström (1814-74); helium by Sir Norman Lockyer in 1868; and about forty elementary substances are now known with approximate certainty to be common to the earth and sun. The chemistry of the stars is strictly analogous to that of the sun, although their spectra exhibit diversities symptomatic of a considerable variety in physical state. Father Angelo Secchi, S.J. (1818-78), based on these diversities in 1863-67 a classification of the stars into four orders, still regarded as fundamental and supplied by Dr. Vogel in 1874 with an evolutionary interpretation, according to which differences of spectral type are associated with various stages of progress from a tenuous and inchote towards a compact condition. Since 1879, when Sir William Huggins secured impressions of an extended range of ultra-violet white star light, stellar spectra have been mostly studied photographically, the results being, not only precise and permanent, but also more complete than those obtainable by visual means. The same eminent investigator discovered, in 1864, the bright-line spectra of certain classes of nebulae, by which they were known to be of gaseous composition, and recognized, as of carbonaceous origin, the typical coloured bands of the cometary spectrum, noted four years previously, though without specific identification, by G.B. Donati (1827-73) at Florence.

Doppler's principle, by which light alters in refrangibility through the end-on motion of its source, was first made effective for astronomical reseach by 1868. The criterion of velocilty, whether of recession or approach, is afforded by the shifting of spectral lines from their standard places; and the method was raised to a high grade of accuracy through Dr. Vogel's adaptation, in 1888, of photography to its requirements. It has since proved extraordinarily fruitful. Its employment enabled Dr. Vogel to demonstrate the reality of AIgol's eclipses, by showing that the star revolved round an obscure companion in the identical period of light-change; and the first discoveries of non-eclipsing spectroscopic binaries were made at Harvard College in 1889. These interesting systems cannot be sharply distinguished from telescopic double stars, which are, indeed, believed to have developed from them under the influence of tidal friction; their periods vary from a few hours to several months; and their components are often of such unequal luminosity that only one leaves any legible impression on the sensitive plate. Their known number amounted, in 1905, to 140; and it may be indefinitely augmented. It probably includes all short-period variables, even those that escape eclipses; though the connection between their duplicity and luminous variations remains unexplained. The photography in daylight of solar prominences was attempted by Professor Young of Princeton in 1870, and the subject was prosecuted by Dr. Braun, S. J., in 1872. No genuine success was, however, achieved until 1891, when Professor Hale of Chicago and M. Deslandres at Paris independently built up pictures of those objects out of the calcium-ray in their dispersed light, sifted through a double slit onto moving photographic plates. Professor Hale's invention of the "spectroheliograph" enables him, moreover, to delineate the sun's disc in any selected of its light, with the result of disclosing vast masses of calcium and hydrogen flocculi, piled up at various heights above the solar surface.

SIDEREAL CONSTRUCTION

The investigation of the structure of the sideral heavens was the leading object of William Herschel's career. The magnitude of the task, however, which he attempted singlehanded grows more apparent with every fresh attempt to grapple with it; and it now engages the combined efforts of many astronomers, using methods refined and comprehensive to a degree unimagined by Herschel. An immense stock of materials for the purpose will be provided by the international photographic survey, at present advancing towards completion at eighteen observatories in both hemispheres. About thirty million stars will, it is estimated, appear on the chart-plates; and those precisely catalogued are unlikely to fall short of four millions. The labour of discussing these multitudinous data must be severe, but will be animated by the hope of laying bare some hidden spring of the sidereal mechanism. The prospect is indeed remote that the whole of its intricacies will ever be penetrated by science. We only perceive that the stars form a collection of prodigious, but limited, extent, showing strongly concentrative tendencies towards the plane of the Milky Way. Nor can the nebulae be supposed to form a separate scheme. The closeness of their relations, physical and geometrical, with stars excludes that supposition. Stars and nebulae belong to the same system, if such the sidereal world may properly be called in the absence of any sufficient evidence of its being in a state of dynamical equilibrium. We cannot be sure that it has yet reached the definitive term appointed for it by its instability and evanescence help us to realize that the heavens are, in very truth, the changing vesture of Him whose "years cannot fail".

Agnes M. Clerke

Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume II

Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: www.NewAdvent.org

Astrology

The supposed science which determines the influence of the stars, especially of the five older planets, on the fate of man (astrologia judiciaria; mundane, or judicial astrology) or on the changes of the weather (astrologia naturalis; natural astrology) according to certain fixed rules dependent upon the controlling position of stars (constallations aspects ) at the time under consideration. Judicial astrology--more important branch of this occult art--depended for its predictions upon the position of the planets in the "twelve houses " at the moment of the birth of a human being. The calculations necessary to settle these positions were casting the horoscope or the diagram of the heavens (thema coeli) at the nativity. Starting with the point that was rising just at the moment of birth, the celestical equator was divided into twelve equal parts, six above, and six below the horizon, and circles were drawn through these points and the intersecting points of the horizon and the meridian. Thus the heavens were divided into twelve houses. The first house (horoscopus) begins with the point of the ecliptic that is just rising (ascendens). The twelve houses are divided into cardinal houses, also called anguli, succeeding houses (succedentes, anaphora) and declining or cadent houses (cadentes, cataphora). The houses symbolize respectively: life, personal property, consanguinity, riches, children and jewels, health, marriage and course of life, manner of death and inheritance, intellect and disposition (also long journeys), position in life and dignities, friends and success, enemies and misfortune. In the horoscope all these symbolic meanings are considered in their relation to the newly born. A Latin hexameter thus sums up the meaning of the twelve houses:

Vita, lucrum, fratres, genitor, nati, valetudo,

Uxor, mors, sapiens, regnans benefactaque, daemon.

The position of the planets and the sun and moon in the twelve houses at the moment of birth is decisive. The planets vary as to meaning. They are divided into day-stars (Saturn, Jupiter, and also the sun) and night-stars (the moon, Mars, and Venus); Mercury belongs both to day and night. The sun, Jupiter, and Mars are masculine; the moon and Venus are feminine, Mercury belongs both to day and night. The sun, Jupiter, and Mars are masculine; the moon and Venus are feminine, Mercury belonging again to both classes. Jupiter (fortuna major) and Venus (fortuna minor) are good planets; Saturn (infortuna major) and Mars (infortuna minor) are malignant planets. The sun, moon, and Mercury have a mixed character. Each of the planets known to antiquity, including sun and moon, ruled a day of the week; hence the names still used to designate the various days. Judicial astrology also took into consideration the position of the sun in the zodiac at the moment of birth; the signs of the zodiac also had a special astrological significance in respect to the weal and woe of the newborn, particularly his health. In medical astrology every sign of the zodiac ruled some special part of the body, as for example: Aries, the Ram, the head: its diseases; Libra, the Balance, the intestines. Judicial astrology postulates the acceptance of the earth as the centre of the solar system. Natural astrology predicts the weather from the positions of the planets, especially the moon. Many of its theories are not to be rejected a priori, since the question of the moon's meteorological influence still awaits a solution which must depend upon the progress of human knowledge as to ether waves and cognate matters.

HISTORY

The history of astrology is an important part of the history of the development of civilization, it goes back to the early days of the human race. The unchangeable, harmonious course of the heavenly bodies, the profound impression made on the souI of man by the power of such heavenly phenomena as eclipses, the feeling of dependence on the sun, the giver of daylight--all these probably suggested in the early ages of the the human race, the question whether the fate of man was not dependent on these majestic manifestations of Divine power. Astrology was, therefore the foster-sister of astronomy, the science of the investigation of the heavens. From the start astrology was employed for the needs and benefit of daily life; the astrologers were astronomers only incidentally and in so far as astronomy assisted astrology in the functions which the latter had to perform in connection with religious worship. According to the belief of the early civilized races of the East, the stars were the source and at the same time the heralds of everything that happened, and the right to study the "godlike science" of astrology was a privilege of the priesthood. This was the case in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the oldest centres of civilization known to us in the East. The most ancient dwellers on the Euphrates the Akkado-Sumerians were believers in judicial astrology which was closely Interwoven with their worship of the stars. The same is true of their successors, the Babylonians and Assyrians, who were the chief exponents of astrology in antiquity. The Babylonians and Assyrians developed astrology, especially judicial, to the status of a science, and thus advanced in pure astronomical knowledge by a circuitous course through the labyrinth of astrological predictions. The Assyro-Babylonian priests (Chaldeans) were the professional astrologers of classic antiquity. In its origin Chaldaic astrology also goes back to the worship of stars; this is proved by the religious symbolism of the most ancient cuneiform texts of the zodiac. The oldest astrological document extant is the work called "Namar-Beli" (Illumination of Bel) composed for King Sargon I (end of the third millennium B.C.) and contained in the cuneiform library of King Asurbanipal (668-626 B.C.). It includes astronomical observations and calculations of solar and lunar eclipses combined with astrological predictions, to which the interpretation of dreams already belonged. Even in the time of Chaldean, which should be called Assyrian, astrology, the five planets, together with the sun and moon, were divided according to their character and their position in the zodiac as well as according to their position in the twelve houses. As star of the sun, Saturn was the great planet and ruler of the heavens. The weather, as far back as this time, was predicted from the colour of the planets and from their rising and setting. Classical antiquity looked upon Berosus, priest of the temple of Bel at Babylon, as the oldest writer on astrology; and according to Vitruvius Berosus founded a school of astrology at Cos. Seneca says that a Greek translation, made by Berosus, of the "Namar-Beli " from the library the Asurbanipal was known to classical antiquity. The Egyptians and Hindus were as zealous astrologers as the nations on the Euphrates and Tigris. The dependence of the early Egyptian star (sun) worship (the basis of the worship of Osiris) upon early Chaldaic influences belongs to the still unsettled question of the origin of early Egyptian civilization. But undoubtly the priest of the Pharaohs were the docile pupils in astrology of the old Chaldean priests. The mysterious Taauth (Thoth), the Hermes Trismegistus of antiquity, was regarded the earliest teacher of astrology in Egypt. He is reputed to have laid the foundation of astrology in the "Hermetic Books"; the division of the zodiac into the twelve signs is also due to him. In classic antiquity many works on astrology or on occult sciences in general were ascribed to this mythical founder of Egyptian astrology. The astrological rule of reckoning named after him, "Trutina Hermetis" made it possible to calculate the position of the stars at the time of conception from tbe diagram of the heavens at the time of birth. The Egyptians developed astrology to a condition from which it varies but little today. The hours of the day and night received special planets as their rulers, and high and low stood under the determinative influence of the stars which proclaimed through the priestly caste the coming fate of the land and its inhabitants. It is significant that in ancient Egypt astronomy, as well as astrology, was brought to an undoubtedly high state of cultivation. The astoundingly daring theories of the world found in the Egyptian texts, which permit us to infer that their authors were even acquainted with the helio-centric conception of the universe, are based entirely on astrologico-theosophic views. The astrology of the ancient inhabitants of India was similar, though hardly so comptetely developed; they also regarded the planets as the rulers of the different hours. Their division of the zodiac into twenty-eight houses of the moon is worthy of notice; this conception like all the rest of the fundamental beliefs of Hindu astrology, is to be found in the Rig-Veda. In India both astrology and the worship of the gods go back to the worship of the stars. Even today, the Hindus, especially the Brahmins, are considered the best authorities on astrology and the most skilful casters of horoscopes.

India influenced and aided the development of astrology in ancient China, both India and Mesopotamia that of the Medes and Persians. The Assyro-Babylonian and Egyptian priests were the teachers of the Greek astrologers. Both of these priestly castes were called Chaldeans, and this name remained the designation of all astrologers and astronomers in classic antiquity and in the period following. It speaks well for the sound sense of the early Grecian philosophers that they seperated the genuine astronomic hypotheses and facts from the confused mass of erroneous astrological teaching which the Egyptian priests had confided to them. At the same time it was through the old Hellenic philosophers that the astrological secrets of the Oriental priestly castes reached the profane world. The earliest mention of the art of astrological prediction in early classical literature is found in the "Prometheus Vinctus" of Æschylus (line 486 sqq.) a comparatively late date. The often quoted lines of the Odyssey (Bk. XVIII, 136 sqq.) have nothing to do with astrology. Astrology was probably cultivated as an occult science by the Pythagorean school which maintained the exclusiveness of a caste. The teaching of Pythagoras on the "harmony of the spheres" points to certain astrological hypotheses of the Egyptian priests. It is a striking fact that Greek astrology began to flourish when the glory of the early classical civilization had begun to wane. It was in the age of Euripides, who refers to astrological predictions in a little comedy, that the belief in astrology began to grow popular in Greece. After the overthrow of the Assyro-Babylonian Empire, the priests of those regions found refuge in Greece and spread their astrological teachings by word of mouth and writing. In this way astrology lost the characler of occult science. Astronomy and astrology remained closely united, and both sciences were represented by the so-called Chaldeans, Mathematici, and Genethliacs. Astrology proper, from the time of Posidonius, was called apotelesmatika (rendered into English, "apotelesmatics" in order to indicate more clearly the influence of the stars upon man's final destiny; apo, "from", and telos, "end"). Astrology soon permeated the entire philosophical conception of the nature among the Greeks, and rapidly attained a commanding position in religious worship. Plato was obliged to take astrology into consideration as a "philosophical doctrine", and his greatest disciple, Aristotle, was the first to separate the science of astrology from that of meteorology, which was reserved for the phenomena of the atmosphere. The Stoics who encouraged all forms of divination were active promoters of astrology. The more plainly the influence of Oriental teaching manifested itself in Greek civilization, and the more confused the political conditions and religious ideas of the Greek States became, the greater was the influence of astrologers in public, and the more mischievous their activity in private life. Every professional astronomer was at the same time an astrologer. Eudoxus of Cnidles, the author of the theory of concentric spheres, was perhaps the first to write in Greek on purely astrological topics, being led to select this subject by his studies in Egypt. Most of the Greek astronorners known to us followed in his footsteps, as, for instance, Geminus of Rhodes whose most important work treating of astronomy and astrology Eisagoge eis ta Phainomena (Introduction to Phenomena) was commented on even by Hipparchus. About 270 B.C. the poet Aratus of Soli in his didactic poem, "Phænomena", explained the system of Eudoxus, and in a poem called "Diosemeia", which was appended to the former, he interprets the rules of judicial and natural astrology that refer to the various changes of the stars. The poem of Aratus was greatly admired by both the Greeks and the Romans; Cicero translated it into Latin, and Hygius, Ovid's friend, wrote a commendary on it. In this age astrology was as highly developed as in its second period of prosperity, at the Renaissance. Medical astrology had also at this date secured a definite position. Hippocrates of Cos in his work "De Aere, Aqua et Locis", which shows the influence of the Pythagoreans, discusses at length the value of astrology and its prognostications for the whole domain of medicine. In the Alexandrine school of medicine, astrological prognosis, diagnosis, and hygiene soon covered with their rank growths the inherited scientific teachings that had been tested by practice. In this way "astrological" cures grew in favour. These forms of the art of healing are not without interest both for the history of suggestion and for that of human error. The diseases of the more important bodily organs were diagnosed according to the influence of the sign of the zodiac at the time, and a medicine applied which either acted by suggestion, or was wholly inoperative. In the division of the zodiac according to its medical effect on the different parts of the body the first sign taken was the Ram (Aries), which ruled the head, and the last of the series was the Fishes (Pisces) which controlled the health or ailments of the feet. As the appetite of the Greeks for the mysterious wisdom of astrology grew keener, the Egyptian and Chaldean astrologers continually drew out still more mystical but, at the same time, more dubious treasures from their inexhaustible store-house. The newly founded city of Alexandria, where the later Hellenic culture flourished was a centre for all astrologers and practitioners of the occult arts. From time to time books appeared here, professing to have had their origin in the early days of Egytian civilization, which contained the secret knowledge pertaining to astrological and mystical subjects. These writings seems to meet the aspirations of ordinary men for the ideal, but all they offered was a chaotic mass of theories concerning astrology and divination, and the less they were understood they more they were applauded. In the Renaissance these pseudo-scientific works of antiquity were eagerly studied. It suffices here to mention the books of Nechopso-Petosiris which were believed by the neo-Platonists to be most the ancient Egyptian authority on astrology but which, probably were written in Alexandria about 150 B.C. About this same time, in all probability, Manetho, an Egyptian priest and traveller mentioned by Ptolemy, wrote on astrology. In order to meet the exigencies which arose, each degree of the heavens in late Egyptian astrology was assigned to some special human activity and some one disease. Besides this, the "heavenly spheres", which play so important a part in the history of astronomy, were increased to 54, and even a higher number, and from astrological calculations made from the complicated movements of these spheres the fate both of men and nations was predicted. Thus arose in late classic times the sphoera barbarica (foreign sphere) which in the Middle Ages also had a controlling influence over astrology.

It was to be expected that the sober-minded, practical Romans would soon be dissatisfied with the mystical and enigmatical doctrines of Alexandrian astrology. Cato uttered warnings against the mischievous activity of the Chaldeans who had entered Italy along with Greek culture. In the year 139 B.C. the Praetor Cneius Cornelius Hispallus drove all astrologers out of Italy; but they returned, for even the Roman people could not begin an important undertaking without the aid and auspices. It is only necessary to recall the greatest man of ancient Rome, Julius Caesar. Cicero, who in his younger days had busied with astrology, protested vigorously, but without success, against it in his work "De Divinatione". The Emperor Augustus, on the other hand, believed in astrology and protected it. The first Roman work on astrology was dedicated to him; it was the "Astronomica" written about 45 B.C. by Marcus Manilius, who was probably a Chaldean by birth. In five books this poem gives an outline of the astrology of the zodiac and constellations. The fifth book is devoted to the sphoera barbarica. It is a curious fact that the poem does not take up the astrology of the planets. In spite of repeated attempts to suppress it, as in the reigns of Claudius and Vespasian, astrology maintained itself in the Roman Empire as one of the leading forms of culture. The lower the Romans sank in religion and morals the more astrology became entwined with all action and belief. Under Tiberius and Nero the two astrologers named Thrasyllus who were father and son held high political positions. The most distinguished astronomer of antiquity, Claudius Ptolemaeus, was also a zealous astrologer. His "Opus Quadripartitum, seu de apotelesmatibus et judiciis astrorum, libri IV" is one of the chief treatises on astrology of earlier times and is a detailed account of astrological teachings. This work occupied in astology as important a position as that which the same author's Megale Euntaxis (also called "Almagest"), held in the science of astronorny before the appearance of the Copernican theory. It is a striking fact that Ptolemy sought, in the second book of the "Opus Quadripartitum" to bring the psychical and bodily differences of the various nations into relation with the phyical conditions of their native lands, and to make these conditions, in their turn, depend on the positions of the stars. The Roman astrologers wrote their manuals in imitation of Ptolemy, but with the addition of mystic phantasies and predictions. After the death for Marcus Aurelius, the Chaldeans were always important personages at the imperial court. As late as the time of Constantine the Great the imperial notary Julius Firmius Maternus, who later became a Christian, wrote on "Mathematics, or the power and the influence of the stars" eight books which were the chief authority in astrology until the Renaissance. With the overthrow of the old Roman Empire and the victory of Christianity, astrology lost its importance in the centres of Christian civilization in the West. The last known astrologer of the old world was Johannes Laurentius (sometimes called Lydus) of Philadelphia in Lydia, who lived A.D. 490-565.

ASTROLOGY UNDER CHRISTIANITY

From the start the Christian Church strongly opposed the false teachings of astrology. The Fathers energeticaly demanded the expulsion of the Chaldeans who did so much harm to the State and the citizens by employing a fantastic mysticism to play upon the ineradicable impulses of the common people, keeping their heathen conceptions alive and fostering a soul-perplexing cult which, with its fatalistic tendencies created difficulties in the discernment of right and wrong and weakened the moral foundations of all human conduct. There was no room in the early Christian Church for followers of this pseudo-science. The noted mathematician Aguila Ponticus was expelled from the Christian communion about the year 120, on account of his astrological heresies. The early Christians of Rome, therefore, regarded the astrological as their bitterest and, unfortunately, their too powerful enemies; and the astrologers probably did their part in stirring up the cruel persecutions of the Christians. As Christianity spread, the astrologers lost their influence and reputation, and gradually sank to the position of mere quacks. The conversion of Constantine the Great put an end to the importance of this so-called science, which for five hundred years had ruled the public life of Rome. In 321 Constantine issued an edict threatening all Chaldeans, Magi, and their followers with death. Astrology now disappeared for centuries from the Christian parts of Western Europe. Only the Arabic schools of learning, especially those in Spain after the Moors had conquered the Iberian peninsula, accepted this dubious inheritance from the wisdom of classic times, and among Arabs it became incentive to pure Astronomical research. Arabian and Jewish scholars were the representatives of astrology in the Middle Ages, while both Church and State in Christian countries rejected and persecuted this false doctrine and its heathen tendencies. Unfortunately, at the same time the development of astronony was checked, excepting so far as it was needed to establish certain necessary astronomic principles and to calculate the date of Easter. Yet early Christian legend dstinguished between astronomy and astrology by ascribing the introduction of the former to the good angels and to Abraham, while the latter was ascribed to Cham. In particular, St. Augustine ("De civitate Dei", VIII, xix, and in other places) fought against astrology and sought to prevent its amalgamation with pure natutal science. Once more the East prepared a second period of prosperity for astrology. The Jews, very soon after they were driven into Western Europe, busied themselves with astrological questions, being stimulated thereto by Talmud. Jewish scholars had, moreover, a knowlege of the most important works of classic times on astrology and they became the teachers of the Arabs. These latter, after the rapid spread of Mohammedanism in Western Asia and North Africa, and their defeat in Western Europe by Charles Martel, began to develop a civilization of their own. The mystical books which appeared in Jewish literature after the time of the Talmud, that is, the books called the "Sefer Zohar" and the "Sefer Yezirah" (Book of Creation), are full of rules of divination dealing especially with astrological meanings and calculations. The high reputation of the Talmud and Cabbala among the Jews in the Middle Ages explains their fondness for astrological speculations; but at a very early date, it should be noted, they distinguished between astronomy, "the science of reading the stars", and astrology, "the science of divination".

Caliph Al-Mansur, the builder of Bagdad, was, like his son, the famous Harun-al-Rashid, a promoter of learning. He was the first caliph to call Jewish scholars around him in order to develop the study of the mathematical sciences, especially astronomy, in his empire. In the year 777 the learned Jew Jacob ben Tarik founded at Bagdad a school for the study of astronomy and astrology which soon had a high reputation; among those trained here was Alchindi (Alkendi), a noted astronomer. It was one of Alchindi's pupils, Abumassar (Abu Mashar), from Bath in Chorassan, born about the year 805, whom the Middle Ages regarded as of greatest of Arabian astrologers. Astrology being regarded by the caliphs as the practical application of astronomy, all the more important Arabic and Jewish astronomers who were attached to that court, or who taught in the Moorish schools were also astrologers. Among the noteworthy Jewish astrologers may be mentioned Sahl ben Bishr al-Israel (about 820); Rabban al-Taban, the well-known cabbalist and Talmudic scholar; Shabbethai Donalo (913-970), who wrote a commentary on the astrology of the "Sefer Yezirah" which Western Europe later regarded as a standard work; and, lastly, the Jewish lyric poet and mathematician Abraham ibn Ezrah. Among the noted Arabic astronomers were Massah Allah Albategnius, Alpetragius, and others. The Arabo-Judaic astrology of the Middle Ages pursued the path indicated by Ptolemy, and his teachings were apparently the immovable foundation of all astronomical and astrological activity. At the same time the "Opus Quadripartitum" of the great Alexandrian was corrupted with Talmudic subtleties and overlaid with mystical and allegorical meanings, which were taken chiefly from the Jewish post -Talmudic belief conceming demons. This deterioration of astrology is not surprising if we bear in rnind the strong tendency of all Semitic races to fatalism and their blind belief in an inevitable destiny, a belief which entails spiritual demoralization. The result was that every conceivable pursuit of mankind every disease and indeed every nation had a special "heavenly regent", a constellation of definitely assigned position from the course of which the most daring prophecies were deduced.

Up to the time of the Crusades, Christian countries in general were spared any trouble from a degenerate astrology. Only natural astrology, the correctness of which the peasant thought he had recognized by experience secured a firm footing in spite of the prohibition of Church and State. But the gradually increasing influence of Arabic learning upon the civilization of the West, which reached its highest point at the time of the Crusades was unavoidably followed by the spread of the false theories of astrology. This was a natural result of the amalgamation of the teachings of pure astronomy with astrology at the Mohammedan seats of learning. The spread of astrology was also furthered by the Jewish scholars living in Christian lands, for they considered astrology as a necessary part of their cabalistic and Talmudic studies. The celebrated didactic poem "Imago Mundi", written by Gauthier of Metz in 1245, has a whole chapter on astrology. Pierre d'Ailly, the noted French theologian and astronomer, wrote several treatises on the subject. The public importance of astrology grew as the internal disorders of the Church increased and the papal and imperial power declined. Towards the close of the Middle Ages nearly every petty prince, as well as every ruler of importance, had his court astrologer upon whose ambiguous utterances the weal and the woe of the whole country often depended. Such a person was Angelo Catto, the astrologer of Louis XI of France. The revival of classical learning brought with it a second period of prosperity for astrology. Among the civilized peoples of the Renaissance period, so profoundly stirred by the all-prevailing religious, social and political ferment, the astrological teaching which had come to light with other treasures of ancient Hellenic learning found many ardent disciples. The romantic trend of the age and its highly cultivated sensuality were conditions which contributed to place this art in a position far higher than any it had attained in its former period of prosperity. The forerunners of Humanism busied themselves with astrology, and but few of them perceived the dangerous psychical effect of its teachings upon the masses. Towards the end of the the thirteenth century the Florentines employed Guido Bonatti as their official astrologer, and , although Florence then stood alone in this respect, it was scarcely a hundred years later when astrology had entered in earnest upon its triumphant course, and a Cecco d'Ascoli was already its devoted adherent. In Petrarch's day the questionable activity of the astrologers at the Italian courts had made such progress that this clear-sighted Humanist (De remed. utr. fortm. I , iii, sqq; Epist. rer. famil., III; 8, etc.) again and again attacked astrology and its representatives with the keenest weapons of his wit, though without success, and even without any following except the weak objections of Villani and the still more ineffectual polemics of Salutato in his didactic poem "De fato et fortunâ". Emperors and popes became votaries of astrology-- the Emperors Charles IV and V, and Popes Sixtus IV, Julius II, Leo X, and Paul III. When these rulers lived astrology was, so to say, the regulator of official life; it is a fact characteristic of the age, that at the papal and imperial courts ambassadors were not received in audience until the court astrologer had been consulted. Regiomontanus, the distinguished Bavarian mathematician, practised astrology, which from that time on assumed the character of the bread-winning profession, and as such was not beneath the dignity of so lofty an intellect as Kepler. Thus had astrology once more become the foster-mother of all astronomers. In the judgment of the men of the Renaissance -- and this was the age of a Nicholas Copernicus--the most profound astronomical researches and theories were only profitable in so far as they aided in the development of astrology. Among the zealous patrons of the art were the Medici. Catharine de' Medici made astrology popular in France. She erected an astrological observatory for herself near Paris, and her court astrologer was the celebrated "magician" Michel de Notredame (Nostradamus) who in 1555 published his principal work on astrology--a work still regarded as authoritative among the followers of his art. Another well-known man was Lucas Gauricus, the court astrologer of' Popes Leo X and Clement VII, who published a large number of astrological treatises. ln Germany Johann Stöffler, professor of mathematics at Tübingen, Matthias Landenberg, and, above all, Philip Melanchthon were zealous and distinguished defenders of astrology. In Pico della Mirandola (Adversus Astrologos libri XII) and Paolo Toscanelli astrology encountered its first successful antagonists; later in the Renaissance Johann Fischart and the Franciscan Nas were among its opponents (Cf. Philognesius, Practicarum, Ingolstadt, 1571).

Gabotto's charming essay, "L'astrologia nel quattrocento" in "Rivisto di filosofia scientica", VIII, 378, sq., gives much information concerning astrology in the fifteenth century. A. Graf's "La fatalita nelle credenze del medio evo" (in "Nuovo Antologia", 3rd series, XXVIII, 201,sqq.) is also of value for astrology at the turning point of the Middle Ages. Some of the late Roman astrologers, among whom was probably Firmicus Maternus, thought to reform astrology by idealizing it and raising its moral tone. The same purpose animated Paolo Toscanelli, called Maistro Pagollo, a physician greatly respected for the piety of his life, who belonged to the learned and artistic circle which gathered around Brother Ambrosius Camaldulensis in the Monastery of the Angels. There were special professors of astrology, besides those for astronomy, at the Universities of Pavia, Bologna, and even at the Sapienza during the pontificate of Leo X, while at times these astrologers outranked the astronomers. The three intellectual centres of astrology in the most brilliant period of the Renaissance were Bologna, Milan, and Mantua. The work of J.A. Campanus, published at Rome in 1495, and often commented on, namely, "Oratio initio studii Perugiae habita" throws a clear light on the lack of comprehension shown by the Church Fathers in their attitude towards pagan fatalism. Among other things it is here said: "Quanquam Augustinus, sanctissimus ille vir quidem ac doctissimus, sed fortassis ad fidem religionemgue propensior, negat quicquam vel mali astrorum necessitate contingere".

In the Renaissance, religion, also, was subordinated to the dictation of astrology. The hypothesis of an astrological epoch of the world for each religion was widely believed by Italian astrologers of the time, who obtained the theory from Arabo-Judaic sources. Thus it was said that the conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn permitted the rise of the Hebrew faith; that of Jupiter with Mars, the appearance of the Chaldaic religion; of Jupiter with the sun, the Egyptian religion; of Jupiter with Venus, Mohammedanism; and of Jupiter with Mercury, Christianity. At some future day the religion of Antichrist was to appear upon the conjunction of Jupiter with the moon. Extraordinary examples of the glorification of astrology in Italy during the Renaissance are the frescoes painted by Miretto in the Sala della Ragione at Pavia, and the frescoes in Borso's summer palace at Florence. Petrarch, as well, notwithstanding his public antagonism to astrology, was not, until his prime, entirely free from its taint. In this connection his relations with the famous astrologer, Mayno de Mayneri, are significant (Cf. Rajna, Giorn. stor., X, 101, sq.).

Even the victorious progress of the Copernican system could not at once destroy confidence in astrology. The greatest astronomers were still obliged to devote their time to making astrological predictions at princely courts for the sake of gain; Tycho Brahe made such calculations for the Emperor Rudolph II, and Kepler himself, the most distinguished astronomer of the age, was the imperial court astrologer. Kepler was also obliged to cast horoscopes for Wallenstein, who later came completely under the influence of the alchemist and astrologer Giambattista Zenno of Genoa, the Seni of Schiller's "Wallenstein". The influence of the Copernican theory, the war of enlightened minds against pseudo-prophetic wisdom and the increasing perception of the moral and psychical damage wrought by astrological humbug at last brought about a decline in the fortunes of astrology, and that precisely in Wallenstein's time. At the same period astrological tracts were stil being written by the most celebrated of English astrologers, William Lilly of Diseworth, Leicestershire, who received a pension of 100 pounds from Cromwell's council of state, and who, in spite of some awkward incidents, had no little political influence with Charles II. Among his works was a frequently republished "Christian Astrology". Shakespeare (in King Lear) and Milton were acquainted with and advocated astrological theories, and Robert Fludd was a representative of the art at the royal court. Francis Bacon, it is true, sought to win adherents for a purified and reformed astrology in order to destroy the existing form of the art. It was Jonathan Swift who in his clever satire, "Prediction for the Year 1708 by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq", which deserves to be read even at the present day, gave the deathblow to the belief of English society in astrology. The last astrologer of importance on the Continent was Jean-Baptiste Marin, who issued "Astrologia Gallica" (1661). The greatly misunderstood Swiss naturalist Theophrastus Paracelsus was an opponent of astrology, and not its advocate, as was formerly inferred from writings erroneously attributed to him. The rapid growth of experimental investigation in the natural sciences in those countries which had been almost ruined, socially and politically; by the Thirty Years War completely banished the astrological parasites from society. Once more astrology fell to the level of a vulgar superstition, cutting a sorry figure among the classes that still had faith in the occult arts. The peasant held fast to his belief in natural astrologist and to this belief the progress of the art of printing and the spread of popular education contributed largely. For not only were there disseminated among the rural poor "farmer's almanacs", which contained information substantiated by the peasant's own experience, but the printing-presses also supplied the peasant with a great mass of cheap and easily understood books containing much fantastic astrological nonsense.

The remarkable physical discoveries of recent decades, in combination with the growing desire for an elevated philosophico-religious conception of the world and the intensified sensitiveness of the modern cultured man -- all these together have caused astrology to emerge from its hiding place among paltry superstitions. The growth of occultistic ideas, which should, perhaps, not be entirely rejected, is reintroducing astrology into society. This is especially true of judicial astrology, which, however, by its constant encouragement of fatalistic views unsettles the belief in a Divine Providence. At present Judicial astrology is not justified by any scientific facts. To put forward the theory of ether waves as an argument for astrological assertions is not in accord with the methods of sober science. Judicial astrology, therefore, can claim a place only in the history of human error, while, however, as an historical fact, it reflects much light upon the shadowy labyrinth of the human soul.

ASTROLOGY AMONG THE ANCIENT JEWS

The Bible is free from any base admixture of astrological delusions. There is no reason for dragging the passage Josue x, 12, into historito-astrological discussions; the facts there related --the standing still of the sun in the valley of Gabaon and of the moon in the valley of Ajalon--are of purely astronomical interest. Only a few indicatiors in the Old Testament suggest that, notwithstanding the Divine prohibitinn (Ex., xxii, 18, Deut, xviii, 10, etc.), the Jews, especially after they were exposed to the influence of Egyptian and BabyIonian errors, may have practised astrology in secret, along with other superstitions. The Prophets warned the people against the pernicious ascendancy of soothsayers and diviners of dreams (Jer., xxix, 8; Zach., X. 1-2), among whom astrologers were included. Thus in the Book of Wisdom (xiii, l-2) it is said: "All men are vain . . . who . . . have either . . . the swift air, or the circle of stars, or the great water, or the sun and the moon, to be the gods that rule the world." The Book of Job, a writing of importance in the history of astronomy and star nomenclature, is also free from astrological fatalism. But to this fatalism the Jews had a natural predisposition, when Hellenism gained footing in the Holy Land it was accompanied by the spread of astrology, largely among the learned, the "philosophers", at whom even in an ealier age the passage in Wisdom had probably been aimed. Again, Isaias (xlvii, 13-14) derides the Babylonian astrologers ( Let now the astrologers, stand and save thee, they that gazed at the stars . . . Behold they are as stubble fire hath burnt them"), and Jeremias exclaims (x, 2): "Be not afraid of the signs of heaven, which the heathen fear".

After the Exile, however, astrology spread so rapidly, above all among the educated classes of Israel, that as early as the Hellenistic era a Jewish astrological literature existed, which showed a strong Persico-Chaldean influence. The prophets had been opponents of astrology and of a relapse into fatalism. If, when they were phophesying of the great events to come, the contemplation of nature, and especially of the stars, filled them with sympathetic enthusiasm, by reason of their poetic inspiration and power of divination, this had nothing to do with astrology. On the other hand it does not appear impossible that in Daniel's time exiled Jews practised astrology. Judging from Daniel, v, 7, 11, it is possible that the prophet himself held a high rank among the astrologers of the Babylonian court. After the Exile an attempt was made to separate astrology from sorcery and forbidden magical arts, by denying a direct Biblical prohibition of astrology and by pretending to find encouragement for such speculations in Genesis, i, 14. It is a characteristic fact that in ancient Israel astrology received no direct encouragement, but that its spread was associated with the relapse of many Jews into the old Semitic star-worship which was aided by Persico-Chaldean influence. For this Jeremias is a witness (vii, 18; xix, 13; xliv, 17-19, 25). Co-incident with the spread of old astrology in old Israel and the decline of the nation was the diffusion of demonology. The Jewish prayers to the planets, in the form in which they are preserved with others in Codex Paris, 2419 (folio 277r), came into existence at the time when Hellenism first flourished in the East, namely, the third and second centuries B.C. In these prayers special angels and demons are assigned to the different planets; the greatest and most powerful planet Saturn having only one angel, Ktetoel, and one demon, Beelzebub. These planetary demons regulated the destiny of men.

The most notable witness for astrological superstitions in the era of the decadence of Israel is the apocryphal "Book of the Secrets of Henoch", which, notwithstanding its perplexing phantasies, is a rich treasure-house of information concerning cosmological and purely astronomical problems in the Hellenic East. The author of "Henoch" is said by a Samaritan writer to be the discoverer of astronomy, and the book contains valuable explanations in regard to astronomy and astrology at the time of the Machabean dynasty. The evidences for astrologic demonology in ancient Israel, when the nation was affected by Hellenism and Babylonian decadence, are found in the latter part of the "Book of the Secrets of Henoch"-- the "Book of the Course of the Lights of Heaven"-- as also previously in the fourth section which treats of Henoch's wanderings "through the secret the places of the world". This latter is perhaps the archetype of Dante's "Divine Comedy". According to the "Book of Henoch" the human race derived its knowledge of astrology and "lunar sorceries", together with all other forms of magic, from the seven or eight spirits from whom come the chief sins of mankind (Henoch, i, 8). It is, moreover, worthy of note that the "Book of Henoch" must be regarded as a witness to Jewish national prophecy. It does not betray the ascendancy of Hellenism in any such degree as do the verses of the "Sibylline Oracles", which were recorded in the old Ionic dialect during the reign of Ptolemy Physcon (145-112 B.C.) by Jewish scholars in Egypt, and probably at a later date in the Holy Land itself.

The astrological demonology of the Jews was continually fed from Egyptian and Babylonian sources, and formed in its turn the basis for the astrology of certain neo-Platonic sects. Together with the Parsee astrology, it was the Gnostics and Priscillianists. The influence of Hellenistic Judaism is also plainly visible in the philosophic system of the Harranites, or Sabeans. It is only necessary to mention here the high honour paid by the Sabeans to the seven planetary gods who regulate the fate of man. According to the belief of the every planet is inhabited by a spirit as star-soul, and the deciphering of the figures of the conjunction and opposition of the planets made the prediction of future destiny possible. Other elements of late Judaic astrology were adopted by the earliest known Christian writer on astrology, the Byzantine court-astrologer, Hephaestion of Thebes. The didactic astrological poem of Johanes Kamteros (about the middle of the twelfth century), which was dedicated to the Byzantine Emperor Manual I, appears to have heen drawn from Judaeo-Gnostic sources. It is a striking fact that as "demonized astrology" gained ground in ancient Israel -- and this was a branch of astrology in great favour among the Jewish scholars of the age of the Ptolemies, and much practised by them--the worship of the stars ventured once more to show itself openly. It was not until the appearance of Christianity that the preposterous, and, in part, pathologically degenerate, teachings of the Judaic astrology were swept away.

The lower the Jewish nation sank in the scale of religion and civilization the greater was the power gained by the erratic doctrines of astrology and the accompanying belief in demonology. The earthly labours of the Saviour purified this noxious atmosphere. The New Testament is the opponent of astrology, which, by encouraging an apathetic fatalisrn, prevents the development of and elevating and strengthening trust in a Divine Providence. The "Star of the Wise Men" (Matt., ii, 2, 7, 9, sq.) cannot be identified by astronomy; perhaps, according to Ideler (Handbuch der mathemat. und techn. Chron.), the conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn is meant. But this hypothesis, which would be of decisive importance in settling the year of the birth of Christ, still lacks convincing proof. It finds a curious support in Abrabanel's comment that, according to Jewish astrologers, a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was a sign of the Messias. It must, however, remain questionable whether and to what extent a prediction of Jewish astrologers, or Kere schamajim, is to be considered as realized in the "Star of the Wise Men" (Matt., ii, 2, etc). The first heralds of Christianity, the Twelve Apostles, at once began a bold war against the rank growths of superstition. They also battled with the propensity of the people for astrology and in its stead planted in the hearts of men a belief in the power and goodness of God. Supported by the teachings of the Scriptures, the Church Fathers became powerful opponents of astrology and attacked with determination the bewildering and demoralizing ascendancy of its devotees. The assertion therefore justified that the Book remained free from the taint of astrological delusion. The passion for astrology evinced by decadent Judaism, and preserved in the Bible, is only one more proof of the propensity of Semitic nations for fatalistic superstitions and of the purifying victorious power of the ethics of Christianity.

Campbell Thompson's monumental work, "The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon" (London, 1902), may be consulted for the valuable facts which throw light upon the dependence of the astrology of the ancient Jews on the that of Babylon. "A special branch of astrology which was zealously cultivated in Babylon was medical astrology, or the astrological prognosis of disease." Medical astrology is important in regard to the question of astrology in the Bible. It was greatly favoured by the spread of empirical treatment of disease among the astrologers. The Bible itself gives very little information concerning this form of the science, but subordinate Jewish sources, above all the Talmud, allow conclusions to be drawn as to its importance. Medical astrology, derived from Arabo-Judaic sources, flourished again at the time of the Renaissance. Its professional representatives were then called "Iatromathematicians", after the mathernatical mode of arriving at conclusions in their "art of healing". [Cf. Karl Sudhoff, Jatromathematiker, vornehml. des XV. und XVI. Jahrhund., in Abhand. zur Geseh. der Medizin (Breslau, 1902), pt. II; Wilh. Ebstein, Die Medizin im Alten Testament (Stuttgart, 1901); Gideon Precher, Das Tranzendentae, Magie im Talmud ((Vienna, 1850); Trasen, Sitten der alten Hebräer (Breslau, 1853).]

The Babylonians, chiefly in relation to medical astrology, distinguished between a spherical method of calculation (from the point of view of the observer to the stars, i.e. subjectively), and a cosmical method (from the relative position of the stars, i.e. objectively). The former was used in the prognosis deduced from the observation of the twelve houses of the heavens; the latter in that drawn from the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

Max Jacobi

Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume II

Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: www.NewAdvent.com

Astronomy in the Bible

No systematic observations of the heavenly bodies were made by the Jews. Astral worship was rife in Palestine, and they could hardly have attended closely to its objects without yielding to its seductions. Astronomy was, under these circumstances, inseparable from astrolatry, and anathemas of the prophets were not carelessly uttered. As the most glorious works of the Almighty, the celestial luminaries were indeed celebrated in the Scriptures in passages thrilling with rapture; but the appeal to them for practical purposes was reduced to a minimum. Even the regulation of times and seasons was largely empirical. The Jews used a lunar year. It began, for religious purposes, with the new moon next after the spring equinox, and consisted normally of twelve months, or 354 days. The Jewish calendar, however, depended upon the course of the sun, since the festivals it appointed were in part agricultural celebrations. Some process of adjustment had then to be resorted to, and the obvious one was chosen of adding a thirteenth, or intercalary, month whenever the discrepancy between the ripening of the crops and the fixed dates of the commemorative feasts became glaringly apparent. Before the time of Solomon, the Jews appear to have begun their year in the autumn; and the custom, revived for civil purposes about the fifth century B.C., was adopted in the systematized religious calendar of the fourth century of our era.

Both the ritual and civil day commenced in the evening, about half an hour after sunset. Its subdivisions were left indeterminate. The Old Testament makes no mention of what we call hours; and it refers to the measurement of time, if at all, only in the narrative of the miracle wrought by Isaias in connection with the sundial of Achaz (IV Kings, xx, 9-11). In the New Testament, the Roman practice of counting four night-watches has superseded the antique triple division, and the day, as among the Greeks, consists of twelve equal parts. These are the "temporary hours" which still survive in the liturgy of the Church. Since they spanned the interval from sunrise to sunset, their length varied with the season of the year, from 49 to 71 minutes. Corresponding nocturnal hours, too, seem to have been partially used in the time of the Apostles (Acts, xxiii, 23).

As might have been expected, the Sacred Books convey no theory of celestial appearances. The descriptive phrases used in them are conformed to the elementary ideas naturally presenting themselves to a primitive people. Thus, the earth figures as an indefinitely extended circular disk, lying between the realm of light above and the abyss of darkness beneath. The word firmamentum, by which the Hebrew rakia is translated in the Vulgate, expressed the notion of a solid, transparent vault, dividing the "upper waters" from the seas, springs, and rivers far below. Through the agency of the flood-gates, however, the waters sustained by the firmament were, in due measure, distributed over the earth. The first visibility after sunset of the crescent moon determined the beginning of each month; and this was the only appeal to the skies made for the purposes of the Jewish ritual. Eclipses of the sun and moon are perhaps vaguely referred to among the signs of doom enumerated by the Prophets Joel and Amos, who may have easily have enhanced their imagery from personal experience, since modern calculations show solar totalities to have been visible in Patestine in the years 831, 824, and 763 B.C., and the moon reddened by immersion in the earth's shadow is not an uncommon sight in any part of the world. But the passages in question cannot be literally associated with mere passing phenomena. The prophets aimed at something higher than intimidation. An express warning against ignoble panic was indeed uttered by Jeremias in the words: "Be not afraid of the signs of heaven which the heavens fear", (x, 2). The stellar vault, conceived to be situated above the firmanent, is compared by Isaias to a tent stretched out by the Most High.

ASTRONOMICAL ALLUSIONS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

The "host of heaven", a frequently recurring Scriptural expression, has both a general and a specific meaning. It designates, in some passages, the entire array of stars; in others it particularly applies to the sun, moon, planets, and certain selected stars; the worship of which was introduced from Babylonia under the later kings of Israel.

The Planets

Venus and Saturn are the only planets expressedly mentioned in the Old Testament.

Isaias (xiv, 12) apostrophizes the Babylonian Empire under the unmistakable type of Helal (Lucifer in the Vulgate), "son of the morning".

Saturn is no less certainly represented by the star Kaiwan, adored by the reprobate Israelites in the desert (Amos, v, 26). The same word (interpreted to mean "steadfast") frequently designates, in the Babylonian inscriptions, the slowest-moving planet; while Sakkuth, the divinity associated with the star by the prophet, is an alternative appellation for Ninib, who, as a Babylonian planet-god, was merged with Saturn. The ancient Syrians and Arabs, too, called Saturn Kaiwan, the corresponding terms in the Zoroastrian Bundahish being Kevan. The other planets are individualized in the Bible only by implication. The worship of gods connected with them is denounced, but without any manifest intention of refering to the heavenly bodies. Thus, Gad and Meni (Isaias, lxv, 11) are, no doubt, the "greater and the lesser Fortune" typified throughout the the East by Jupiter and Venus; Neba, the tutelary deity of Borsippa (Isaias xlvi, 1), shone in the sky as Mercury, and Nergal, transplanted frorn Assyria to Kutha (IV Kings, xvii, 30), as Mars.

Kimah and Kesil

The uranograpy of the Jews is fraught with perplexity. Some half-dozen star-groups are named in the Scriptures, but authorities differ widely as to their identity. In a striking passage the Prophet Amos (v, 8) glorifies the Creator as "Him that made Kimah and Kesil", rendered in the Vulgate as Arcturus and Orion. Now Kimah certainly does not mean Arcturus. The word, which occurs twice in the Book of Job (ix, 9; xxxviii, 31), is treated in the Septuagint version as equivalent to Pleiades. This, also, is the meaning given to it in the Talmud and throughout Syrian literature; it is supported by etymological evidences, the Hebrew term being obviously related to the Arabic root kum (accumulate), and the Assyrian kamu (to bind); while the "chains of Kimah", referred to in the sacred text, not inaptly figure the coercive power imparting unity to a multiple object. The associated constellation Kesil is doubtless no other than our Orion. Yet, in the first of the passages in Job where it figures, the Septuagint gives Herper; in the second, the Vulgate quite irrelevantly inserts Arcturus; Karstens Niebuhr (1733-1815) understood Kesil to mean Sirius; Thomas Hyde (1636-1703) held that it indicated Canopus. Now kesil signifies in Hebrew "impious", adjectives expressive of the stupid criminality which belongs to the legendary character of giants; and the stars of Orion irresistibly suggest a huge figure striding across the sky. The Arabs accordingly named the constellation Al-gebbar, "the giant", the Syriac equivalent being Gabbara in old Syriac version of the Bible known as Peshitta. We may then safely admit that Kimah and Kesil did actually designate the Pleiades and Orion. But further interpretations are considerably more obscure.

Ash

In the Book of Job -- the most distinctively astronomical part of the Bible -- mention is made, with other stars, of Ash and Ayish, almost certainly divergent forms of the same word. lts signification remains an enigma. The Vulgate and Septuagint inconsistently render it "Arcturus" and Hesperus". Abenezra (1092-1167), however, the learned Rabbi of Toledo, gave such strong reasons for Ash, or Ayish, to mean the Great Bear, that the opinion, though probably erroneous, is still prevalent. lt was chiefly grounded on the resemblance between ash and the Arabic na 'ash, "a bier", applied to the four stars of the Wain, the three in front figuring as mourners, under the title of Benât na 'ash, "daughtters of the bier". But Job, too, speaks of the "children of Ayish", and the inference seems irresistible that the same star-group was similarly referred to in both cases. Yet there is large room for doubt. Modern philologists do not admit the alleged connection of Ayish with na 'ash, nor is any funereal association apparent in Book of Job. On the other hand, Professor Schiaparelli draws attention to the fact that ash denotes "moth" in the Old Testament, and that the folded wings of the insect are closely imitated in their triangular shape by the doubtly aligned stars of the Hyades. Now Ayish in the Peshitta is translated Iyutha, a constellation mentioned by St. Ephrem and other Syriac writers, and Schiaparelli's learned consideration of the various indications afforded by Arabic and Syriac literature makes it reasonably certain that Iyutha authentically signifies Aldebaran, the great red star in the head of the Bull, with its children, the rainy Hyades. It is true that Hyde, Ewald, other scholars have adopted Capella and the Kids as representative of Iyutha, and therefore of "Ayish and her children"; but the view involves many incongruities.

Hadre Theman (Chambers of the South)

The glories of the sky adverted to the Book of Job include a sidereal landscape vaguely described as "the chambers [i.e. penetralia] of the south". The phrase, according to Schiaparelli, refers to some assemblage of brilliant stars, rising 20 degrees at most above the southern horizon in Palestine about the year 750 B.C. (assumed as the date of the Patriarch Job), and, taking account of the changes due to precession, he points out the stellar pageant formed by the Ship, the Cross, and the Centaur meets the required conditions. Sirius, although at the date in question it culminated at an altitude of 41 degrees, may possibly have been thought of as belonging to the "chambers of the south"; otherwise, this spendid object would appear to be ignored in the Bible.

Mezarim

Job opposes to the "chambers of the south", as the source of cold, an asterism named Mezarim (xxxvii, 9). Both the Vugate and the Septuagint render this word by Arcturus, evidently in mistake (the blunder is not uncommon) for Arctos. The Great Bear circled in those days much more closely round the pole than it now does; its typical northern character survives in the Latin word septentrio (from septem triones, the seven stars of the Wain); and Schiaparelli concludes from the dual form of mezarim, that the Jews, like the Phoenicians, were acquainted with the Little, as well as with the Great, Bear. He identifies the word as the plural, or dual, of mizreh, "a winnowing-fan", an instrument figured by the seven stars of the Wain, quite as accurately as the Ladle of the Chinese or the Dipper of popular American parlance.

Mazzaroth

Perhaps the most baffling riddle in Biblical star-nomenclature is that presented by the word Mazzaroth or Mazzaloth (Job, xxxxiii, 31, 32; IV Kings, xxiii. 5) usually, though not unanimously admitted to be phonetic variants. As to their signification, opinions are hopelessly divergent. The authors of the Septuagint transcribed, without translating, the ambiguous expression; the Vulgate gives for its equivalent Lucifer in Job, the Signs of the Zodiac in the Book of Kings. St. John Chrysostom adopted the latter meaning, noting, however, that many of his contemporaries interpreted Mazzaroth as Sirius. But this idea soon lost vogue while the zodiacal explanation gained wide currency. It is, indeed, at first sight, extremely plausible. Long before the Exodus the Twelve Signs were established in Euphratean regions much as we know them now. Although never worshipped in a primary sense, they may well have been held sacred as the abode of deities. The Assyrian manzallu (sometimes written manzazu), "station", occurs in the Babylonian Creation tablets with the import "mansions of the gods"; and the word appears to be etymologically akin to Mazzaloth, which in rabbinical Hebrew signifies primarily the Signs of the Zodiac, secondarily the planets. The lunar Zodiac, too, suggests itself in this connection. The twenty-eight "mansions of the moon" (menazil al-kamar) were the leading feature of Arabic sky-lore, and they subserved astrological purposes among many Oriental peoples. They might, accordingly, have belonged to the apparatus of superstition used by the soothsayers who were extirpated in Judah, together with the worship of the Mazzaroth, by King Josias, about 621 B.C. Yet no such explanation can be made to fit in with the form of expression met with in the Book of Job (xxxviii, 32). Speaking in the person of the Almighty, the Patriarch asks, "Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in its time?" -- clearly in allusion to a periodical phenomenon, such as the brilliant visibility of Lucifer, or Hesperus. Professor Schiaparelli then recurs to the Vulgate rendering of this passage. He recognizes in Mazzaroth the planet Venus in her double aspect of morning and evening star, pointing out that the luminary designated in the Book of Kings, with the sun and moon, and the "host of heaven" must evidently be next in brightness to the chief light-givers. Further, the sun, moon, and Venus constitute the great astronomical triad of Babylonia, the sculptured representations of which frequently include the "host of heaven" typified by a crowd of fantastic animal-divinities. And since the astral worship anathematized by the prophets of Israel was unquestionably of Euphratean origin, the designation of Mazzaroth as the third member of the Babylonian triad is a valuable link in the evidence. Still, the case remains one of extreme difficulty.

Nachash

Notwithstanding the scepticism of recent commentators, it appears fairly certain that the "fugitive serpent" of Job, xxvi, 13 (coluber tortuosus in the Vulgate) does really stand for the circumpolar reptile. The Euphratean constellation Draco is of hoary antiquity, and would quite probably have been familiar to Job. On the other hand, Rahab (Job, ix, 13; xxi, 12), translated "whale" in the Septuagint, is probably of legendary or symbolical import.

Summary

The subjoined list gives (largely on Schiaparelli's authority) the best-warranted interpretations of biblical star-names:

* Kimah, the Pleiades;

* the Kesil, Orion;

* Ash, or Ayish, the Hyades;

* Mezarim, the Bears (Great and Little);

* Mazzaroth, Venus (Lucifer and Hesperus);

* Hadre theman -- "the chambers of the south" -- Canopus, the Southern Cross, and a Centauri;

* Nachash, Draco.

ASTRONOMICAL ALLUSIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The New Testament is virtually devoid of astronomical allusions. The "Star of the Magi" can scarcely be regarded as an objective phenomenon; it was, at least, inconspicuous to ordinary notice. Kepler, however, advanced, in 1606, the hypothesis that a remarkable of Jupiter and Saturn, which occurred in May of the year 7 B.C., was the celestial sign followed by the Wise Men. Revived in 1821 by Dr. Münter, the Lutheran Bishop of Zealand, this opinion was strongly advocated in 1826 by C.L. Ideler (Handbuch der Chronologie, II, 399). But the late Dr. Pritchard's investigation (Smith's Dict. of the Bible, Memoirs Roy. Astr. Society, XXV, 119) demonstrated its inadequacy to fulfil the requirements of the Gospel narrative.

Agnes M. Clerke

Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume II

Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: www.NewAdvent.org