As Above, So Below. Astrology and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century New Spain

Department of History and Civilization As Above, So Below. Astrology and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century New Spain Ana Avalos Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of History and Civilization of the European University Institute Florence, February 2007 EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE Department of History and Civilization As Above, So Below. Astrology and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century New Spain Ana Avalos Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of History and Civilization of the European University Institute Examining Board: Prof. Peter Becker, Johannes-Kepler-Universität Linz Institut für Neuere Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte (Supervisor) Prof. Víctor Navarro Brotons, Istituto de Historia de la Ciencia y Documentación “López Piñero” (External Supervisor) Prof. Antonella Romano, European University Institute Prof. Perla Chinchilla Pawling, Universidad Iberoamericana © 2007, Ana Avalos No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or transmitted without prior permission of the author A Bernardo y Lupita. ‘That which is above is like that which is below and that which is below is like that which is above, to achieve the wonders of the one thing…’ Hermes Trismegistus Contents Acknowledgements 4 Abbreviations 5 Introduction 6 1. The place of astrology in the history of the Scientific Revolution 7 2. The place of astrology in the history of the Inquisition 13 3. Astrology and the Inquisition in seventeenth-century New Spain 17 Chapter 1. Early Modern Astrology: a Question of Discipline? 24 1.1. The astrological tradition 27 1.2. Astrological practice 32 1.3. Astrology and medicine in the New World 41 1.4. Institutional environment: teaching astrology at University 48 1.5. The Decline of Astrology 63 Chapter 2. The persecution of Astrology 70 2.1. Astrology and Christian Faith, or Science and Religion 70 2.2. The theological background 74 2.3. The institutional background 81 2.4. The Inquisitorial procedure 87 2.5. Astrology and the Inquisition in Spain and the New World 99 Chapter 3. The Mercedarian Astrologer 104 3.1. Scandalous predictions in Guatemala 110 3.2. Astrology, physiognomy, and politics 127 3.3. Accusation and Defence: the Problem of Free Will 144 3.4. Resolution: inquisitorial censors in action 158 2 Chapter 4. The mulatto astrologer and the great Auto of 1649 163 4.1. A Judicial Astrologer or a Judaizante 168 4.2. An astrologer or a calumniator of the Holy Office 191 4.3. Accusation and Defence: the Blessing of Ignorance 198 Chapter 5. The astrologer’s books 211 5.1. Translating books on astrology 215 5.2. Censoring dangerous books 237 5.3. Circulating books on astrology: an intellectual network 247 5.4. Some uses of astrological knowledge 256 Chapter 6. Foretelling the Future: from Prophecy to Forecast 265 6.1. Astrological prophecies 267 6.2. The Mexican Inquisition and dangerous prophecies 271 6.3. Almanacs and Forecasts 279 6.4. Almanacs’ Censorship in New Spain 287 Chapter 7. Astrology and Other Fields of Knowledge 301 7.1. Astrology and Cosmography 301 7.2. Astrology and Magic 310 7.3. Astrology, Physiognomy, and Chiromancy 317 Concluding remarks 329 Documentary appendices 333 Inquisitorial documents related to astrology. Documents on forbidden books at the AGN. Transcription of Friar Diego Rodríguez’s examination of the case against Friar Nicolás. Bibliography 342 3 Acknowledgments I would particularly like to thank my supervisors, Peter Becker and Victor Navarro, for their support, and, more importantly, for their trust during the course of my doctoral research. I would like to express my gratitude to those scholars who shared their expertise and helped me with important suggestions, and criticism: Antonella Romano, Perla Chinchilla, Darrel Rutkin, Hans Bödecker, and Charles Burnett. I am also deeply grateful to my father, who read every draft version of this thesis and encouranged me with his love and understanding. I would also like to thank the staff of the European University Institute and the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence for their generosity and hospitality. Particularly, I would like to thank Stefano Casati for making every working day in the Library a happy one. I would deeply like to thank Daniel, for his love and care, the most important source of support over the years; and my family in Florence: Volker Balli, Chiara De Franco, Stephan Fahr, and Antje Vetterlein. Tayra Lanuza, my intellectual soulmate in this side of the Atlantic, was a constant source of knowledge and friendship. I would like to thank my flatmates, from Via Marconi, to Piazza Santa Trinita, all the way up to the hills in Settignano; my Kung-Fu friends, who helped me to stay sane in the craziest moments of writing this dissertation; and my friends in Mexico, luckily too many to name, for providing me with all kind of support during these years. 4 Abbreviations AGCA= Archivo General de Centroamérica (Guatemala City) AGI= Archivo General de Indias (Seville) AGN= Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico City) AHN= Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid) BNM= Biblioteca Nacional de México (Mexico City) BNE= Biblioteca Nacional de España (Madrid) INAH= Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (Mexico City) BAN= Bibliotheca Astrologica Numerica (Warburg Institute) DHM= Documentos para la Historia de México HMES= History of Magic and Experimental Science (Lynn Thorndike) 5 Introduction History of astrology is no longer neglected. Studies on the subject now benefit from a rich historiographical tradition within various fields, such as history of science, history of art, intellectual history, and so on. In this opening section, I would like to present a general overview of the main themes and arguments that serve as a framework for a study on the history of astrology and the Inquisition in seventeenth-century New Spain. Other methodological and historiographical issues will be discussed in their corresponding sections. First, I will show how astrology became a salient object of historical inquiry as the result of crucial changes in the historiography of the Scientific Revolution from the 1960s onwards. This new historiography reflected both on the flexibility of previously fixed categories such as reason and faith or rationality and superstition, as well as on the boundaries between different fields of knowledge. Astrology was thus not considered anymore as a superstitious belief, but as a field whose transformations during the seventeenth century played a fundamental role in the shaping of modern disciplinary boundaries. Secondly, I will show how this change of narrative about the Scientific Revolution shifted the attention from the texts to the various contexts in which this entity called modern science was developed. As opposed to an internalistic analysis, this externalistic approach focuses on the study of different sites of knowledge, such as laboratories, universities, museums, or, in this case, the inquisitorial courtroom. Moreover, what this emphasis on context shows is that knowledge is not transmitted from one place to another in a unidirectional way. Rather, knowledge is adapted and creatively transformed in every different context. 1. The place of astrology in the history of the Scientific Revolution As early as 1917 Franz Boll published his Sternglaube und Sterndeutung; Die Geschichte und das Wesen der Astrologie, regarded as the best introduction to history of astrology. And almost a century has passed since George Sarton asserted in his Introduction to the History of Science that ‘the historian of science cannot devote much attention to the study of superstition and magic, that is, of unreason, because this does not help him very much to understand human progress.’1 When talking specifically about astrology, Sarton referred to it as a ‘superstitious flotsam of the Near East’. Otto Neugebauer, one of the most prominent scholars of the history of astronomy and mathematics in Ancient Greece, reacted immediately to Sarton’s affirmation in his famous letter to Isis, “The Study of Wretched Subjects” (1951). He underlined that a great number of scholars have worked “to recover countless wretched collections of astrological treatises from European libraries, and they succeeded in giving us an insight into the daily life, religion and superstition, and astronomical methods and cosmogonic ideas of generations of men who had to live without the higher blessings of our own scientific era.”2 In the last decades, astrology has without doubt gained more and more attention by historians of science. To ascertain this, one needs only to look at recent bibliographies on the history of science, including entire biographies on medieval, renaissance, and early modern astrologers.3 The question that is perhaps necessary to ask here is how astrology became a 1 Sarton, George. Introduction to the History of Science, Baltimor, Williams and Wilkins, for Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1927-1947, 1:3, p. 19. Quoted in Debus, Allen G. “Science and History. The Birth of a New Field” in Stephen McKnight. Science, Pseudo-Science, and Utopianism in Early Modern Thought. Columbia: University of Missouri Press; 1992, p. 16. 2 Neugebauer, Otto. “The Study of Wretched Subjects” in Isis. 1951; 42(2):p. 111 3 Kassell, Lauren. Medicine and magic in Elizabethan London. Simon Forman : astrologer, alchemist and physician. Oxford : Clarendon press, 2005. Dooley, Brendan. Morandi’s Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics. Princeton and

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