READINGS for HS 4476 MEDIEVAL HERETICS AND INQUISITORS

44
CASE TWENTY-SEVEN
two sorts of divination, art and madness. They are called sorcerers who practice the art using words.
§3. The are called mediums who make wicked prayers before the altars of idols and offer
them evil sacrifices, thus by these ceremonies procuring responses from the demons.
§4. The are called soothsayers who determine times, for they set days and hours for
conducting business and projects, and choose different times that men should observe. These also
investigate the entrails of beasts and predict the future from them.
§5. They are called augurs who observe the flights and songs of birds and point out to people
who approach them other signs of things and unexpected occurrences. There are also bird-seers. The
auguries of birds are called auspices, taken from bird-life and what birds do. There are two kinds of
auspices, one proper to the eyes and one to the ears: to the eye is the observing of bird-flights and
that to the year the observing of bird-songs.
§6. Pythonesses are called from Pythian Apollo, who is the master of divination. They are
called astologians who take auguries from the stars. Astrologists are those who determine birth-signs.
They describe the origins of human beings from the twelve heavens, and try to predict the characters
of those born, their actions, and their future from the movements of the stars, that is from the sign
under which they were born, or by interpreting that signs effect on their lives. These are the people
commonly called astrologers whose superstition involves what Latins call "constellations" ("Signs
of the Zodiac"). That is the determination of the stars as to how they were positioned when one was
born.
§7. The first of those to interpret the stars were the called the magi, as is read concerning
them in the Gospel [Mt 2] when they announced the birth of Christ. Later they become known only
under the name of astrologers. Their art was permitted up to the time of Christ, when by Christ's
command none were hence to calculate birth-signs from the heavens. Those are called horoscopecasters
who predict various different fates from the hour of one's birth. Those are called lot-casters
who, etc. As above.
§8. They are called fortunetellers who, when various parts of the body are presented to them,
they predict that these signify good or evil.
Gratian: It is also asked on the nature of demons, what there nature is, whether they can
foretell the future, and how many ways they might know the future.
Concerning these things, Augustine, in the same book [i.e. On the Nature of Demons 3, 5,
6, but as adapted in Rabanus Maurus, On the Tricks of Magicians], writes:
How many ways demons can know the future.
C. 2.
It should be known what the nature of demons is, that by the senses of their aerial body they
easily surpass the senses of material bodies; they are incomparably superior in speed also, on account
of the superior mobility of an aerial body over not only people and beasts but even over the flight
of birds. They prevail in these two things in as much as they have aerial bodies: their acuity of sense
and their speed of motion. So they predict things which they see much earlier or report things that
people are amazed by because of the lethargy of their earthy senses. Demons, on account of the long
time they have been alive, also have much greater experience than people can acquire because of
their short life span. Through these powers, which arise from the nature of their aerial bodies, not
only can demons predict many future events and even do many things which human beings could
neither know nor do. And so certain people judge them worthy to be served and given divine honors.