Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/456

 440 SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. ity of being at any moment called to account by the Inquisition. That this did not occur more often may be attributed to the fact that all classes, in Church and State, from the lowest to the highest, believed in astrology and protected astrologers, and some special inducement or unusual indiscretion was required to set in motion the machinery of prosecution. We can thus understand the case of the celebrated Peter of Abano or Apono, irrespective of his reputation as the greatest magician of his age, earned for him among the vulgar by his mar- vellous learning and his unsurpassed skill in medicine. We have no details of the accusations brought against him by the Inquisi- tion, but we may reasonably assume that there was little difficulty in finding ample ground for condemnation. In his Conciliator Differentiinn, written in 1303, he not only proved that astrology was a necessary part of medicine, but his estimate of the power of the stars practically eliminated God from the government of the world. The Deluge took place when the world was subject to Mars, in consequence of the conjunction of the planets in Pisces; it was under the lead of the moon when occurred the confusion of tongues, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the exodus from Egypt, Even worse was his Averrhoistic indifference to re- ligion manifested in the statement that the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the head of Aries, which occurs every nine hundred and sixty years, causes changes in the monarchies and religions of the world, as appears in the advent of Xebuchadnezzar, Moses, Alexander the Great, Christ, and Mahomet — a speculation of which the infidelity is even worse than the chronology.* It is not sur- prising that the Inquisition took hold of one whose great name was popularizing such doctrines in the University of Padua, es- pecially as there was a large fortune to be confiscated. We are told that he at first escaped its clutches, but this probably was 14-15.). Cf. Albumasar de Magnis Conjunctionibus Tract in. Diff. i. (Aug. Vin- del. 1489). The Conciliator was a work of immense reputation. The preface of the edi- tion of 1494 speaks of three or four previous printed editions, and there were repeated later ones up to 1596. Curiously enough, it was never included in the Roman and Spanish Indexes, though it appears in that of Lisbon of 1624 (Reusch, der Index der verbotenen Biicher, I. 35).
 * P. de Abano Conciliator Different. Philos.Diff. ix., x. (Ed. Venet. 1494, fol.