[MUSIC] Hi again. I hope you've had some time to think about the last video, and to reflect on the fact that the historical idea of science and the historical idea of magic share a key element. They have changed over time. The frontier between them can get blurry sometimes, but especially when we are dealing with a discipline, such as astrology. Today, we are going to discuss how medieval astrology in Christian Europe was made up of a great variety of astrological traditions. Imagine a complex building, built for the ages. Where every civilization contributes its piece. Styles and materials combine to the point where it's difficult to say what came from where. But occasionally, some distinct elements survive well enough that we can pinpoint their origin. That is precisely the case with some specific astrological elements that were assimilated by Christian astrology, without much adaptation, as we will see in a minute. But first, let me clarify something. When we talk about Christian Astrology, we refer to the Astrology that was studied, and practiced in Christian Europe. And since Astrology was a discipline reserved for scholars, this so-called Christian astrology was, of course, written in the scholarly language of the period, Latin. Thus, a good example of those distinct elements I just mentioned are lunar mansions. A lunar mansion, is a segment of the apparent path of the moon in it's orbit around the earth. These mansions were often used by ancient cultures as part of their calendar system. But what qualifies them as one of those easily identifiable foreing elements is that their names were assimilated by Latin astrological texts maintaining their Arabic form: Alnath, Albotain, Aldebaran. Now, those of you who are familiar with current astronomy are probably thinking that what I just said is a list of stars, and you would be absolutely right. The explanation is that the Arabic lunar mansions usually refer to a constellation and its most important star, that is generally, the brightest star that could be seen in the area defined by each lunar mansion. Sometimes however, the syncretism, in other words: the amalgamation of different astrological traditions, was much more successful and the result included late Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek materials that were compiled in Greece during the Hellenistic period filtered and enriched with Iranian, Indian, and Arabic contributions, reworded in the Islamic phase, and finally translated into Greek and Latin first, and later on into the vernacular languages. This corpus of knowledge was aimed at a European Christian audience and so it incorporated the appropriate adjustments in each case to avoid the censure of the Church. There are many examples of this complex blend of astrological conceptions. Bear with me here, for a moment because this is when things get complicated. For instance, world astrology. That is the application of astrology to predict and understand world events. Well then, world astrology was a result of the combination of one, Zoroastrian millennialism, that is a philosophy born on the Iranian plateau, somewhere between the 18th and the 6th century before the common era. And two, the astrology of the Sassanian Empire. But in turn, Sassanian astrology combined indian and Hellenistic traditions and developed in Iran between the 3rd and the 7th century of our era. How's that for complicated? But wait, there's more. The <i>electiones</i>, choices, or <i>interrogationes</i>, questions were an astrological practice that, to put it simply, was based on answering specific yes or no questions and in helping decide about the best time to do something. We we'll discuss them in the upcoming videos but what makes them relevant for our argument that astrology was a true medley of traditions, is the fact that they were a loan from the Islamic tradition but also the last remaining legacy of the so called cathartic Greek astrology that had first spread to India around the second century of our era and much later from the 9th century onwards, was assimilated and passed onto the west by Arabic science. So as you see, historical astrology's big picture is indeed huge. The astrological corpus available to Medieval Europe, was a product of evolution that was largely similar to that of European medicine. We cannot divide it into neat linear consecutive periods. Something like classical astrology, medieval astrology, Renaissance astrology. Neither can we think of it as a monolithic block, where all the materials come from the same source and share the same style. The truth is closer to a complex network of heterogeneous systems, each with its particular history, that converged only incidentally in the Middle Ages and gave birth to the new hybrid traditions. In our next video, we will take a look at the different materials and traditions that have been so far recognized within the collection of ideas, practices, and texts that compose the astrological knowledge of the Middle Ages. Specifically, we will focus on the early centuries of the medieval period, and on how Christianity took over a rather ancient ensemble of principles and beliefs and adapted it to its own symbolism. But then again, if you've been following the previous units of this MOOC that's not exactly news, is it? Stay tuned. [MUSIC]