Early Christian Views on Astrology: From Clement of Alexandria to Medieval Practices

Clement of Alexandria, Extract 54

To each planet corresponds an angel and a Christian and angelic intelligence opposed to a demonic power, and thus an incessant struggle is unleashed from which man can escape through baptism. The 12 signs of the Zodiac and the seven stars that follow them rise now in conjunction, now in opposition [...] But both the stars and the powers are of different types: some are benefic, some malefic, some right, others left [...] From this contrast and from this battle of the powers, the Lord saves us and gives us peace from the battle of angels and powers, in which some fight for us, others against us.

Baptism and Free Will

Baptism, understood as the awakening of the Self bearing full and profound individual knowledge, possesses according to Christian doctrines a transcendent content hierarchically superior to the stars and thus capable of breaking the natural circle of destiny with the consequent conquest of free will. Until baptism, Destiny is real, but after baptism, astrologers no longer have reason. But it is not only the washing that liberates but the knowledge of who we were, who we have become, where we were or where we were placed, what we tend toward and from what we are liberated, the knowledge of what birth is and what rebirth is.

Apart from these rare fragments, which allow us to partially reconstruct the thought of the Alexandrian catechetical school regarding astrology, it is useless to deny an evident silence, at least partial, on the part of Origen and Clement of Alexandria regarding astrological doctrines. Compared to other Church Fathers like Tertullian or Saint Augustine, here astrological theses are never completely denied, nor however fully confirmed.

Tertullian and Saint Augustine

Very different from Origen and Clement of Alexandria is the position of Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine had indeed dedicated himself in his youth to Manichaean astrology as he declares in the Confessions. Of such astrologers, Augustine denounces the denial of salvation and the blind fatalism used as excuse and shelter for their own vices:

"The gift of salvation, these strive to destroy entirely saying: 'From heaven comes the inevitable cause of sin' and: 'It is the work of Venus,' or of Saturn, or of Mars. Evidently they aim with this to render without fault man, who is flesh and blood and proud rot, and guilty the creator and regulator of heaven and the stars."

Later in the City of God, Saint Augustine dedicates himself to a long attack against Astrology which however, as Thorndike notes, fails in its key points. Saint Augustine indeed never denies the influence that stars can have on man but instead concentrates on secondary details in an attempt at demonstration by absurdity that in the end does not seem to manage to complete convincingly.

Medieval Shadows

It happens thus that apart from three or four scholars in the span of five hundred years, like Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Bede the Venerable, astrology becomes so barbarized that even the zodiacal signs disappear. The destiny of the person depends on the day of the week on which he was born. Predictions on the entire year are thus drawn simply from the day of the week with which it begins.

For example, we read in a tenth-century manuscript: "If the calends of January fall on the Lord's Day, then winter will be good, balanced and mild, spring windy and summer dry. Good the harvest, cotton grows; honey abundant; the old will die and peace will be made."

Similarly, other predictions are drawn from the day on which thunder is heard, or from the blowing of wind on Christmas day. Auspices on the nativity of children are drawn simply from the day of the week on which they are born and placing as planetary dominant of the child the planet reigning.