Introduction
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Notes Introduction 1. William Lilly, Christian Astrology (London: Printed by John Macock, 1659), b. 2. Lilly, ‘The Epistle Dedicatory’, in Christian Astrology. 3. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy,trans.Donald Tyson (St. Paul: Llewellyn Publication, 2004), p. 5. 4. S. A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486) (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998), 9>5–9>3, pp. 494–6, 2>75, p. 395. 5. Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy,p.5. 6. Giambattista della Porta, Natural Magick, ed. Derek J. Price (New York: Basic Books, 1958; reprint of London: Printed for Thomas Young and Samuel Speed, 1658), p. 8. 7. A. I. Sabra, ‘Situating Arabic Science’, Isis, 87 (December, 1996), pp. 654–70 (655). 8. It was attributed erroneously to the astronomer and mathematician Maslama al-Majriti (d. c.398/1008), an attribution made in the Muqaddima of Ibn Khaldun. It has become widely accepted that it was penned by Maslama al-Qurtubi as identified by Maribel Fierro and confirmed by Godefroid de Callataÿ. See David Pingree, ‘Some Sources of the Ghayat al-hakim– ’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 43 (1980), pp. 1–15 (1). Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad– Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddima, ed. Darwish Juwaydi (Beirut: al- maktaba al- asriyya, 2000), pp. 483, 507. Mushegh Asatrian, ‘Ibn Khaldun on Magic and the Occult’, Iran and the Caucasus, 7/1 (2003), pp. 73–123 (97–9). Maribel Fierro, ‘Batinism in al-Andalus. Maslama b. Qasim al-Qurtubi Author of the Rutbat al-hakim and the Ghayat al-hakim’, Studia Islamica,84 (1996), pp. 87–112 (106). Godefroid de Callataÿ, ‘Magia en al-Andalus: Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’, Rutbat al-H. akim y Ghayat al-Hakim (Picatrix)’, Al-Qantara, 34/2 (2013), pp. 297–344. 9. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences (London: Routledge, 1970), p. 33. 10. Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 37. 11. Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 36. 12. Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 33. 13. Aristotle, ‘Physics’, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 184a10–13. 14. The use of the term ‘occult’ has been rightly problematized because of the anachronism associated with its twentieth-century pejorative use in which occult interests are distinguished from pragmatic, rational and scientific pur- suits; see Gunther Oestmann, H. Darrel Rutkin and Kocku von Stuckard, Horoscopes and Public Spheres: Essays on the History of Astrology (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), p. 4. However, it is used here in the meaning intended by the writers discussed: as forces or elements hidden from immediate 201 202 Notes sensation. The magnet’s attraction of iron was often included among occult forces. In De Operationibus occultis naturae, Thomas Aquinas speaks of cer- tain ‘occult workings’ in inferior bodies (quaedam autem actiones occultae sunt corporum inferiorum); see Thomas Aquinas, ‘De Operationibus occultis natu- rae’, in Sancti Thomae de Aquino opera omnia: tomus 43 (Rome: St. Thomas Aquinas Foundation, 1976), p. 184. The natural philosopher Marsilio Ficino describes some astral and natural forces as occult (virtutes a stellis occultas; occultae proprietas); see Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life: A Critical Edi- tion and Translation with Introduction and Notes, trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (New York: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies in conjunction with the Renaissance Society of America, 1989), pp. 298, 302. Whereas Pico refers to them in his Disputationes adversus astrologiam divina- tricem as ‘occultiores afflatus’; see Pico della Mirandola, Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem Libri I–V,2vols.,ed.EugenioGarin(Florence: Vallecchi Editore, 1946), I, p. 178. This is the sense intended by Dee in his Propaedeumata Aphoristica when he speaks of ‘secret influences’ (secretiores fuit influentiae); see John Dee, John Dee on Astronomy: Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558 and 1568), ed. and trans. Wayne Shumaker, and introductory essay by J. L. Heilbron (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), XXV, pp. 132–3. 15. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971). 16. Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2002); Frances Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London and New York: Routledge, 1979). 17. Allen G. Debus, Man and Nature in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 2. 18. Stanley Tambiah, Magic, Science and the Scope of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 140. 19. Richard Kieckhefer, ‘The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic’, The American Historical Review, 99 (June, 1994), pp. 813–36 (814). 20. William A. Green, ‘Periodization in European World History’, Journal of World History, 3 (Spring, 1992), pp. 13–53. 21. Frank L. Borchardt, ‘The Magus as a Renaissance Man’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 21 (Spring, 1990), pp. 57–76 (62). 22. Eugenio Garin, ‘Magic and Astrology in the Civilisation of the Renaissance’, in Articles on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology, ed. Brian P. Levack (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1992), pp. 83–104 (85–6). 23. Garin, ‘Magic and Astrology’, p. 153. 24. Yates, Giordano Bruno, p. 18. 25. Nicolas Weill-Parot, ‘Astral Magic and Intellectual Changes (Twelfth– Fifteenth Centuries)’, in The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), pp. 167–87 (178). 26. Luca Bianchi, ‘Continuity and Change in the Aristotelian Tradition’, in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 49–71 (49–50). Notes 203 27. Paul O. Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, trans. Virginia Conant (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943); H. Darrel Rutkin, ‘The Physics and Metaphysics of Talismans (Imagines Astronomicae) in Marsilio Ficino’s De vita libritres: A Case Study in (Neo)Platonism, Aristotelianism and the Esoteric Tradition’, in Platonismus und Esoterik in Byzantinischem Mittelalter und Italienischer Renaissance, ed. Helmut Seng (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2013), pp. 149–74; H. Darrel Rutkin, ‘Astrology, Natural Philosophy and the History of Science c.1250–1700: Studies Toward an Interpretation of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Disputationes adversus astrologiam div- inatricem’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Indiana University, 2002); Nicholas Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 1988). 28. John Monfasani, ‘Marsilio Ficino and the Plato–Aristotle Controversy’, in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J. B. Allen, Valery Rees and Martin Davies (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 179–202 (189–90); Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘Giovanno Pico della Mirandola and His Sources’, in L’Opera e il pensiero di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nella storia dell’Umanismo, vol. 1 (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1965), pp. 35–133 (54–6, 58, 61–2); Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy, pp. 23–5. 29. Michael D. Bailey, ‘The Age of Magicians: Periodization in the History of European Magic’, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, 3 (Summer, 2008), pp. 1–28 (18–19). 30. Bailey, ‘The Age of Magicians’, p. 15. 1 Arabic Theories of Astral Influences: Abu Ma‘shar al-Balkhi 1. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Science and Civilization in Islam (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1987), Chapter 3, p. 196. The dates of Abu Ma‘shar’s birth and death are not certain due to discrepancies in several primary sources; see Charles Burnett, ‘Abu Ma‘shar’, Encyclopaedia of Islam, EI3. 2. Charles Burnett, ‘Abu Ma‘shar (A.D. 787–886) and His Major Texts on Astrology’, in Kayd: Studies in the History of Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrology in Memory of David Pingree, ed. G. Gnoli and A. Panaino (Rome: Instituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 2009), pp. 17–27 (18). 3. Burnett, ‘Abu Ma‘shar (A.D. 787–886) and His Major Texts on Astrology’, p. 19. 4. Burnett, ‘Abu Ma‘shar’, EI3. 5. Richard Lemay, Abu Ma‘shar and Latin Aristotelianism in the Twelfth Century: The Recovery of Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy through Arabic Astrology (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1962), p. 45. 6. Ibn al-Nadim, Kitab al-Fihrist, 2 vols. (Beirut: Khayats, 1964), I, p. 277. 7. Muhassin ibn ‘Ali al-Tanukhi, Niswar al-muhadara wa akhbar al-mudhakara, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1971–3), II, pp. 324–6. 8. Ibn Tawus, The Faraj al-mahmum of Ibn Tawus, trans. and ed. Zaina Matar, 2 vols. (unpublished doctoral thesis, New York University, 1987), I, pp. 144–5, 142. 204 Notes 9. Ibn Tawus, Faraj,I,pp.46–7. 10. Ibn Tawus, Faraj, I, pp. 147–8. 11. George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during the Golden Age of Islam (New York: New York University Press, 1994), Pt. 1, Chapter 2, p. 70. 12. Dimitri Gutas, ‘Certainty, Doubt, Error: Comments on Epistemological Foundations of Medieval Arabic Science’, Early Science and Medicine,7 (2002), pp. 276–89 (278–9). 13. The Qur’an, trans. Tarif Khalidi (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 72:26, p. 483. 14. The Qur’an, 7:131, p. 129. 15. The Qur’an, 3:190, p. 60. 16. The Qur’an, 56:75–8, p. 447. 17. Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy,p.55. 18. Abu Ma‘shar al-Balkhi, Kitab al-madkhal al-kabir ila ‘ilm ahkam al-nujum (The Great Introduction), ed. Richard Lemay, 9 vols. (Naples: Instituto Universitario Orientale, 1995–6), II, p. 2. 19. Oliver Leaman, An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 187. 20. George Saliba, ‘The Role of the Astrologer in Medieval Islamic Society’, in Magic and Divination in Early Islam, ed. Emilie Savage-Smith (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2004), pp. 341–70 (341).