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Astrology and the Sibyls: John of Legnano's De adventu

Christi and the Natural Theology of the Later Middle Ages
Laura Ackerman Smoller
Science in Context / Volume 20 / Issue 03 / September 2007, pp 423 - 450

DOI: 10.1017/S0269889707001378, Published online: 14 August 2007
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0269889707001378
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Laura Ackerman Smoller (2007). Astrology and the Sibyls: John of Legnano's De adventu Christi
and the Natural Theology of the Later Middle Ages. Science in Context, 20, pp 423-450
doi:10.1017/S0269889707001378
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Astrology and the Sibyls: John of Legnano’s De adventu

Christi and the Natural Theology of the Later Middle Ages
Laura Ackerman Smoller

University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Argument
Medieval authors adopted a range of postures when writing about the role of reason in matters
of faith. At one extreme, the phrase “natural theology” (theologia naturalis) was used, largely
pejoratively, to connote something clearly inferior to revealed theology. At the other end, there
was also a long tradition of what one might term “the impulse to natural theology,” manifested
perhaps most notably in the embrace of Nature by certain twelfth-century authors associated
with the school of Chartres. Only in the fifteenth century does one find authors using natural
reason to investigate religious truths who also employ the term “natural theology,” now in a
positive light, for their activities. Among such thinkers, astrology and eschatology frequently
played an important role. In that respect, the writings of fourteenth-century Bolognese jurist
John of Legnano offer an important example of the place of astrological, prophetic, and
apocalyptic material in late medieval natural theology. In his 1375 treatise De adventu Christi,
Legnano demonstrated that ancient poets, pagan seers such as the Sibyls, and non-Christian
astrologers had all predicted, like Old Testament prophets, the virgin birth of Christ. For
Legnano, not simply was Creation part of God’s revelation, but, equally importantly, the very
categories of reason and revelation blur in a way that points toward the works of Renaissance
humanists and lays a foundation for a model of natural vaticination that showed reason’s capability
to reach fundamental religious truths.
Scholars seeking the historical roots of the natural theology of the seventeenth through
nineteenth centuries have tended to look largely at medieval proofs of the existence of
God, especially the classic demonstrations in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologica (e.g.,
Brooke 2002). Given the efforts of early modern physico-theologians to construct
proofs of God independent of revelation, such a focus is understandable, yet it obscures
the many ways in which medieval authors embraced both reason and revelation in
their search for religious truths as well as the wider purposes behind their writings.
The antecedents of seventeenth-century natural theology are not to be found so much
in rational proofs of God’s existence, but rather in a collection of thinkers far more
likely to adduce such names as Hermes Trismegistus, the Sibyls, and Albumasar than
to cite Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes. Among that group one can detect a variety
of agendas, ranging from sheer delight in the existence of pagan and gentile testimony
to Christian truth, to the goal of converting Jews and Muslim infidels, to concern with
424 Laura Smoller
an apparently impending apocalypse. But, whatever their motivations for writing, all
shared this conviction: that the truth was unitary and that it had been given to humans
in a variety of ways, whether through Scripture, direct revelation, or in the testament
of God’s Creation.
The thirteenth-century Franciscan Roger Bacon is perhaps the prime example
of such a thinker. George Molland has claimed him as a medieval example of “the
Hermetic tradition,”1 to which, for the last several decades, scholars have assigned a
crucial role in the development of Renaissance science and, by extension, the rational
approach to the study of the divine envisioned by later natural theologians. Crucial
to Bacon’s “precocious” predictions of such inventions as submarines and airplanes
was his conviction that all knowledge had initially been revealed to the patriarchs,
prophets, and other specially chosen recipients. Although this revelation had become
corrupt over time, certain thinkers, including Aristotle and Avicenna, had come close
to restoring knowledge to its pristine fullness. And for Bacon, that fullness included
the writings of the pseudo-Aristotle of the magically-oriented Secreta secretorum, as well
as the works of the ninth-century Arabic astrologer Abu Ma–shar (Albumasar to the
Latin west). It involved the embrace of mechanical and optical “experiments” as well
as the insistence that certain gentiles had foreseen the coming of Christ.2 According to
Molland, Bacon saw himself as restoring and correcting a once-again impaired body of
tradition, placing himself in a line of transmitters of prisca auctoritas (ancient or venerable
tradition), even as he offered naturalistic explanations of apparently “magical” actions.
And, Molland speculates, there must be other medieval ancestors who have a place
in a “genealogy of ‘Science and the Hermetic Tradition’” (Molland 1993, 141–44,
160).
Surely one of those figures, and an indirect descendent of Roger Bacon, would
be the fourteenth-century Bologna jurist John of Legnano. In a beautifully illustrated
manuscript presented to Pope Gregory XI, Legnano forcefully made the point that
pagan philosophers, poets, seers, and astrologers had all arrived at foreknowledge of the
virgin birth of Christ.3 Like Bacon, Legnano, too, could trace a history of knowledge
that stretched back to an original revelation. Similarly, Legnano also reasoned from
God’s visible creation to less visible religious matters, specifically using astrology to
predict the time of Antichrist’s advent.4 Since, for Legnano, the testimony of Old
Testament prophets, astrologers, and the supposedly ancient female seers known as
Sibyls equally pointed to the truth, human beings, whether reasoning from the book
of nature or interpreting divine Scripture, could have access to that truth.
1
Phrase from Yates 1967.
2
E.g., in the Metaphysics: Bacon 1909, 39–52.
3
Vat. lat. 2639. On Legnano, see Donovan and Keen 1981; McCall 1967; Gianazza 1973; de Matteis 1990; Valois
1896–1902, I:126–28; Thorndike 1923–58, 3:592–97; Legnano 1950. I have not been able to see Gianazza and
D’Ilario [1973] [1975] 1983.
4
Suggested in Bacon 1897, 1:269 (pars 4).
John of Legnano’s De adventu Christi 425
The difficulty of finding “natural theology” in medieval thought
In tracing a history of natural theology in the Middle Ages, it is helpful to distinguish

between the term “natural theology” (theologia naturalis) and the impulse to or practice
of natural theology, by which I mean here the investigation of religious truths using
the natural light of reason to evaluate the created world. Each of these two senses
of natural theology has a history in the Middle Ages, but those two paths do not
always intersect. At one extreme, there is the medieval scholastics’ sometimes dismissive
use of the term “natural theology” as a clear inferior to revealed theology; on the
other, the embrace of “natural theology” so proclaimed, as seen in later sixteenth-
century and seventeenth-century writers (e.g., Kraye 1988, 370–73; Lohr 1988, 611–
19; Copenhaver and Schmitt 1992, 267–68). In between, one can find a range of poses,
from a total distrust of the role of reason in matters of faith, to a situation in which
an author might denigrate or simply ignore the term “natural theology,” while at the
same time engaging in rational speculation about matters divine.5
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, however, there is a sense that the balance
was tipping towards the “natural theology” side of the spectrum. I would propose that
those changes came not just within scholastic theology proper, but also from often
overlooked sources, namely, writings displaying the constellation of interests that one
can see in several late medieval thinkers who were curious about the science of the
stars. By and large, as Jean-Patrice Boudet has argued, these men were not expert
astrologers, but, rather, passionate amateurs who found in astrology just the set of tools
they were hunting as they sought to bring human reason to bear upon important
religious questions (Boudet 1990). Their insistence that “all truth must agree,” as
the early fifteenth-century French cardinal Pierre d’Ailly would assert in astrology’s
defense,6 could include an embrace of the term “natural theology” along with the
impulse to natural theology. Such authors read far more in the heavens than the mere
existence of their Creator. Indeed, a major focus of such astrological research became
the investigation of the timing of Antichrist’s advent and the end of the world, a
topic of deep concern in the apocalyptically charged atmosphere of fourteenth- and
fifteenth-century Europe.
Thus, if, as Frances Yates most famously argued, modern science has its roots in
the occult sciences of the Renaissance, or if, as William Eamon has demonstrated, the
scientific method owes a major debt to the chase after marvelous “secrets of nature”
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it may well be that early modern natural
theology, too, depends upon the more magical side of late medieval and Renaissance
thought (Yates 1967; Eamon 1994). The examples of John of Legnano and other
5
For some sense of the complex relationship between reason and faith, see Grant 2004, 191–224. Aside from
oft-cited proofs of God’s existence, one sees the impulse to natural theology in, e.g., the fourteenth-century
thinkers Duns Scotus (Ross and Bates 2003; Mann 2003) and Jean de Ripa (Ruello 1990).
6
D’Ailly 1483, verbum 1, fol. aa2r (see Smoller 1994).
426 Laura Smoller
like-minded thinkers suggest that the embrace of natural theology comes not simply
from the supposition that astrology (as an exercise of human reason) can predict religious
changes, but rather from the conviction that astrological conclusions are essentially the
equivalent of truths revealed not simply in Scripture, but also to non-Christian seers,
most notably the Sibyls. As scholars begin to unravel the deep roots of modern natural
theology, it may turn out that the late medieval bringing together of apocalyptic,
astrological, and Sibylline materials plays a crucial role in the celebration of reason’s
role in discovering religious truths.
Natural theology in the Middle Ages: term and impulse
The phrase “natural theology” (naturalis theologia) has a spotted history in medieval
Europe. The term “theology” itself came to be used in its modern sense, that is,
including the whole of Christian dogmas, only in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
For many early Christians, theologia was a narrower, negative term, implying pagan
fictions about the gods. For others, such “theologians” as Orpheus, Homer, and
Hesiod had possessed a kernel of the truth, gleaned from the Hebrew prophets; for
Clement of Alexandria, “theology” was that inherited knowledge of divine things
(Brown 1990, 89–93). As for “natural theology” in particular, a still more complicated
message appeared in Augustine’s City of God. On the one hand, Augustine, borrowing
Varro’s distinction between mythical, natural (physica), and civil theology (De civ. Dei
VI.5), noted that Varro’s “natural theology” was able to “extend only as far as the nature
of the rational soul” and not even to reach “the true God, the maker of the soul” (De
civ. Dei VII.5). On the other hand, although Augustine denigrated the philosophers’
“natural theology,” he praised the Platonists as Dei cognitores. In fact, Augustine, like
Clement, speculated that Plato might have had access to the words of the Old Testament
prophets or even some direct divine inspiration (De civ. Dei VIII.5, 11, and 12; Brown
1990, 90). Still, Augustine’s dismissive sense of Varro’s term “natural theology” would
be echoed by later authors, for example, in the great scholastic synthesis of Thomas
Aquinas (ST, IIa IIae, q. 94, art. 1). For Thomas, as for Augustine, “natural theology”
arose from philosophers, but led to pagan practices and worship inimical to Christians.
There was, however, some rehabilitation of the term “natural theology” in the
fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. For example, Nicholas Bonet (d. 1360)
employed the phrase theologia naturalis without apparent negative connotation as a
title of a book in his Summa (Lohr 1988, 589–90). Writing in 1414, Pierre d’Ailly
asserted that “astrology [astronomia] is not inappropriately called ‘natural theology’,”
explaining, “Just as the superior theology leads to the knowledge of God through
supernatural faith, so this inferior handmaid [ancilla], as it were, serving [theology],
leads to the introduction of divine cognition through natural reason” (d’Ailly 1483,
fol. aa2r). These uses of the words “natural theology” indicate an important shift in
the understanding of the phrase. “Natural theology” still retains its subordinate status,
but its inferiority is now presented in a more positive light. D’Ailly, in fact, invokes
the term ancilla, a word with Marian overtones [“Behold the handmaid of the Lord”
(Luke 1:38)], as well as a complex history of usage by medieval authors to describe the
relevance of human disciplines for the study of Scripture.7 Further, for both authors,
“natural theology” is explicitly linked to natural philosophy, that is, the study of nature.
The medieval impulse to natural theology also had deep roots in Scripture and the
church fathers. As the Bible taught, “The invisible things of him from the creation
of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Rom.
1:20), and “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1). Such statements implied
that God and the “invisible things” of God are to be known through a study of his
Creation. Several of the early church fathers echoed this sentiment. Even Augustine
saw “a great book” in “the appearance of created things,” adding that “heaven and
earth shout to you: ‘God made me!’” (Hess 2004, 2). Despite Augustine’s worries over
the vain curiosity he exhibited in contemplating a lizard eating a fly (Conf. X.35), the
Neoplatonism of the early church fathers suggested the possibility of an intellectual
ascent from the contemplation of nature to knowledge of the divine, of which Creation
was, after all, an emanation.
A similar Neoplatonic impulse to natural theology forms a major component of
the revived interest in nature seen in twelfth-century Europe, a natural philosophy in
which astrology often found a welcoming home (Gregory 1975; Newman 2003, 86–87,
d’Alverny 1967). Perhaps the most extensive example of this impulse to natural theology
appears in the work of Bernard Silvestris. In his ca. 1140 allegory, Cosmographia, Bernard
has the goddess Nature carrying out the work of creation along lines laid out in Plato’s
Timaeus without much of a nod to the text of Genesis. In the treatise’s second part,
Microcosmos, Nature’s sister goddess Urania offers a short course in astrology, asserting,
“the stars are not allowed to lie,”8 and noting that unaided reason (“philosophy”) can
lead to the knowledge of God as well as of the good life (Newman 2003, 62).
The same impulse to a natural theology wedded with astrology appears in the work
of one of Bernard’s thirteenth-century readers, the author of the pseudo-Ovidian
poem De vetula.9 In that poem, “Ovid” is made to predict the virgin birth of Christ
on the basis of astrology, although the words the poet puts in Ovid’s mouth are drawn
from the ninth-century astrologer Albumasar. Borrowing from Albumasar, “Ovid”
describes a constellation that rises with the first “face” of Virgo (that is, the first ten
degrees of the zodiacal sign), a pure and honest virgin sitting and nursing a baby called
7
On philosophy’s role as ancilla, see Brown 1990, 93–95; Klima 1998.
8
Quoted in Newman 2003, 61 (see also 64–66, 86). Bernard Silvestris 1978; English translation: Bernard
Silvestris 1973.
9
Sometimes identified by modern scholars as Richard de Fournival: pseudo-Ovid 1968, 4–10; but cf. pseudo-
Ovid 1967, 78–99, and Hexter 2002, 440. Michelle M. Hamilton has suggested that the poem’s author was
inspired by Iberian Hebrew maqamat (Hamilton 2007). I am grateful to Professor Hamilton for allowing me to
see her article in page proof.
428 Laura Smoller
Jesus.10 From Albumasar, too, the poet takes the theory that certain conjunctions of
Saturn and Jupiter predict major changes in religions. Such a conjunction, he says,
took place “in the happy time of Caesar Augustus . . . which signified that after six
years a prophet would be born to a virgin” (pseudo-Ovid 1968, bk. 3, lines 611–15).
Using astrology, the author of the De vetula extends the scope of human reason beyond
Bernard Silvestris’ knowledge of God and the good life to a demonstration of the
virgin birth.
That portion of the De vetula in turn was read by the Franciscan Roger Bacon, along
with the poet’s unacknowledged source, Albumasar. In his 1266 Opus maius Bacon
would follow pseudo-Ovid and Albumasar’s line of reasoning both to demonstrate that
Christ’s birth had been foretold in the stars and to claim that astrology could help
the church foretell the time of Antichrist.11 Since, in Bacon’s estimation, all truth had
originally been revealed to the patriarchs and transmitted to the Chaldeans, Egyptians,
and others, it was no surprise that there were numerous gentile predictions of the
Incarnation. Hence, it is fitting that when Bacon cites Albumasar’s description of the
figure of the Virgin, he attributes the “prediction” not simply to the Arabic astrologer,
but also to “all ancient Indians, Chaldeans, and Babylonians.”12 For Bacon, God had
implanted meaning in the stars at Creation and had revealed the way to read his message
to the prophets and patriarchs.
The impulse to natural theology in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
With the works of Arnald of Villanova (d. 1311), Ramon Llull (d. 1316), and John
of Rupescissa (d. ca. 1364), one sees a similar extension of the impulse to natural
theology, wedded to an apocalyptic sensibility that envisioned end-time conversions
to “one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). For all three authors, revelation and
natural knowledge converge as routes to religious truth. Arnald of Villanova, a noted
physician, who eventually aligned himself with the much hounded Spiritual wing of
the Franciscan order, was deeply concerned with eschatology. His treatise De tempore
adventus Antichristi, read to University of Paris theologians in 1299, baldly predicted
that Antichrist would arrive in the 1360s or 70s (Smoller 1994, 90–91; Backman 2000,
143–44). Under the patronage of Frederick III of Sicily, Arnald also sought to enact
reforms that would create in Sicily a perfect Christian society in preparation for End
10
Pseudo-Ovid 1968, bk. 3, lines 623–33. See also Smoller 1994, 55, 168–9; Abu Ma–shar 1995, tr. 6, diff. 1
(quoted in Albertus Magnus 1977, 72); Albertus Magnus 1977, 36–37 (chap. 12); and Bacon 1897, 1:257
(pars 4).
11
Bacon 1897, 1:269 (pars 4). (The same passages are found in the Metaphysics, note 2 above.) Cf. Carey 2003,
518–21.
12
Bacon 1897, 1:257 (pars 4). Bacon may be relying here on pseudo-Ovid, in which one does find reference
to predictions by “Indis / Et Caldeorum sapientibus ac Babilonis.” Pseudo-Ovid 1968, bk. 3, lines 624–45.
times, a project that included training preachers and the conversion of the Jews (DeVun
2004, 143).
Arnald clearly believed that a study of the natural world could bring humans the
knowledge of matters divine. In a treatise composed for Frederick III, Arnald argued
that “man . . . knows God in the present life, first of all through his creatures” (quoted
in ibid., 144). Such a leap from Nature to God was possible, Arnald believed, because
God had implanted meaning and order in the natural world so that humans, using
reason, might decipher it (Backman 2000, 146–47). At times, the categories of reason
and revelation blur in Arnald’s work. As Joseph Ziegler has shown, Arnald believed
that medical knowledge was divinely inspired, enabling physicians to treat spiritual as
well as physical ills (Ziegler 1998). Further, Arnald held that all of human knowledge
contained the elements of prophecy, so that, as knowledge expanded, so, too, would
people’s potential to understand prophecy (DeVun 2004, 144).
Arnald’s writings have much in common with the work of his contemporary and
compatriot Ramon Llull. Llull, a Franciscan tertiary with close ties to the Spirituals,
devoted his life’s work to creating a method (or “ars,” as he called it) that would
convince Muslims and Jews of the truth of Christianity. Although Llull did not openly
predict the time of the apocalypse, his works also are deeply steeped in themes drawn
from contemporary eschatology: the conversion of infidels, the reclamation of the Holy
Land, the reform of Christianity. Llull’s ars rested on the conviction that people of all
faiths shared certain assumptions about the natural world (ibid., 148–50). Drawing
analogies from nature, Llull attempted to convince his audience not simply of the
existence of God, but also of the truth of such Christian doctrines as the Trinity and
the Incarnation (Lohr 1988, 538–45). In moving from, say, the qualities of fire and
pepper to an understanding of the Incarnation, Llull’s work offered a vision of nature
suffused with theological meaning (DeVun 2004, 149).
In the works of the Franciscan John of Rupescissa, the natural and the divine
again intertwine within a framework deeply determined by eschatological concerns
(North 1980, 198–99; Boudet 1990, 634; DeVun 2004; Roquetaillade 2005). The
author of important works of alchemy and apocalyptic speculation, Rupescissa shared
the eschatological sensibilities of the early fourteenth-century Franciscan spirituals.
Profoundly influenced by Arnald of Villanova, and convinced that he was living on
the brink of apocalyptic turmoils, Rupescissa hoped both to fortify humans against
the forces of Antichrist through alchemical elixirs and to provide leaders with a clear
sense of the timing of the crisis through astrological prognostication.13 Like Arnald of
Villanova and Ramon Llull, Rupescissa viewed nature as a type of divine revelation
that could be “read,” just as exegetes read Scripture.14 Among the tools to help in
that exegesis, astrology and alchemy had an important place. And here, too, natural
13
Rupescissa’s use of astrology: Roquetaillade 2005, 206–17.
14
So DeVun 2004, 230 and 241. Rupescissa speaks of the “marvelous concord between nature and divine
Scripture” in the Liber ostensor: Roquetaillade 2005, 207 (my translation).
430 Laura Smoller
reasoning and divine revelation could blur, for, as Rupescissa believed, Scripture taught
that the knowledge of such sciences and “all of Philosophy” had been revealed by
God to Solomon (Wisdom 7:17–21; DeVun 2004, 84). Similarly, fourteenth-century
alchemist Petrus Bonus asserted that God had revealed the secrets of the art to Moses,
Daniel, Solomon, and John, who valued alchemy for its ability to “illustrate Divine
truth” and were able thereby to foresee the Incarnation (DeVun 2004, 193).
The work of Arnald of Villanova, Ramon Llull, and John of Rupescissa helped
to pave the way for the thoroughgoing embrace of natural theology (both impulse
and term) in the work of Ramon Sibiuda (d. 1436).15 A student of Llull’s, Ramon
Sibiuda, professor of philosophy, theology, and medicine in Toulouse, also attempted
to create a general science that would lead to the cognition of Christian doctrine.
Rather than aiming primarily to convert non-believers, however, Sibiuda hoped to
sustain the faith of Christians confused by conflicting interpretations of Scripture. In
his Liber creaturarum sive theologia naturalis, Sibiuda spoke of two parallel books given
to humans by God: the book of Creation and the book of Scripture, the second of
which was necessary only because humans had lost the ability properly to read the
book of Creation (Lohr 1988). For Sibiuda, too, nature, as God’s creation, is equally
God’s revelation; interpreted correctly, nature as well as Scripture can teach the truths
of Christianity.
John of Legnano’s work as presented in Vat. lat. 2639
As the previous examples indicate, an important moment in the joining together

of the impulse to natural theology with the rehabilitated term “natural theology”
comes in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century. The crises of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries drove a number of thinkers into the type of astrology-based natural
theologies earlier seen in Bernard Silvestris, the De vetula, and Roger Bacon. Arnald
of Villanova and John of Rupescissa both wrote with the firm conviction that the
religious knowledge gleaned from their study of nature would be of use to Christians
confronting the terrors of Antichrist. The mid-fourteenth-century English astrologer
John of Eschenden used astrology to help him deride certain prophecies for the years
1357–65, classing them instead with illicit forms of knowledge and products of the
imagination (Reeves 1969, 84; North 1980, 196–97). In the case of Pierre d’Ailly, a
desire to discredit apocalyptic prophecies in the wake of the Great Schism (1378–1414)
drove the noted cardinal to the astrological studies that he called “natural theology.”
Given claims for the stars’ ability to forecast religious changes (including past ones like
the Flood and the virgin birth of Christ), astrology presented itself as an obvious avenue
leading to a natural theology (Smoller 1994; Carey 2003).
15
Given his importance for later thinkers, there has been remarkably little scholarly attention paid to Sibiuda
himself, a fact noted in Giordano 2003. See also Puig 1997.
So astrology will appear in the work of John of Legnano, which also goes beyond a
mere demonstration of God’s existence. Best known for his legal works, teaching civil
and canon law in Bologna from around 1350 on, Legnano had a recognized expertise
in astrology, theology, moral philosophy, natural philosophy, and politics as well. He
was instrumental in reconciling Bologna to Pope Gregory XI after the city’s rebellion
against the papal legate in 1376; the following year he was named papal vicar in the
city. When Schism broke out in 1378, Legnano’s influence kept the city loyal to Urban
VI (the Roman pope), and he remained an important partisan of the Roman papacy
up to his own death in 1383 (Donovan and Keen 1981; McCall 1967; Gianazza 1973;
de Matteis 1990).
Some time between November 1376 and the pope’s own death in 1378, Legnano
presented Gregory with a deluxe manuscript of his own works, including theological,
moral, scientific, political, and legal works (Vat. lat. 2639). The manuscript opens
with the treatise De adventu Christi, dated internally to 1375 (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 4–91;
date at fol. 28v). Assuming that Legnano himself had a hand in designing the papal
manuscript, we have to conclude that he wished to foreground this opening treatise
by its prime position as well as by a set of splendid illustrations preceding it (fol. 2v-4r)
and numerous illuminated initials within the treatise’s initial sections. The illuminations
bear the signature of Nicolaus of Bologna (Niccolò di Giacomo da Bologna) (fols. 3v
and 4r), the most prominent Bolognese illuminator of the fourteenth century.16 No
other treatise in the manuscript receives the same degree of care devoted to the opening
portions of the De adventu Christi.17
John of Legnano’s treatise, like the writings of many late medieval authors, might
best be described as a compilation. He lifts large passages, verbatim, from earlier writers,
only sometimes acknowledging a source for his words. When he does name a source,
there is often the chance that he is citing that author at second hand, through another’s
work. Legnano appears at first glance, thus, to be a strikingly unoriginal thinker. But
it would be a mistake to dismiss him as one. Legnano’s compositional technique can
be maddening for the modern reader, caught in a seemingly endless sense of déjà-vu.
Yet his propensity to borrow the words of others also makes it possible to discern not
simply his major sources, but also the way in which Legnano reads, manipulates, and
even distorts this material. His De adventu Christi may represent a spectacular collage,
16
On Niccolò: Conti 1996; Morozzi 1991–2002; L’Engle and Gibbs 2001, 225–37.
17
There are two other manuscripts of this treatise (Valencia, Bibl. De la Catedral, MS 45, fols. 46–137v XV;
Valencia, Bibl. De la Catedral, MS 48, fols. 21–84 XV, the latter being incomplete). They evidently lack the
lavish illuminations of Vat. lat. 2639 (see Olmos y Canalda 1943, 44–46, nos. 45 and 48). I treat here only the
first two tractates of the De adventu Christi; there is some indication that Legnano thought of these two as a
whole and perhaps added the rest later. In his treatise on the 1365 conjunction, he mentions the treatise “I
just compiled on the advent of Christ and Antichrist” (Gianazza 1973, 266–67, fol. 26r-26v). The remaining
tractates have as their subjects On God; On the genealogy of the gods according to the gentiles; On the nature
of the rational soul; On the nature of angels; and On evil angels.
432 Laura Smoller
but the finished picture is Legnano’s own. It offers a stunning assertion of human
reason’s power to attain religious truths.
Legnano’s reading list in this treatise, not that surprising given his range of interests, is
an interesting mix of theology, canon law, prophecy, and astrology. He borrows heavily
from such standard theological works as Augustine’s City of God and Isidore of Seville’s
encyclopedic Etymologies, as well as from major astrological treatises by Albumasar (the
Introductorium maius and the De magnis coniunctionibus, both of which he appears to quote
at first hand) and John of Eschenden (although not by name), as well as the thirteenth-
century pseudo-Ovidian De vetula. He quotes briefly from Gratian’s Decretum and at
length from a prophetic text known as the Sibylla Tiburtina, which offered supposed
prophecies of the first and second comings of Christ. He also lifts passages from
two treatises penned around 1300 by John of Paris, the Tractatus de adventu Christi or
Testimonia gentilium de secta Christiana (the former not named here) and the Tractatus
de adventu Antichristi (whose author he mentions once).18 This latter John of Paris
work was one of several responses to Arnald of Villanova’s prediction of the advent of
Antichrist. In it, John conjectured that the world would last only another two hundred
years, although he ultimately concluded that humans could not foreknow that time
with any degree of certainty, whether through Biblical interpretation or by astrological
calculation.19 The former treatise, essentially a compilation of gentile testimonies about
Christian truths, bears such close resemblance to passages from Roger Bacon’s works
that it has been proposed that Bacon is really the author and not John of Paris (Orlando
1976). Legnano does not quote or cite Roger Bacon directly, but in many ways he is
the noted Franciscan’s intellectual heir, and nowhere more so than in his conviction
that astrology and prophecy were capable of reaching the same set of religious truths.
The harmony of “revealed” and “natural” theology in the De adventu Christi
John of Legnano’s impulse to natural theology is apparent in the opening tractate of the
De adventu Christi, in which he demonstrates not simply that Old Testament prophets,
kings, and priests had foreseen the advent of Christ, but that ancient pagan philosophers,
poets, and seers did so, too, along with non-Christian astrologers. To begin, largely
18
On these works by John of Paris, their use by other authors (including plagiarism of the both by Nicholas of
Strassburg), and the question of authorship of the Tractatus de adventu Christi, see Orlando 1973; Orlando 1976;
Denifle 1888; and Smoller 1994, 91–92, 113–14. Editions: Orlando 1973; Joannes Quidort Parisiensis (John of
Paris) 1981. There are no extant MSS of either treatise in Bologna (Kaeppeli 1970–93, 2:520–21). It is possible
that Legnano knew the treatises through Nicholas of Strassburg, who had sent his treatise plagiarizing both to
the pope in 1326 (Denifle 1888, 316–17). Still, he must have known that at least the second was the work of
John of Paris, whom he cites by name as a source of some of the material he drew from that treatise (Vat. lat.
2639, fol. 28v).
19
Joannes Quidort Parisiensis (John of Paris) 1981, 44–47. Explanation of John’s conjecture: Smoller 1994,
91–92. In 1313 Henry of Harclay ridiculed not just Arnald’s predictions, but also John’s “probable conjectures”
(Henry of Harclay 1951, 62–68, 81–82).
following Augustine’s City of God (De civ. Dei, XVIII.28–36), Legnano adduces a long
array of Old Testament prophets, juxtaposing their words with the fulfillment of their
specific prophecies in the New Testament (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 4v-7v). A list of prophets
of Christ drawn from Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies (20.8) follows (Vat. lat. 2639, fol.
7v-8r). Next, Legnano turns to the words of the poets “who predicted the advent of
Christ” (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 8r). Here Legnano quotes and comments at length on
“Ovid,” that is, verses from book 3 of the thirteenth-century De vetula (bk. 3, lines
680ff), in which the poet offers his astrological “prediction” of Christianity (Vat. lat.
2639, fol. 8r-8v).20
Legnano next turns to a discussion of “how astrologers predicted the advent of
Christ” (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 9r). Legnano here cites directly the ninth-century Arab
astrologer Albumasar’s description of a virgin rising in the first face (or first ten degrees
of the sign) of Virgo, nursing a child called “Jesus (Ih’m),” bypassing a similar passage
in the De vetula.21 Legnano then moves to an astrological division of history based on
the signs of the Zodiac, concluding that, astrologically speaking, the Virgin would have
to be born in the 5178th year of the world; he places the birth of the Savior then in the
Virgin’s eighteenth year, which he equates with the 24th year of the reign of Augustus,
that is, at exactly the right time in history (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 9r). The source of this
simplistic theory, which requires absolutely no sophisticated astrological knowledge to
understand, is not clear; Legnano also used the same passage in his 1372 Somnium (Vat.
lat. 2639, fol. 270v).22
Having given the astrologers a hearing, Legnano turns to other non-Christian
writers who “predicted” the birth of Christ: Virgil, whose Fourth Eclogue speaks of
a virgin and the return of the reign of Saturn; the Erythrean Sibyl, in whose Greek
verses as translated into Latin by Flavianus, one can read the acrostic “Ihesus dei filius
salvator”; Plato, in whose tomb was allegedly found a gold tablet professing belief that
“Christ will be born of a virgin and will suffer for human[s]”; and a Jew in Toledo in
1239, who found a mysterious and apparently ancient book noting that “in the third
[age of the] world, the son of God will be born of a Virgin and will suffer for the
salvation of men” (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 9v). For his citations of Virgil, the Erythrean
Sibyl, and Plato, Legnano appears to be relying on John of Paris’ De adventu Christi,
whose sixth chapter details gentile predictions of the birth of Christ (Orlando 1973,
70, 72).23
20
He is quoting directly from the De vetula here; a much less extensive set of quotations from “Ovid” is contained
in John of Paris’s Tractatus de adventu Christi.
21
He quotes the entire section on Virgo’s first face from bk. 6, chap. 2 of the Introductorium maius in the more
commonly used John of Seville translation (Abu Ma–shar 1995, 5:224–25).
22
The idea of equating millennia with the signs of the Zodiac was an old one (see North 1977, 321; Kennedy
1962, 37–38).
23
John of Paris follows with a quotation of Albumasar’s passage about the virgin from the Introductorium maius,
but he uses the Hermann of Carinthia translation and not the John of Seville translation quoted by Legnano
and thus cannot be Legnano’s source for Albumasar, which Legnano appears to have read first-hand. John of
434 Laura Smoller
Next, Legnano returns to astrology, extensively lifting (without acknowledgment)

from John of Eschenden’s mid-fourteenth-century Summa astrologie iudicialis de
accidentibus mundi (Eschuid 1489, 12–12v). Legnano’s source here was drawing on
astrological theories articulated by Albumasar, namely a periodization of history
according to planetary conjunctions and 360-year periods called “great orbits.”
Although John of Paris, following Roger Bacon and the De vetula, had also detailed
Albumasar’s teaching on conjunctions, Legnano here has instead gone directly to a
recent – and dense – astrological text. After rehearsing Eschenden’s rather tedious
arithmetical calculations of when these great orbits will occur, Legnano follows his
source in noting that the year 1659 will see the completion of fourteen revolutions
(presumably, great orbits) and the moon’s assumption of leadership of the great orbit.
But then, Legnano ceases copying from Eschenden and adds a comment of his own.
Immediately after describing the 1659 completion of the fourteenth orbit, Legnano
writes, “and at that time by all considerations [in omnibus] is the advent of Antichrist
according to the astrologers.”24 Legnano’s interpolation goes well beyond his source’s
subject and intention. Throughout his treatise, Eschenden had steered clear of any
astrological predictions of the end of the world (North 1980, 192–95). In particular,
Eschenden here had continued his list to include a fifteenth revolution of the great
orbit and had added some general concluding remarks. In a jarring break, Legnano
forces the material into an astrological forecast of the apocalypse.
Legnano returns to an investigation of the time of Antichrist’s arrival in the second
tractate of the De adventu Christi, again mingling Scriptural and prophetic material
with astrological calculations. In the second tractate, however, following John of Paris’
Tractatus de adventu Antichristi, he now concludes, “there do not remain but 100 years
or fewer until the birth of Antichrist.”25 This statement is a bit of a distortion, for
Legnano has neglected also to quote John of Paris’ assertion that this figure cannot
be known with any certainty, but only by conjecture.26 Nor is it Legnano’s only
attempt to pinpoint Antichrist’s advent using astrology. A different calculation, based
on Albumasar’s “maximum years of the sun” also points to the world’s end around
Paris also quotes pseudo-Ovid (Orlando 1973, 77–78), but not as extensively as does Legnano, who thus also
must have known at least bk. 3 of the De vetula at first hand. Legnano does not follow John of Paris exactly in
the passages on the Cumaean and Erythrean Sibyls [John is himself quoting Augustine’s De civ. Dei, XVIII, 23,
though perhaps via Roger Bacon (Orlando 1976)], but he does have textual interpolations that are found in
John of Paris and not in Augustine, for example, a remark that Jerome does not agree with Augustine on the
Cumaean Sibyl. Legnano adds a comment not found in John of Paris, namely, “Tamen per illos versus conversi
sunt ad fidem Scondianus et Nerianus imperatores.” Legnano does not quote the Erythrean Sibyl in full, as do
John of Paris and Augustine (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 9v). I have not located the source of Legnano’s story of the Jew
in Toledo.
24
Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 9v. For Pierre d’Ailly, as well, 1659 will be an important year in the series of “great orbits”
(see Smoller 1994, 61–62, 71–72).
25
Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 28v; pseudo-Methodius 1898, pseudo-Methodius 1998, Joannes Quidort Parisiensis (John
of Paris) 1981. Details about the calculation in Smoller 1994, 91.
26
Joannes Quidort Parisiensis (John of Paris) 1981, 66.
1500, or – in a third calculation – around 1434.27 Legnano supports this latter date
by reference to Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions in October 1365, 1384, and 1404. He
now cites Albumasar’s De magnis coniunctionibus, although some of the material in
this discussion is also dependent on John of Eschenden. Legnano has also read (and
probably lifted from) other astrologers as well, although his borrowings betray a lack
of true expertise on his part. For example, although he notes the crucial distinction
between true and mean conjunctions and offers more details about the conjunction
preceding the birth of Christ, he repeats without wincing a reference to the outdated
Toledan Tables, at this time superseded by the Alfonsine Tables.28 Clearly, Legnano’s
real interest is with what astrology can teach about the apocalypse, and not so much
with the exact details.
Legnano has thus far reasoned the time of Antichrist’s arrival simply on the basis of
chronology and astrology. He ends his discussion of Antichrist by bringing in Scripture
as confirmation, saying, “this time [1434] is consonant with divine scripture” (Vat.
lat. 2639, fol. 29r), namely, a series of calculations he makes using the numbers in
Daniel 12:11–12 and Revelation 12:6. This passage is roughly reminiscent of material
in John of Paris’ Tractatus de adventu Antichristi. Again, however, Legnano distorts John’s
ultimate conclusion that “we do not, therefore, believe in any certain determination
about the time of Antichrist, whether by revelation, by inspection of Scripture, or
by argumentation” [Ioannes Quidort Parisiensis (John of Paris) 1981, 69]. Rather,
evidently confident in his calculations, Legnano concludes the second tractate with
the happy statement, “Thus the authority of divine scripture is in agreement with
astrological time” (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 29r). The only marginal annotation to be found
in the manuscript is at the bottom of this leaf. It is in a different hand from the
scribe’s, and appears to represent an annotation added by the author himself. In a more
conciliatory tone, the note reads:
In all of these things written by me, both these tractates and any other ones [still] to be
written or already written, I declare that if anything written or to be written is found to
be dissonant from the truth of the faith and of the Holy Mother Church, that [statement]
I now revoke and hold as revoked and as not written. And teaching, asserting, affirming,
and preaching what the Holy Mother Church and her holy doctors teach, assert, and
27
He is relying (at apparent first-hand) on De magnis coniunctionibus, tr. 2, diff. 8 (Abu Ma–shar 2000, 2:99).
Pierre d’Ailly will make the same argument in his De persecutionibus ecclesie (Smoller 1994, 113–14).
28
The whole discussion is at Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 28v-29r. See Abu Ma–shar 2000, 2:99 (De magnis coniunctionibus,
tr. 2, diff. 8), for Albumasar’s equation of Christianity with the Sun. Legnano’s source for the discussion of true
and mean conjunctions, and for the conjunction signifying the birth of Christ, is not clear. (For true vs. mean,
possibly Eschuid 1489, 13r.) Legnano places the conjunction at 26 B.C.E., which is Masha’allah’s (Messahalla’s)
date, but not that in Albumasar, Roger Bacon, or pseudo-Ovid, Legnano’s other main sources. In his 1368
treatise De cometa, Legnano had also mentioned the astrological authors Leopold of Austria and Michael Scot
(Thorndike 1950, 259). Masha’allah’s date for the conjunction signifying Christ: Kennedy 1962, 34. Legnano
nicely fits, then, Jean-Patrice Boudet’s type of the “amateur.”
436 Laura Smoller
preach, also I wish and intend this declaration to hold as repeated both in my tractates in
general and in all my other acts.29
That these lines mark a lawyer’s caution and not an abandonment of Legnano’s
astrological natural theology is proven by his later output: a chart and commentary
on the 1365 Saturn-Jupiter conjunction, plus a lengthy astrological section in his
Schism polemic, the De fletu ecclesie (On the Lamentation of the Church), including three
horoscopes.30 Both works offer astrological commentary on the state of the church
and the impending apocalypse.
Legnano’s treatise, thus, illustrates a vigorous assertion of the medieval impulse to
natural theology along the path already trodden by Roger Bacon, Arnald of Villanova,
and John of Rupescissa. Like Arnald of Villanova, Ramon Llull, and John of Rupescissa,
Legnano wrote with the clear belief that he was living near the end of times, a sensibility
perhaps exacerbated by the intense sense of crisis in the final years of the Avignon papacy
(1305–1378), as Pope Gregory XI waged war against the Duke of Milan (1372–74) and
then faced a rebellion led by Milan and Florence in 1375. By Legnano’s own testimony,
he composed the treatise in 1375 (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 28v); the ensuing years would
see the unrolling of the chain of events leading to the outbreak of the Great Schism
and the city of Bologna’s own confrontation with the pope. While at times Legnano
seems simply to revel in the masterful design of a universe that does appear to function,
as Ramon Sibiuda will later assert, as an independent book of Creation, the anxiety
of his times and the impending apocalypse could never have been far from his mind.
As did several of his contemporaries, Legnano mingled natural reasoning and revealed
prophecy in his search for clues to the meaning of present and future events.
John of Legnano’s astrological writings may also have played at least a small role in
the rehabilitation of theologia naturalis in the anxious years of the Great Schism. That
is, John of Legnano may have directly or indirectly influenced Pierre d’Ailly, who in
1414 would dub astrology “natural theology.” Legnano was probably among the jurists
consulted by the French king Charles V in Paris about the terms of the Treaty of
Brétigny, and writings by Leganano graced the library of Cardinal Pedro de Luna, who
would eventually become Pope Benedict XIII in the Avignon line of popes. He had
friendships with a number of French cardinals, although those relationships became
strained after Legnano became such a vocal supporter of Urban VI, the Roman pope
29
Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 29r: In hiis omnibus per me scriptis hiis tractatibus et quantiscumque alliis scribendis et
scriptis, protestor quod si alliquid scriptum vel scribendum reperiatur disonum a veritate fidei et sancte matris
ecclesie quod nunc revoco et pro revocato reputo et habeo pro non scripto. Et docens, asserens, afirmans, et
predicans quod docet, asserit, et predicat sancta mater ecclesia et sancti doctores ipsius et hanc protestationem
vollo et intendo habere pro repetita in generalibusque tractatibus meis et singulis alliis actibus.
30
Facsimile and edition of the conjunction treatise: Gianazza 1973, 264–73; MS: Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale, MS Gaddi 342 con segnatura II.IV.313, fol. 25r-29v. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat.
2599 also contains a Latin version. I am grateful to Jean-Patrice Boudet for a copy. De fletu: Vatican City,
Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Arm. 54, vol. 18, fols. 53–96v.
(McCall 1967, 415–16; Donovan and Keen 1981, 327). These connections may explain
the fact that at least some of Legnano’s works were known in Paris. Heavy borrowings
from Legnano’s Somnium appear in the Somnium viridarii written in 1375 in the court
of Charles V and perhaps known to d’Ailly (Donovan and Keen 1981, 325). A copy of
Legnano’s treatise on the 1365 conjunction is in the Bibliothèque nationale de France
in Paris (Boudet 1990, 636). Several passages in Pierre d’Ailly’s astrological writings
bear a remarkable similarity to portions of Legnano’s De adventu Christi, making one
wonder whether d’Ailly did have access to Legnano’s writings and if Legnano is an
unnamed source behind some of d’Ailly’s thinking on the stars.31
Astrology, Sibylline prophecy, and natural theology
For John of Legnano, reason and revelation were intertwined, both pointing to the
same fundamental truths. Indeed, in the De adventu Christi, he appears to place
astrology and prophecy on an equivalent plane. There, Legnano establishes the essential
harmony of Biblical prophecy not simply with astrological prognostication, but also
with ancient Sibylline oracles. Long tradition in the ancient world held that a handful
of women, collectively known as Sibyls, had received special divine revelations. By
late antiquity, newly manufactured Sibylline texts “predicted” the birth of Christ and
the Last Judgment. Lactantius, in the Divine Institutions, had brought together both the
Sibyls and Hermes Trismegistus as witnesses to Christian truths, passing on to future
generations a catalogue of ten different Sibyls (Dronke 1990, 6–7, McGinn 1985b,
13). Augustine, too, acknowledged a place for at least some of the Sibyls, particularly
the Erythrean Sibyl, whose verses spelled out in acrostic form a message about Christ
(Dronke 1990, 9; McGinn 1985b, 14; De civ. Dei, XVIII:23).
Augustine’s name lent additional authority to Sibylline texts in the Middle Ages. To
the Bishop of Hippo was attributed a sermon Against Jews, Pagans, and Arians whose
author refuted the Jews with both the words of Old Testament prophets and the
verses of the Erythrean Sibyl (Quodvultdeus 1976, 225–58). In a Latin play based on
the sermon, the Sibyl’s song appears as the drama’s climax (McGinn 1985b, 15–19;
Dronke 1990, 12). Another pseudo-Augustinian text, De natale Domini (On the Birth
of the Lord), told how the Tiburtine Sibyl had showed the emperor Augustus a vision
of the Virgin and child in the heavens.32 A prophetic text attributed to the Tiburtine
Sibyl, including predictions of the Incarnation, passion, and apocalypse, circulated from
31
For example, d’Ailly’s 1385 advent sermon in which he mentions gentiles who had foreknowledge of Christ’s
birth: Hermes Trismegistus, the Sibyl, Ovid, and the ancient Chaldeans (that is, the Magi or astrologers). The
sermon also discusses four advents of Christ, as does Legnano’s De adventu (Smoller 1994, 50). In the Elucidarium,
d’Ailly lists great orbits up until 1659 and not beyond, as does Legnano (but not John of Eschenden) (Smoller
1994, 72); see also n. 27, above.
32
Settis 1985, 94. Circulation of the the Ara coeli legend; e.g., Mirabilia urbis Romae, chap. 11; Wilson and Wilson
1984, 157; Holdenried 2006, 66.
438 Laura Smoller
the late fourth century on. Anke Holdenried has recently shown that the text’s appeal
to medieval readers was largely as a specimen of pagan prophecy of Christ.33
As with the medieval impulse to natural theology, an important moment in the
linking of astrology and the Sibyls lay in the twelfth century. Twelfth-century authors
brought together Sibylline material with writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus
(the supposed recipient of magical and astrological revelations) and newly translated
astrological texts, such as Albumasar’s, to demonstrate that even non-Christians had
predicted the birth of Christ (Chenu 1964, 12–13). In a remarkable sermon by
Garnier de Rochefort, abbot of Clairvaux, the preacher cites “Hermes and Asterius,
philosophers of the king of Persia,” as having foretold the virgin birth. In fact, Garnier
quotes a text remarkably similar to Albumasar’s description of the virgin nursing the
child called Jesus (Garnerius Lingonensis 1996–2005, col. 775; Chenu 1964, 63).
After putting the astrologer’s words in the mouths of “Hermes and Asterius,” Garnier
adds that “a third poet [!], whose name is Albumazar,” agrees with them.34 Garnier
says that he “does not know” whether Hermes and Asterius spoke “out of great
learning or in the spirit of prophecy,” although he perhaps leans towards the former
interpretation. Noting that “common people say that an unskilled pig many times
turns up a good truffle [root],” Garnier proffers that the Sibyl, John the Baptist,
Balaam, and, presumably, Hermes and Asterius, “as if digging in the ground, that is,
scrutinizing terrestrial things, see the root of the tree of Jesse” (Garnerius Lingonensis
1996–2005, col. 775, my translation and emphasis). Most notably, Garnier does not
seem to distinguish between prophecy, the oracles of the Sibyls, and the predictions
of an astrologer. Albumasar’s words become those of Hermes, who was held to have
been divinely inspired; John the Baptist and the Sibyl are credited with “scrutinizing
terrestrial things.”
Like astrology, the Sibyls also found a new lease on life in the later Middle
Ages. Newly “discovered” Sibylline prophecies had already begun to circulate in the
thirteenth century, often incorporating materials drawn from the apocalyptic favorite
Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202), and his essential framework of an upcoming period of
tribulation to be followed by a millennial time of peace and renewal, the Age of the
Spirit or third status (Reeves 1969; McGinn 1985a). The late thirteenth and early
fourteenth century witnessed a major resurgence of such prophecies, as the persecuted
Spiritual Franciscans in particular seized upon the Joachimist identification of “new
spiritual men” who would usher in the perfect third status. John of Rupescissa, as
we have seen, produced a series of eschatological treatises that incorporated Joachite,
Sibylline, and astrological materials (DeVun 2004, North 1980; Boudet 1990, 636–
33
Edition: “Die tiburtinische Sibylle” 1898; pseudo-Bede 1995–2006. A fourteenth-century manuscript in the
British library contains the text, just after a treatise De Antichristo: Arundel 326, fol. 60b-63r(a). Holdenried
2006 is now the definitive study and takes issue with Sackur’s presentation of the text primarily as apocalyptic
and political.
34
Explanation of use of poeta: Chenu 1964, 65.
37). And, closer still to Legnano, Joachite prophecies, some based upon Rupescissa’s
writings, circulated in Florence in the 1360s through 1380s and in Bologna itself around
the time of the outbreak of the Great Schism (Reeves 1969, 216–19, 324, 417–20).
In the intense scrutiny for the signs of the times, all routes to knowledge had value,
whether the verses of an ancient prophetess or the calculations of a contemporary
astrologer.
For John of Legnano, Sibylline prophecy was as important a route to truth as the
words of the Old Testament prophets and the calculations of the astrologers. Legnano
in fact opens a lengthy discussion of the Sibyls in the De adventu Christi just after his
initial treatment of astrological predictions of the virgin birth (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 10r).
He begins by lifting extensively from the Tiburtine Sibyl text, and her description of
nine suns, showing the events of nine future generations or dynasties.35 In the passages
copied by Legnano, the Sibyl predicts that under the fourth sun, “there will arise a
woman from the Hebrews named Mary, with a husband named Joseph, and a son will
be born to her of the Holy Spirit, without any man’s participation, named Jesus” (Vat.
lat. 2639, fol. 10r). She then narrates many details of Christ’s life and describes his
passion. Next, following John of Paris, Augustine, or Rabanus Maurus, Legnano notes
that the [Erythrean] Sibyl had written Greek verses whose initial letters, in acrostic,
spelled out “Yseis Cristos tene yados sother, which in Latin means ‘Jesus Christ, Son
of God, Savior’” (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 10r). Then, borrowing from Isidore of Seville’s
Etymologies (or Rabanus Maurus’ De universo, which quotes Isidore),36 Legnano lists
ten Sibyls, in the now standard listing of the ancient prophetesses (Parke 1988, 29–
35). Legnano ends by noting, as does his source, that the Tiburtine Sibyl’s poems are
manifestly more famous, while the Erythrean Sibyl is “of the rest, nobler.”37
The equivalence of astrological prognostication with Biblical and Sibylline prophecy
is also made apparent in the lavish illustrations that begin the Vatican manuscript
containing the De adventu Christi (see figs. 1 and 2). The first illustration (Vat. lat. 2639,
fol. 2v) beautifully represents Legnano’s argument in the first tractate of the De adventu
Christi. Topped by a figure of God in majesty surrounded by angels and the apostles, the
illumination depicts the Annunciation and, below it, scenes of the Nativity. Beneath
the figures of the Annunciation and Nativity appear ten frames arranged in two parallel
columns. The illuminator Niccolò, with whom Legnano probably worked closely,
was doubtless drawing on a medieval tradition of pairing Old Testament prophets and
35
He reproduces the “Sibylline Gospel” portion of the text in the version Holdenried labels the Bedan rescension.
Holdenried 2006, xx, 4. Edition of the pseudo-Bede 1996–2005. English: McGinn 1979, 43–50. Cf. “Die
tiburtinische Sibylle” 1898. Legnano’s lifting of only the “Gospel” section of the Tiburtine Sibyl text confirms
Holdenried’s thesis about the way medieval readers understood the text.
36
Isidore 1995–2006 (Etymologies 8.8); Rabanus Maurus 1995–2006. Legnano adds that there is a city called
Cumas in Lombardia.
37
Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 10r. Legnano also adduces contemporary prophecies attributed to the Erythrean Sibyl, the
Cumaean Sibyl, and a Sibyl called “Despair” in his treatise on the 1365 conjunction (edited in Gianazza 1973).
440 Laura Smoller
angels
angels
God in
majesty
6 seated with 6 seated
figures book figures
(Apostles) (Apostles)
Annunciation
Nativity Virgin and Infant

Shepherds Jesus--in heavens
Tiburtine Sibyl, Augustus, crowd

figures with scrolls
1
1 2 3 4 5
figures with scrolls Astrologers with scrolls
6 7 8 9
2 3 4
crowned figures Sibyls with scrolls

11
with scrolls 7
13
6 8 9
10 12 5
15 men/scrolls 17 19 Poets/scrolls 12
18 13 15
10 (codex) 14
14 16 11
Plato 20b 16
20a enthroned Jew
Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the illustration at Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 2v. Numbers represent
figures with texts.
Sibyls, whether it be a parade of prophets followed by a single Sibyl, or parallel ranks

of twelve.38 But Niccolò’s illustration departs from that tradition.
38
Settis 1985, 96; thanks to Professor Robert J. Gibbs, University of Glasgow, who agrees that it is possible that
John of Legnano and Niccolò could have had a personal relationship (private email of June 1, 2005).
Fig. 2.
c Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican), MS Vat. Lat. 2639, fol. 2v.
442 Laura Smoller
True, those at the left (at God’s right hand), with two notable exceptions, portray
Old Testament figures holding text scrolls, each of whom looks upward and gestures
toward the figure of the Nativity (just as the words that appear on their scrolls do). The
right column is devoted to those non-Christians who predicted Christ’s birth: now not
just the Sibyls, but also astrologers and poets (including the “Ovid” of the De vetula).
The two bottom panels are reserved for Plato and the Toledan Jew of 1239, both of
whom Legnano had associated with mysterious texts about the Virgin birth.
But not simply does the diagram (like Legnano’s treatise) insist that pagans as well
as Old Testament prophets had access to the fundamental truth of the Incarnation. It
also begins to break down the distinctions between Christian (or Old Testament Jew)
and pagan (or gentile). More than a simple parallel listing of Old Testament prophets
and ancient Sibyls, Niccolò’s stunning illumination substantially mixes up categories
and blurs such neat boundaries. The Arabic astrologer Albumasar nearly touches the
hand of Moses. Among the crowned Old Testament figures in the left column stands a
personage labeled “Flavianus,” who can only be the late fourth century C.E. Roman
consul whom Legnano mentions as Augustine’s source for the verses of the Erythrean
Sibyl (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 9v). And at the bottom of the column of Old Testament
prophets an enthroned Plato gazes out at the viewer.
Once astrology and the Sibyls (and their linked brother Hermes Trismegistus) were
viewed on an equal footing with the Old Testament prophets, the way was open for a
natural theology rooted in the astrological analysis of religions. After Legnano, Sibylline
oracles continued to blend with astrological materials and to appear in parallel with Old
Testament prophecies in art and letters. By at least the 1420s, two additional Sibyls had
been added to Lactantius’ ten, and the mingling of astrological and Sibylline predictions
of the Incarnation received a mark of permanence. Sometime in that decade, Cardinal
Giordano Orsini (d. 1434) had painted in his palace in Rome the portraits of twelve
Sibyls, together with the texts of what each seer had predicted about Christ (Hélin
1936, 349–53; Settis 1985, 96; de Clercq 1979, 8). Among the twelve was a “Sibilla
Chimeria,” described in language reminiscent of the twelfth-century sermon on the
nativity of the Virgin cited above. According to the inscription, she was the one “about
whom Eminius and Albunazar [sic] the astrologer, men of great intelligence, said this:
‘In the first face of Virgo there ascends a certain maiden, honest and clean . . .’” (Hélin
1936, 360). Albumasar’s “prediction” of the virgin birth of Christ now had been stapled
onto a description of the Sibilla Chimeria.
It was just a short step from Orsini’s famous wall paintings to the work of Filippo
de Barbieri, O.P. Around 1480, Barbieri published a treatise in which he set out to
reconcile differences among the church fathers by recourse to the Sibyls. His treatise
contains portraits of twelve Sibyls, one of which shows the now complete conflation
of astrological and Sibylline materials.39 Labeled the “Sybilla Chimica” or “Sybilla
39
There were two editions of this text (1481 and 1482). The first contained parallel portraits of Old Testament
prophets (de Clercq 1979, 12).
Emeria,” she holds a scroll that reads, “In the first face of Virgo, there ascends a
young girl.” The fuller caption below repeats, almost verbatim, the text about the
virgin nursing the boy that one could find in pseudo-Ovid, Roger Bacon, or John of
Legnano. Albumasar’s description of the stars rising in the first face of Virgo had now
become a Sibyl’s prophecy.40 Similarly, in his Recueil des plus célèbres astrologues, compiled
between 1494 and 1498, the astrologer Simon de Phares wrote that the Erythrean Sibyl
“was expert in the science of the stars and had the gift of prophecy” (quoted in Boudet
1990, 626; my translation and emphasis). One finds a similar conflation in a sixteenth-
century work by Herman tom Ring, from Munster. In a series of engravings (including
one of Hermes Trismegistus with Old Testament prophets), Herman included one of
the Erythrean and Phrygian Sibyls, together with Albumasar (de Clercq 1979, 60–61).
That John of Legnano was far from the only author to pair astrology and the Sibyls
indicates that the road to a rehabilitation of natural theology had an important branch
leading through the tangled world of late medieval and Renaissance occult thought,
an area of inquiry in which one more and more sees Scripture, extra-Scriptural
prophecies, and astrology all occupying the same territory, frequently within an
overtly eschatological framework (e.g., Broecke 2003, 62–63; Niccoli 1990). Humanist
scholars’ embrace of ancient learning, and with it the notion of a prisca theologia
revealed to such figures as Hermes Trismegistus and Moses (Walker 1972; Schmidt-
Biggemann 1998; Hanegraaff 2005), guaranteed the continued blending of astrological
and Sibylline material in such a way that validated both as sources to true religious
knowledge. Both Hermes and the Sibyls appear on the pavement of the cathedral in
Siena; Sibyls and Old Testament prophets line the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Most
tellingly, in a defense of his own blend of magic, cabala, ancient science, Christian
theology, and Neoplatonic philosophy, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim
claimed that he was practicing nothing other than what the ancient Sibyls had done,
writing that “the Sibyls were magi” (Settis 1985, 106). As Salvatore Settis has remarked,
there existed by Agrippa’s day “a divinatory tradition that recognized in the Sibyls
an unsurpassable model of ‘natural’ vaticination, true, exercised among the gentiles, but
capable nonetheless of grasping in the world the presages of the Redemption and the
Judgment” (ibid., 105–06; my translation and emphasis).
The epistemology of future things
In bringing together the words of scriptural prophets, ancient Sibyls, poets, and
astrologers, John of Legnano’s De adventu Christi makes the claim that all of the above
are valid routes to religious truth. Still, they are different paths to knowledge, with the
prophets and Sibyls speaking through divine inspiration and the astrologers using reason
40
Barbieri 1482, illustration labeled “Sybilla Chimica.” She is holding a scroll that reads, “In prima facie virginis
ascendit puella.” On Barbieri: “Filippo de Barbieri” 1964.
444 Laura Smoller
to scrutinize the stars. Yet in the striking illumination that heads Legnano’s treatise,
the boundaries between these different types of knowledge appear to break down. In
fact, while carefully walling off a special place for “prophecy,” Legnano explicitly and
implicitly erects an epistemology of future things in which the distinction between
reason and revelation is less than clear.
According to a discussion in De adventu Christi, prophecy differs from other ways of
knowing. “Prophecy,” properly speaking, is “the cognition of those things that exceed
natural human cognition” (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 10v ). As such, prophecy must come
from divine revelation (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 11v). Still, Legnano admits of other ways
of knowing future events, namely, not “in themselves,” but “through their causes.”
Such knowledge is attainable by the “natural intellect,” just as “a physician has a
precognition of the [patient’s] future health or death in some causes whose ordering
towards those effects he knows by experience” (Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 10v ). Still, Legnano
also notes, like Roger Bacon, that God had revealed the “principal arts and sciences”
(including, presumably, those of the physician and the astrologer) to “his servants the
holy prophets,” who in turn had taught them to the Persians, Greeks, and Latins
(Vat. lat. 2639, fol. 10v). If natural knowledge and prophecy have different immediate
sources, they both ultimately go back to divine revelation.
John of Legnano was not alone in his blurring of the lines between reason and
revelation in the knowledge of future things. As we have seen, Roger Bacon maintained
that all knowledge had its ultimate origin in revelation. For Arnald of Villanova, God
had implanted order and meaning in his creation in order for humans to discover it.
John of Rupescissa held that one could read and interpret nature just as one did Holy
Scripture. Pierre d’Ailly would aver that “The heavens are like a book with spiritual
material, written by the finger of God, showing his supernatural sublimity through it”
(Gerson 1960–1973, 2:220; my translation). Rupescissa also held that Solomon knew
all the sciences of nature and philosophy through divine revelation, just as d’Ailly would
argue (at times, at least) that astrology had been originally revealed to the patriarchs
(Smoller 1994, 40). And at least one Sibyl in the fifteenth-century catalogues appears
to have learned her prophecy by reading the stars, or, at least, Albumasar.
This discussion suggests that two sorts of beliefs could underlay the impulse to
natural theology in the later Middle Ages. The first was the conviction that nature,
as God’s creation, was also God’s revelation, every bit as capable as Scripture was of
teaching human beings religious truths. The second key belief was the assumption that
philosophy, astrology, and alchemy – the tools by which humans could interpret the
world around them – also had their origins in divine revelation.41 In many cases,
the catalyst that brought those two beliefs into an exercise of the impulse to natural
theology was an eschatological framework. The sense that one was living near the
end of times, combined with a Joachite belief that universal conversion would be a
41
On this notion: Bokdam 1987.
feature of the apocalyptic scenario, propelled first, the search for clues as to when
the end would come, second, the drive to find a language with which to convert
the non-believers, and, third, a way to give Christians strength in their faith to steel
them through Antichrist’s torments. In all of these endeavors, natural theology had an
important part to play.
Legnano’s example, then, suggests that in the late medieval embrace of the impulse
to natural theology, we must not expect to find thinkers looking only to what reason
had to teach them about God’s existence (that is, the classic argument from design).
Just as in the sixteenth century the search for magical secrets of nature would help
to valorize a scientific epistemology based on observation and experience (Eamon
1994), so, too, in the later Middle Ages, an eschatologically-driven interest in occult
sciences, astrology, prophecy, and pagan recipients of revelation may have contributed
to an increased confidence in natural theology. If this is the case, Legnano’s example
illustrates the impossibility of separating out the categories of knowledge and belief
in the development of what would come to be known as “natural theology.” He turns
to the Sibyls out of belief that their utterances were divinely inspired; astrology reaches
the same truths using human reason. Yet astrology may have been revealed, and the
Sibyls (according to Agrippa of Nettesheim) were none other than wise magicians.
When Legnano ends his discussion of Antichrist’s advent with a foray into the numbers
in Revelation and Daniel, it is not clear whether his concordance of astrology and
Scripture bolsters Legnano’s faith in the Bible or strengthens his trust in the stars’
ability to foretell the future. If one is convinced that all truth must agree, then the
activities of knowing and believing will proceed in the parallel fashion illustrated in the
Nativity illumination in MS Vat. lat. 2639 (and with the same blurring of boundaries
found therein). Nature, as God’s Creation, becomes divine revelation as well, and
it little matters whether Barbieri’s Sybilla Chimica takes her knowledge from God’s
inspiration – or from the stars.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Bernhard Kleeberg, Scott Mandelbrote, Joan Richards, and Fernando

Vidal for hours of pleasant and intense discussions, as well as to Rivka Feldhay and the
other members of the “Knowledge and Belief” working group organized by Fernando
Vidal and Lorraine Daston of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and
to the anonymous reviewers for Science in Context.
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Astrology and the Sibyls: John of Legnano's De adventu

Laura Ackerman Smoller

Science in Context / Volume 20 / Issue 03 / September 2007, pp 423 - 450

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0269889707001378

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Astrology and the Sibyls: John of Legnano’s De adventu

Laura Ackerman Smoller

The difficulty of finding “natural theology” in medieval thought

In tracing a history of natural theology in the Middle Ages, it is helpful to distinguish

Natural theology in the Middle Ages: term and impulse

The impulse to natural theology in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

John of Legnano’s work as presented in Vat. lat. 2639

As the previous examples indicate, an important moment in the joining together

The harmony of “revealed” and “natural” theology in the De adventu Christi

Next, Legnano returns to astrology, extensively lifting (without acknowledgment)

Astrology, Sibylline prophecy, and natural theology

Nativity Virgin and Infant

Tiburtine Sibyl, Augustus, crowd

figures with scrolls Astrologers with scrolls

crowned figures Sibyls with scrolls

Sibyls, whether it be a parade of prophets followed by a single Sibyl, or parallel ranks

The epistemology of future things

I am grateful to Bernhard Kleeberg, Scott Mandelbrote, Joan Richards, and Fernando

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