Medieval Cosmology: Microcosm and Macrocosm Harmony

This period takes up some classical and traditional themes that will later become the foundation for many of our discussions. The first fundamental aspect, which is an important point of subsequent astrological speculation, is that the Universe is made to measure of Man:

"For grace of the human creature
God made the heavens and the terrestrial world,
creating in her divine figure
in likeness of his worthy form,
placing her in the profound horizon,
where she damns herself, or becomes benign."
— Acerba, Book II, Chapter I

This is a theme that will prove fundamental later and that takes up a theme that was ancient, but which flourishes only in this period: the harmony and specularity of the Micro and Macrocosm. Historically, this theme was reintroduced by Bernard Silvestris around the mid-12th century with the book Cosmographia, but was properly developed by Saint Hildegard of Bingen, scientist, philosopher and prophet, who begins one of her most famous books with the vision of Cosmic Man:

"And I saw a Man of such height that from the summit of the clouds of heaven he reached to touch the abyss: so that his shoulders upward were above the clouds in the most serene ether; from the shoulders down to the loins, under the clouds, he was in another white cloud, from the loins to the knees, in the air that immediately surrounds the earth; from the knees to the calves in the earth; from the calves down to the soles of the feet in the waters of the abyss: for he stood upon the abyss. He had turned toward the East and looked eastward and toward the South."

Hildegard thus divides the Man-Universe into 5 fundamental regions: three celestial, one terrestrial and one subterranean. This will be the prototype of a classical cosmographic subdivision that will continue until the mid-seventeenth century. Like her, Dante will subdivide the structure of the Universe into:

An elementary world: subterranean and devoid of intelligence and the light of the Sun, identified as Dante's Inferno.
A material world: where human action takes place and which includes Purgatory. In this world forms are material and sensible.
A planetary world: where the experience of the Seven Planets unfolds, where there are still individual forms.
A stellar world: relating to the Fixed Stars where spirits assume increasingly superpersonal and universal aspects. In this world, for example, spirits are seen as lights lit by a blazing sun, or angels are seen arranged in nine circles around God.
The Empyrean: a point of transcendence between the Human and the Divine, where the White Rose resides. From the Empyrean, Love spreads and through the primum mobile transmits motion to all Creation, to every star, and from here to every planet, or heaven, or sphere.

The planets, moreover, are not simple inanimate instruments, but are the physical manifestation of entities or celestial intelligences that receive and gather divine virtues and spread them to the world.

"The principle that moves these wheels
Are separate intelligences:
They do not stand remote from divine splendor,
They do not cease the acts of moving powerfully,
Our minds cannot be hidden
From their intellects of shining virtue."
— Acerba, Book I, Chapter II

The virtues of the one God thus spread and are gathered by angelic intelligences to which kindred spirits unite and which are arranged hierarchically according to a predetermined order that is thus synthesized by Dante in his description of Paradise. These celestial intelligences then spread their virtues on earth, influencing and inspiring human souls that thus follow the inspiration or inclination of the planets without, however, being bound to them.

Here the two poets are the full expression of the preparation for the Renaissance proper; they, while accepting and considering astrology fundamental as a form of understanding realities and universal connections, or as a form of metaphysical key, are fully opposed to divinatory and fatalistic astrology. Dante places in the fourth ditch of the Eighth Circle the soothsayers and fatalistic astrologers like Guido Bonatti and Michael Scot with their faces turned behind their shoulders by the law of retribution. Similarly, Cecco d'Ascoli paraphrases about soothsayers and witches:

"Each of these, in the full moon
calling spirits with their muses
know the future by chance and fortune:
By noises of enchanted palms,
By the forked bone that closed,
these damned souls know the future [...]"
— Acerba, Book IV, Chapter III

Both, in fact, while being deeply convinced of the influence of intelligences corresponding to planets and stars, are also convinced of the existence of two realities hierarchically superior to all stars and planets: the will of Man and the will of God. Cecco d'Ascoli will say that the influence of planets acts only if the soul becomes vile, servile and thieving:

"[The Stars] Do not make necessity by moving each,
But well dispose human creature,
By quality which the soul following,
Abandons free will and becomes vile
Servile and thieving [...]"
— Acerba, Book II, Chapter I

While by its nature it should be a dominating lady over the other stars:

"[...] But the beautiful soul similar to the maker,
By its valor, can cast shadow on these,
If its gentle will does not incline.
When influence comes from those,
If its virtue is not scattered by these,
Then it is lady over all stars"
— Acerba, Book I, Chapter II

The same words are spoken by Dante in the Divine Comedy in the XVI canto of Purgatorio:

"The heavens initiate your movements;
I do not say all, but, granted that I say it,
light is given to you for good and evil,
and free will; which, if it endures
fatigue in the first battles with heaven,
then conquers all, if well nourished."

Here then are the astrological positions, especially in relation to free will. However, Cecco d'Ascoli will suffer the process of the Inquisition, officially precisely for his astrological positions, and will be condemned to be burned in Florence in 1327 with one of the most mysterious and disconcerting sentences of the early Inquisition. Officially, in fact, Cecco d'Ascoli...