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Bishop Bartholomew of Exeter (d. 1184) and the Heresy of Astrology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2018

DAVID RUNCIMAN
DAVID RUNCIMAN*
Affiliation:
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge CB3 oDG; e-mail: dr421@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

In the late twelfth century, Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter (1161–84), identified astrology as the most serious heresy facing the English Church. The evidence of Bartholomew's writing suggests that astrology became more widely accepted among the English clergy during his episcopal tenure. It also supports the view that popular heretical movements enjoyed little success in England during this period, in contrast to some regions in mainland Europe. Instead, it was scholars deemed guilty of intellectual error, and above all the astrologers, who became the focus of Bartholomew's anxieties about heresy and the intellectual culture of his day.

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Type
Research Article
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 265 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

During the twelfth century, astrology in England was invigorated by the arrival of Arabic knowledge from Spain.Footnote 1 Scholarly descriptions of this phenomenon have focused on those Englishmen who embraced the ‘new astrology’, such as Adelard of Bath (fl. c. 1110–50), Roger of Hereford (fl. 1176–98) and Daniel of Morley (fl. 1175–1210).Footnote 2 These men introduced the astrolabe, astronomical tables (the Arabic zīj) and astrological manuals to England.Footnote 3 They argued that astrology was entirely a natural science and so advocated the embrace of judicial astrology.Footnote 4

But these astrologers’ claims were not accepted without resistance, and while the astrologers’ own writings demonstrate the transfer of astrological knowledge to north-western Europe, the writings of their opponents provide better evidence for how astrology was being received at any given moment. Notable twelfth-century figures, such as Peter Abelard and Hugh of St Victor, restated the patristic condemnations of astrology and established a model that later opponents of astrology followed.Footnote 5 Isidore of Seville's formulation, that some astrological predictions were natural and others superstitious, remained influential.Footnote 6 But it was in the thirteenth century, as astrology continued to flourish, that its acceptability was more robustly interrogated by intellectuals. Opinions varied, but the discussion focused on delineating the boundary between licit and illicit knowledge, as exemplified by texts like the Speculum astronomiae.Footnote 7 Many thirteenth-century theologians accepted astrology to some degree, although it was denounced by others, including William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, and Robert Grosseteste.Footnote 8

In twelfth-century England, writers who mentioned astrology still tended to be vague or ambiguous about its legitimacy and efficacy. Some evidently had their doubts, but few condemned it totally.Footnote 9 John of Salisbury (d. 1180) has become the best known opponent of astrology, for his treatment of it in book ii of the Policraticus.Footnote 10 There is, however, additional evidence from one of astrology's fiercest critics in late twelfth-century England. Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter (1161–84), a renowned canonist and dialectician who seems to have studied and taught in Paris,Footnote 11 does not appear in any histories of astrology, and yet he bitterly opposed it throughout his career.

The main evidence for this comes from Bartholomew's treatise reconciling divine foreknowledge and human free will, which he completed in the early 1180s.Footnote 12 In the letter of dedication to his protégé Baldwin of Ford (d. 1190), then bishop of Worcester, and in the preface, Bartholomew explained that the treatise was written as a response to astrology.Footnote 13 He also described how he had turned to address astrology once he had received the regimen animarum, that is, some twenty years earlier.Footnote 14 He reminded Baldwin how at that time, ‘with exhortations from you especially, more than others, I undertook to preach insistently and publicly against the aforesaid error’.Footnote 15 Bartholomew does not, so far as I have been able to see, condemn astrology in any of his extant sermons.Footnote 16 But in his penitential, produced at some point before this treatise, Bartholomew had included the judgement that the practices of planetarii and mathematici were unorthodox.Footnote 17 Thus, this treatise was the culmination of a lifetime's opposition to astrology.

A critical edition of the treatise was published in 1996 by David Bell under the title Contra fatalitatis errorem, which we shall adopt.Footnote 18 A later hand in the one of the manuscript copies gives the title De predestinatione contra mathematicos, which might also have been suitable.Footnote 19 Various titles had previously been attached to the treatise by bibliographers: De praedestinatione, De libero arbitrio or De fatalitate et fato.Footnote 20 For some time it was thought to be two discrete works, but Bell has shown that this is not the case.Footnote 21 His edition provides welcome critical apparatus, and his introduction sets the work in the wider context of Christian discussions about predestination and free will, naturalia and contingentia.Footnote 22 Yet more can be said concerning Bartholomew's treatment of astrology, and what that reveals about astrology and intellectual culture in England during his lifetime.

First, it will be useful to describe Contra fatalitatis errorem, which is not a well-known text. Bartholomew makes it clear in the preface that he conceived of the work as a compilation of authorities. He announces his intention to gather together materials ‘so that the faithful who cannot process the abundance of sacred writings on this matter, or cannot memorise them, can find them easily in one place’.Footnote 23 This sort of enterprise was, of course, typical of the twelfth century, a period marked by concerns about the limits of memory for retaining information and a desire to make the authorities readily available.Footnote 24 One thinks, for example, of Peter Lombard's remark that his Sentences should prevent the need for the reader to trawl through numerous tomes.Footnote 25

Compilations could take different forms. Unlike his penitential, Bartholomew's Contra fatalitatis errorem was not a ‘mosaic of quotations’.Footnote 26 Rather, there were five substantial auctoritates that Bartholomew copied almost verbatim. These were taken from: the Hexameron of Basil of Caesarea, as translated by Eustathius;Footnote 27 the Hexameron of Ambrose of Milan;Footnote 28 Augustine's De civitate dei;Footnote 29 Anselm of Canterbury's De concordia praescientia et predestinationis et gratiae dei cum libero arbitrio;Footnote 30 and Boethius’ De consolatione philosophie.Footnote 31 In each case, Bartholomew carefully identified the author, the text, and where in that text the excerpt might be found. These five extended quotations, together with Bartholomew's ‘recapitulations’ of the authorities’ solutions, comprise approximately the first fifth of the entire treatise.Footnote 32

Each auctoritas runs to the order of one or two thousand words. The extracts from Basil, Augustine and Anselm almost entirely retain their integrity, Bartholomew cutting out only brief phrases. Those from Ambrose and Boethius received more editorial attention. Ambrose had little more than translated Basil's Hexameron,Footnote 33 and after beginning to copy out Ambrose's work Bartholomew broke off, explaining that ‘Blessed Ambrose urges against the same error so concordantly with Basil, except in a few places, that to read one after the other in succession seems almost superfluous.’Footnote 34 The two Hexamerons seem to have circulated together often, which may be how Bartholomew gained access to Basil's rarer text.Footnote 35 Bartholomew also explains that he made some omissions from Boethius, leaving enough for the summary of his opinions.Footnote 36 He seldom interrupted the extracts, except to introduce Cicero's De divinatione when it was mentioned and argued against by Augustine,Footnote 37 and to summarise the material that he had cut from Boethius so as to maintain the flow of the argument. Bartholomew summarised the salient points after each extract, but generally withheld analytical comment, only suggesting of Anselm's De concordia that ‘this reasoning is a solution rather than a proof’.Footnote 38

In presenting these auctoritates as they were with minimal editing, Bartholomew was making a point about the nature of authority. He made clear that the authorities condemned astrology as ‘contrary to the Catholic faith, incomprehensible, and vain’.Footnote 39 For Bartholomew, this should have settled the matter. Augustine, in particular, was so persuasive in his attack that ‘sufficiently understanding what he says ought to be sufficient’.Footnote 40 This was a pointed remark in a period when some scholars were accused of arrogantly trusting their own reason and logic more than the authorities.Footnote 41

As David Bell points out, Bartholomew acknowledged that certain ‘moderni’ – a term used pejoratively – might remain unconvinced that astrology was illicit despite the Fathers’ condemnation.Footnote 42 Consequently, Bartholomew proceeded to use his own scholastic training to answer his critics. This latter section of the treatise is itself divided into two parts.Footnote 43 The first was particularly devoted to reconciling divine foreknowledge and free will, by means of distinctions and other solutions that would satisfy such ‘sophistic objections’.Footnote 44 The second part addressed the soteriological questions arising from these doctrines, establishing that the guilt for sin still belonged to man despite God's providence.Footnote 45 These sections are considerably larger than the compilation of auctoritates. Nevertheless, Bartholomew insisted that he wanted only to be credited with discovering and compiling the judgements of the Catholic Doctors,Footnote 46 and requested that Baldwin correct the treatise by removing not only anything ‘opposed to the Holy Faith’, but also that which was ‘not fully supported by authority’.Footnote 47 This was more than just the obligatory expression of humility seen in so many medieval prefaces. Bartholomew was emphasising that, in contrast to the astrologers, he relied on the authorities more than his own reasoning.

Historically, astrology had been condemned as both impracticable and contrary to Christian doctrine. The two were often combined, as Basil, Ambrose and Augustine had done, and others continued to do in the twelfth century. Peter Abelard, for example, claimed that astrologers would decline to foretell his next action when asked, for they knew that he would be able to do precisely the opposite in response.Footnote 48 Underpinning this criticism was an insistence on both the duplicity of the astrologers, who would refuse to predict something that could so immediately be tested, and on Abelard's free will to act against the prediction. Robert Grosseteste used similar lines of argument in the thirteenth century.Footnote 49

What made Bartholomew's approach so distinctive was his almost exclusive focus on astrology's incompatibility with Christian doctrine. This can be seen from the way Bartholomew structured and commented on his compilation. It is true that in some of the auctoritates astrology is described as illogical and impractical. Basil (and therefore Ambrose) had argued that the casting of nativities was flawed because by the time the ‘Chaldaean’ had received a baby from the midwives, enough time must have passed for the prediction to be erroneous.Footnote 50 He described astrology as a spider's web that trapped the weak-minded, while the rational broke through.Footnote 51 But it would be a mistake to think that Bartholomew thought much of these arguments. As we shall see, Bartholomew was more interested in Basil and Ambrose's concluding comments regarding the theological implications of astrology.

Augustine was the most important authority for Bartholomew, as he was for all who opposed astrology, because he specifically set out the incompatibility of astrology with the Christian doctrines of divine foreknowledge and human free will. This brought Bartholomew to the main subject of his treatise: the reconciliation of providence and free will. The extracts from Anselm and Boethius did not mention astrology at all, but they were useful to Bartholomew because they were attempts at reconciling these doctrines. So in his compilation Bartholomew moved from direct condemnations of astrology by the authorities, to affirmations of the doctrines with which astrology was said to be incompatible. It is clear which of the authorities were most important to Bartholomew, for he concluded his compilation thus: ‘Behold the solutions of Augustine, Anselm and Boethius.’Footnote 52 Bartholomew's aim in Contra fatalitatis errorem, therefore, was to reconcile divine foreknowledge and free will, affirm both doctrines anew, and thereby exclude the possibility of belief in astrology within orthodoxy. This is why astrology is rarely mentioned directly in the latter part of the treatise.Footnote 53 Consequently, the letter of commendation and the preface are the main places where Bartholomew connected astrology to the doctrines at stake.

Bartholomew discussed free will more than divine foreknowledge, summarising his view in the preface:

However much they [the astrologers] may present different faces, they all come together in this one scorpion's tail: that nothing should be left to man's free will, nor indeed that anything should remain of free will itself. And thus, with their sacrilegious excuse, they presume to cast back all the cause of sinning on to the Author of Salvation.Footnote 54

Bartholomew characterised the astrologers as fatalists who believed, as he put it, in ‘inevitable necessity’, and who sought to blame God for their own sin.Footnote 55 He took these ideas from the authorities in his compilation, where he quoted Augustine's argument that astrologers casting nativities were effectively accepting determinism, and so denied free will and God's right to judge sin. Augustine did allow that astrologers could hold different positions, and that some might say that the stars were a sign of God's future, not a cause. But he added that no mathematicus actually spoke in this way.Footnote 56 Basil and Ambrose, for all their rational arguments against astrology, were summarised by Bartholomew thus: ‘This teaches that if the astrologers’ opinion is truth, it will be estimated that neither the rewards nor the punishments according to justice are to be owed, and every industry and labour of mankind superfluous.’Footnote 57

Bartholomew also described how astrology was incompatible with divine foreknowledge and providence. In his penitential he had inserted the often-repeated etymological quip that diviners were so called because they pretended to be divine.Footnote 58 In Contra fatalitatis errorem, Bartholomew went further and defined belief in astrology in direct opposition to belief in the providence of God: ‘Some contend the cause of necessity to be the immutability and infallibility of divine providence; others that it is the position or a constellation of the stars, which they call fate.’Footnote 59 This rather simplistic statement is all that Bartholomew says directly on the incompatibility of astrology and divine providence. His simple analogue between two absolute causes lacks all the nuance of Augustine's order of causes.Footnote 60 Bartholomew would of course proceed to offer a more sophisticated attempt at reconciling divine foreknowledge and human free will later in the treatise. But here he stated the orthodox position in the simplest possible terms, in order to draw a stark contrast with the astrologers’ ideas. In so doing, Bartholomew effectively sidestepped the vexed question of which, if any, prognostications from celestial bodies might be valid, enabling him to present the disagreement about astrology as a clear divide between those who subscribed to orthodoxy and those who did not.

In fact, where Augustine, Abelard and Hugh of Saint Victor had not done so explicitly, Bartholomew repeatedly branded astrology as a heresy.Footnote 61 His opening theme in the letter of commendation to Baldwin was taken from the parable of the wheat and tares: ‘Of the tares which we see the enemy over-sow after the good seed of the Father while men were sleeping, none, I believe, are more firmly rooted to the ground, none more perniciously to have abounded, than the error of fate.’Footnote 62 This parable was commonly understood to refer to heresy. False teachers sent by Satan had infiltrated the Church. God would allow this evil, for he would know his own at the last judgement. When the harvest was collected the tares would be taken aside and burnt, but until then these imposters would work evil in the Church.Footnote 63 Bartholomew saw astrologers as heretics, not at the fringes of Christian society, but embedded in the Church itself.

Therefore he wrote to Baldwin: ‘We believe, following the apostle, that after the first and second admonition, they are to be avoided as heretics.’Footnote 64 That is, astrologers were to be anathema. This matched Bartholomew's recommendation in his penitential for all those found guilty of divination.Footnote 65 Any clergymen found consulting with magicians, haruspices, seers, augurs or fortune-tellers were to be degraded and made to enter the monastic life for perpetuity.Footnote 66 Heretics of any kind were to be excluded from society and only gradually rehabilitated, or contained within the cloister.Footnote 67 These provisions were not, of course, original to Bartholomew. They were found in Burchard of Worms, Ivo of Chartres and Gratian, who in turn had taken them from other authorities.Footnote 68 But this call for the exclusion of such people from Christian society was not mindlessly copied by Bartholomew. Consistently he wrote about the need to isolate threats to orthodoxy, advocating it not only in Contra fatalitatis errorem, but also in his Dialogus contra Iudeos where Christians were instructed to avoid Jews.Footnote 69

The Dialogus – essentially a defence of Christian exegesis and theology – was completed in the same few years as Contra fatalitatis errorem.Footnote 70 Throughout his career, but especially in these latter years of his life, Bartholomew displayed a general concern for the preservation of orthodoxy. We may wonder what drove this concern. England did not experience the rise in popular heretical movements then seen elsewhere in Europe. Just one episode is known in which such heretics were identified in England during the twelfth century, when a Cathar mission was discovered in Worcester during the 1160s.Footnote 71 The advice of Gilbert Foliot, bishop of London (1163–87), to Roger, bishop of Worcester (1164–79), shows some uncertainty about the right course of action. But as a preliminary measure, Gilbert advocated solitary confinement for the heretics, and attempted conversion by men who were learned in law and of proven faith.Footnote 72 Bartholomew's instinct to isolate threats appears to have been shared by his episcopal colleagues.

William of Newburgh, who later provided the fullest account of the 1160s episode, seems to suggest that this was the only outbreak of popular heresy in England during the twelfth century.Footnote 73 Nevertheless, awareness of the threat that heresy posed was on the increase in England as elsewhere. Several English writers commented on the popular heretical movements found in other regions, and were especially interested in the Cathars of Southern France.Footnote 74 In the years just before Contra fatalitatis errorem was written, Reginald fitz Jocelin, bishop of Bath and Wells (1174–91), had participated in a mission against Cathar heretics in Toulouse, and at the Third Lateran Council (1179) bishops everywhere had been charged with rooting out heretics in their diocese.Footnote 75 Bartholomew was possibly responding to the papal edicts about heresy. In the absence of popular heresy in England, astrology was the most dangerous threat that he could identify.

That said, Bartholomew viewed astrology as a heresy that led literati into error, not a movement leading the flock astray from the Church.Footnote 76 His objection to astrology was its incompatibility with Christian doctrine, not its association with magic.Footnote 77 Like any heresy, astrology was a deception that Satan used. But it was the astrologers’ ideas that were dangerous, not their practices. He never described astrology as demonica, nor the astrologers as malefici. Nowhere in Contra fatalitatis errorem did he refer or allude to Exodus xxii.18: ‘maleficos non patieris uiuere’. Neither did Bartholomew describe astrology as superstitious or irrational. The astrologers’ newly acquired sophistication lent them credibility.Footnote 78 Their astronomical measurements were indisputably more precise, and they could point to ancient and apparently authoritative assurances of the efficacy of astral prognostication, rooted in the ideas of Aristotle and Ptolemy.Footnote 79 Daniel of Morley even claimed to have found more wisdom studying Arabic sciences in Spain than theology in Paris.Footnote 80

But when Bartholomew wrote of the ‘difficulty of the questions’ that astrologers raised,Footnote 81 he was more likely thinking of the theological defences that they advanced. Raymond of Marseilles (fl. 1141) for instance, in his Liber cursuum planetarum, justified astrology with reference to Scripture: ‘No-one doubts that an astrologer can predict the future. For if this were false, the Truth himself would not have instructed us about the signs by which we will know that the day of judgement is close, saying, “There shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars”.’Footnote 82 Other biblical accounts could be cited in support of astrology, such as the Magi following Christ's natal star.Footnote 83 Commentators on Genesis often felt it necessary to explain that astrology was not sanctioned by the giving of luminaria as signs for determining times, days and years.Footnote 84

Astrologers also defended themselves against the very judgements of the Church Fathers that Bartholomew compiled, and particularly against the charge that they were determinists who believed God to be limited in any way. They emphasised that astronomical measurements and predictions were possible because the stars moved regularly according to divinely ordained laws. Thus it was God who constrained the movements of the stars, not the other way around. Merlin, Geoffrey of Monmouth's astrologer-prophet, praised God with the address: ‘O King, through whom the machine of the starry heavens exists.’Footnote 85 Raymond of Marseilles specified that all things were subject to God's will. God remained the first cause, but revealed the future in the stars. ‘The planets will signify nothing different’, he declared, ‘from what God has foreseen or predestined.’Footnote 86 Roger of Hereford, a contemporary of Bartholomew, likewise argued that the stars were not a cause at all, only a sign. Thus he concluded that only God had complete foreknowledge because the thought and miracles of God were beyond the astrologer's grasp.Footnote 87

John of Salisbury had encountered this argument, and wrote that ‘the most moderate’ astrologers would not promise the fulfilment of events predicted, because the future was not bound to the stars’ movements.Footnote 88 These Christian astrologers all accepted God's prerogatives of sovereignty and foreknowledge. Indeed, they felt there was a devotional aspect to astrology, for they were interpreting God's communication through the natural order.Footnote 89 There was something of a disconnect in the debate, however, since astrologers focused on reconciling their art with predestination, while their opponents – including Bartholomew – were more concerned with human free will. Though connected, these were distinct issues. Abelard responded to Raymond of Marseilles with the charge that he had not accounted satisfactorily for human free will in his defence of astrology.Footnote 90

This may be why Bartholomew focused more on free will than predestination. However, he never engaged directly with the contemporary arguments made in favour of astrology. When Bartholomew described the astrologers as those who believed stars to be the cause of necessity, rather than God, it is more reminiscent of the earlier, bolder claims of Adelard of Bath: ‘If anyone could make her [astronomia] his own, he would be confident in declaring not only the present condition of lower things, but also their past or future conditions. For, those higher and divine animate beings are the principle and causes of the lower natures.’Footnote 91

Given its appeal to intellectuals, Bartholomew worried about whom astrology might ensnare, and readily acknowledged the capability (facilitate) of his adversaries.Footnote 92 He reminded Baldwin who had fallen victim to error that ‘we are not talking only of the laity, but also many literati’, by whom he clearly meant clergy.Footnote 93 These heretics could not be dismissed like others as illiterati, idiotae or rustici.Footnote 94 In his study on the secular clergy, Hugh Thomas noted that ‘many clerics were open to such religiously suspect subjects as magic, astrology, and divination’.Footnote 95 Bartholomew mentions no names, but we may speculate based on his and Baldwin's regional context.

It is interesting that the Welsh Marches and the West Country seem to have produced most of the known English astrologers of the period.Footnote 96 A poem of Simon de Freine (d. c. 1210), written in the late twelfth century, describes the teaching of astronomy and the other liberal arts at the cathedral school of Hereford.Footnote 97 Roger of Hereford's work, the Liber de quatuor partibus iudiciorum astronomie of 1178, appears to be a textbook for his students, and includes the interpretive characteristics of the twelve signs of the zodiac and the nature of the seven planets for producing horoscopes.Footnote 98 At the time of Bartholomew's writing Contra fatalitatis errorem, astrologers were especially animated by a number of events. There were the solar eclipses of 1178 and 1180, the former of which Roger of Hereford used to date his manual.Footnote 99 There was also frenzied anticipation of 1186, in which year all the planets were to align.Footnote 100 An active community of astrologers at the cathedral school of Hereford must, therefore, have been apparent.

Robert Foliot, bishop of Hereford (1173–86), would have appeared to Bartholomew and Baldwin as these astrologers’ patron. There were also continued connections between this same school of astrologers and Robert's brother Gilbert Foliot, formerly bishop of Hereford but since translated to London, who commissioned a computus from Roger of Hereford in 1176.Footnote 101 Gilbert also wrote favourably about divination and with great interest about the firmament in his sermons.Footnote 102 Other senior ecclesiastics were connected to notable astrologers. Daniel of Morley found employment with John of Oxford, bishop of Norwich (1175–1200), from the beginning of the bishop's episcopal tenure. It was apparently at John's request that Daniel wrote the Philosophia, in which he described the efficacy of astrology.Footnote 103 Daniel may also have taught at the schools of Northampton, where he claimed the liberal arts still flourished, and to which he had originally been en route from Toledo when he met John of Oxford.Footnote 104 These examples show that astrology was gaining credibility amongst even the highest ranking churchmen in the country, corresponding with Bartholomew's concern that this ‘heresy’ was firmly taking root in the Church.

Like Bartholomew, John of Salisbury identified that clergymen were susceptible to the claims of the astrologers. But John was equally, perhaps primarily, alarmed by the interest in astrology at the royal court.Footnote 105 The royal astrologer was not yet a familiar figure in twelfth-century England, although Adelard of Bath dedicated his work De opere astrolapsus to the future Henry ii, claiming that the young Henry Fitz Empress desired to know all about the subject matter it contained.Footnote 106 There has been some debate about how seriously John of Salisbury's concern about astrology at the court should be taken, but most agree that he described real developments in curial life.Footnote 107 Whatever the case, Bartholomew did not mention courtiers at all, focusing solely on his ecclesiastical context and the theological problems associated with belief in astrology.

Bartholomew's emphasis on doctrine over reason also derived from his epistemological convictions. He described the astrologers as men with ‘straying hearts’, motivated by the desire to find an excuse for their sin.Footnote 108 Their problem was that they ‘willingly believe that which they desire’.Footnote 109 It was not reason that had led the astrologers into error, but desire. Accordingly, they would not be dissuaded through reason. Faith was required, because true understanding was predicated on faith.Footnote 110 Quoting Isaiah, Bartholomew explained that ‘Unless you believe, you will not understand.’Footnote 111 Bartholomew was not altogether opposed to reason, in its place. He explained that the Christian should ‘faithfully desire and humbly seek not only to believe, but also afterwards to understand what they believe’.Footnote 112 This pattern corresponds with the structure of Contra fatalitatis errorem, in which Bartholomew first held out the judgements of the Church Fathers to be believed simply with faith, before providing his own arguments and commentary in order that these truths might be better understood.

The impact of Contra fatalitatis errorem seems to have been limited. It survives in just three manuscript copies; far fewer than Bartholomew's successful penitential.Footnote 113 David Bell found no later writers citing it,Footnote 114 although he demonstrated that Baldwin added to his own De commendatione fidei after receiving Contra fatalitatis errorem.Footnote 115 In this addition, Baldwin warned: ‘God sometimes permits signs and portents of what is to happen to be predicted by wicked people.’Footnote 116 Even if astrologers’ predictions came to pass, it was only because God chose to fulfil their guesses to test the faithful.Footnote 117 Evidently Bartholomew had persuaded Baldwin to reinforce his condemnation of divination and uphold the doctrines of the Church over any evidence in favour of astrology.

Although unsuccessful in its time, Contra fatalitatis errorem is now a valuable source to the historian. Bartholomew is a witness to the increased acceptance of astrology in England during the third quarter of the twelfth century. Early in his career, Bartholomew condemned astrology along with other forms of divination in his penitential, but gave it no special treatment. By the end of his life, he was claiming that astrology was the most serious heresy taking root in the English Church. Even allowing for overstatement, Bartholomew's alarm demonstrates that astrology had flourished during his episcopal tenure. Although by no means the first to oppose this new astrology, Bartholomew was the first to denounce it so vociferously in England.

If Bartholomew was familiar with John of Salisbury's treatment of astrology in the Policraticus, which seems likely given the friendship between them, he probably would have considered it an inadequate response.Footnote 118 On the fundamental point that astrology was difficult to reconcile with Christian doctrine they agreed. John, like Bartholomew, thought astrologers created an excuse for sin, and presumed to know that which the Son had said only the Father knows.Footnote 119 But John was clearly fascinated by astrologers’ predictions,Footnote 120 and would not rule out the possibility that some form of divination might be perfected in future.Footnote 121 In contrast, Bartholomew condemned divination without reservation. The exclusive focus on his ecclesiastical context marks out Bartholomew's treatment of astrology, but his concerns about intellectual culture more generally represent a step towards the thirteenth-century discussions about legitimate fields of enquiry for scholars.

Bartholomew's treatise also provides evidence in support of the view that England saw little popular heresy in this period, given that he identified astrology as the most dangerous heresy of his day. In a period of heightened anxiety about heresy generally, Bartholomew and Baldwin were especially alert to potential threats to orthodoxy. Bartholomew would go on to write his Dialogus contra Iudeos, and Baldwin his Liber de sectis hereticorum et orthodoxe fidei dogmata.Footnote 122 Both men were convinced that heretics were hidden in the Church. Both men were critical of various aspects of scholastic culture, particularly what they saw as an overdependence on reason and contempt for authority, but also the interest in illegitimate subjects. Thus, for Bartholomew, the astrologers became a natural target.

Footnotes

I am grateful for feedback on this article from the reviewer and from Dr Julie Barrau.

References

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4 Throughout this essay, by astrology I mean – as Bartholomew did – ‘judicial astrology’, that is, the prognostication of events including those contingent on human will. In the twelfth century the meaning of ‘astrologia’ and similar terms was inconsistent: C. Burnett, ‘Astrology’, and Grant, E., ‘Astronomy, cosmology and cosmography’, in Mantello, F. A. C. and Rigg, A. G. (eds), Medieval Latin: an introduction and bibliographical guide, Washington, DC 1996, 369–78Google Scholar, 363–8.

5 d'Alverny, M.-T., ‘Abélard et l'astrologie’, in Louis, R., Jolivet, J. and Châtillon, J. (eds), Pierre Abélard et Pierre le Vénérable: les courants philosophiques, littéraires et artistiques en occident au milieu du XIIe siècle, Paris 1975, 611–30Google Scholar; Boudet, Entre Science et nigromance, 210–12.

6 ‘Astrologia uero partim naturalis, partim superstitiosa est’: Isidore of Seville, Isidori Hispalensis episcopi etymologiarum sive originum, i, ed. W. M. Lindsay, Oxford 1911, iii, xxvii, p. 45; cf. Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, de studio legendi, ed. Buttimer, C. H., Washington, DC 1939, ii, x, p. 133Google Scholar.

7 Boudet, Entre Science et nigromance, 239–80; Zambelli, P., The Speculum astronomiae and its enigma: astrology, theology and science in Albertus Magnus and his contemporaries, Dordrecht 1991, 45–102Google Scholar.

8 Boudet, Entre Science et nigromance, 235. Peters, E., The magician, the witch, and the law, Philadelphia, Pa 1978, 85–90Google Scholar.

9 Watkins, C., History and the supernatural in medieval England, Cambridge 2007, 153–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Boudet, Entre Science et nigromance, 89–96; Seit, S., ‘Die Kunst, die Wahrheit in den Sternen zu lessen: Astrologie, Divination und die “ars coniectoris” bei Johannes von Salisbury’, in Wieland, G. and Dietl, C. (eds), Ars und scientia im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit: Ergebnisse interdisziplinärer Forschung, Georg Wieland zum 65 Geburtstag, Tübingen 2002, 77–96Google Scholar.

11 Morey, A., Bartholomew of Exeter, bishop and canonist: a study in the twelfth century, Cambridge 1937, 4Google Scholar.

12 The treatise was dedicated to Baldwin of Ford as bishop of Worcester, a position he held between 1180 and 1184: CFE, p. xx.

13 The epistola commendativa survives in two of the manuscripts: Corpus Christi College, Oxford, ms 360, fos 3r–61r, and Lincoln College, Oxford, ms 96, fos 1r–37r: CFE, p. xxiii.

14 ‘Quod tunc plenius aduertere cepi cum regimen animarum, quamuis indignus, Dei tamen miseratione et ordinatione suscepi’: CFE, epistola commendativa, ii, p. 11.

15 ‘Cum que in lumen et consolationem suscepte que sollicitudinis partem, te michi Deus comitem indiuiduum ad tempus comodasset, te pre ceteris specialiter exhortante, cepi contra predictum errorem instanter et publice predicare’: ibid.

16 Bodl. Lib., ms Bodley 449, fos 1r–90v. Bartholomew happily acknowledges that Christ's nativity ‘reuelata est per stellam regibus’: fo. 14r.

17 Morey, Bartholomew, 273. The penitential is generally dated to 1155–70: Meens, B., Penance in medieval Europe, 600–1200, Cambridge 2014, 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bartholomew's use of Gratian, which is not known to have circulated in England as early as the 1150s, supports the view that the penitential was the product of his episcopal tenure.

18 CFE, epistola commendativa, ii, p. 11.

19 BL, ms Add. 15971, fo. 1v.

20 Morey, Bartholomew, 108; CFE, p. xxxi.

21 CFE, p. xxxi.

22 CFE, pp. xxviii–ix.

23 ‘Conabor sub quanta res sinit et potero breuitate colligere, ut fidelibus qui sacrarum super hoc scripturarum copiam uel memoriam habere non possunt, facile sit hic inuenire’: CFE i, ii, p. 12.

24 R. H. Rouse and M. A. Rouse, ‘Statim invenire: schools, preachers, and new attitudes to the page’, in Benson, Constable and Lanham, Renaissance and renewal, 203.

25 Lombard, Peter, Magistri Petri Lombardi Parisiensis episcopi sententiae in IV libris distinctae, i, ed. Brady, I., Grottaferrata 1971, 3–4Google Scholar; Rouse and Rouse, ‘Statim invenire’, 206.

26 Morey, Bartholomew, 172.

27 These auctoritates were identified by D. N. Bell. This reference and the four following, indicating the passages from which Bartholomew excerpted material, are taken from Bell's edition: CFE ii–xv, pp. 13–20; Eustathius, Ancienne Version latine des neuf homélies sur l'Hexaéméron de Basile de Césarée, ed. E. A. de Mendieta and S. Y. Rudberg, Berlin 1958, vi, iv–vii, pp. 74–80.

28 CFE xvi, pp. 20–1; Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron, De paradiso, De Cain, De Noe, De Abraham, De Isaac, De bono mortis, ed. C. Schenkl, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum xxxii, i, 1896, iv, iv, pp. 118–26.

29 CFE xvii–xxi, pp. 21–8; Augustine of Hippo, De civitate dei, libri I–X, ed. B. Dombart and A. Kalb, CCSL xlvii, 1955, v, i–x, pp. 128–41.

30 CFE xxii–xxix, pp. 29–35; Anselm of Canterbury, Sancti Anselmi opera omnia, vol. II, ed. F. S. Schmitt, Edinburgh 1938, i, i–v, pp. 245–55.

31 CFE xxix–xxxvii, pp. 35–43; Boethius, Philiosophiae consolatio, ed. L. Bieler, CCSL xciv, 1984, v, iii, iv–v, vi, xliii, pp, 93–106.

32 CFE xxxviii–xli, pp. 43–9.

33 Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron, paradise, and Cain and Abel, trans. John J. Savage, New York 1961, p. vi.

34 ‘Hec Basilius, quibus beatus Ambrosius contra eundem errorem preterquam in paucis ita concorditer agit, ut unum seriatim legisse post alterum pene superfluum uideatur': CFE xvi, i, p. 20.

35 Both Hexamerons were apparently held at Reading Abbey in 1192, and at Ramsey Abbey and the Augustinian Friary at York in the fourteenth century: Sharpe, R., Carley, J. P., Thomson, R. M. and Watson, A. G. (eds), English Benedictine libraries: the shorter catalogues, London 1996, 382–3Google Scholar, 428, 435; Humphreys, K. W. (ed.), The friars' libraries, London 1990, 22Google Scholar.

36 ‘Seuerinus uero Boetius circa finem Consolationis Philosophice eandem de prouidentia questionem paucis intermissis quantum ad necessarium sententiarum summam, nisi fallor, opponendo atque soluendo per dialogum tractat hoc modo’: CFE xxix, vi, p. 35.

37 CFE xix, i–ii, pp. 24–5.

38 ‘Hec ratio solutio potius est quam probatio’: CFE xxii, iv, p. 29.

39 ‘In primis tamen contra eos qui per signorum et astrorum constitutionem et potestatem hanc heresim conantur astruere, duxi esse dicendum, tum quia contra alios diutius et laboriosius est intendendum, tum quia contra hos a sanctis patribus sufficienter non modo dictum, sed et scriptum esse reperio, qui signorum celestium nec omnimodam, nec nullam admittendam, iudicant obseruationem, quia in plerisque catholice fidei contraria, et incomprehensibilis est et uana': CFE ii, i, pp. 12–13.

40 ‘Beatus uero Augustinus contra eandem heresim tam prudenter et peremptorie disputat, ut sufficienter intellegentibus quod dicit sufficere debeat': CFE xvii, i, pp. 21–2.

41 Baldwin, J., The scholastic culture of the Middle Ages, 1000–1300, Lexington 1971, 80–4Google Scholar; W. Otten, ‘Authority and identity in the transition from monastic to scholastic theology’, and Colish, M. L., ‘Authority and interpretation in scholastic theology’, in Frishman, J., Otten, W. and Rouwhorst, G. A. M. (eds), Religious identity and the problem of historical foundation: the foundational character of authoritative sources in the history of Christianity and Judaism, Leiden 2004, 349–68Google Scholar, 369–86.

42 CFE xli, i, p. 49; CFE, p. xxxii.

43 For David Bell's description of this section see CFE, pp. xxxii–xxxv.

44 ‘sophisticas obiectiones’: CFE ciii, i, p. 105. This section of the treatise is CFE xlii–cii, pp. 49–105.

45 CFE civ–clxxiv, pp. 106–66.

46 ‘In quo nichil michi asscribendum censeo, nec ascribo, nisi catholicorum doctorum sententias multa diligentia conquisisse, sed maiore studio iuxta questionum uarietates locis congruentibus adaptasse': CFE, epistola commendativa, iii, p. 11.

47 ‘si quid inueneris sacre fidei uel bonis moribus aliquatenus aduersum, aut non manifeste uerum, aut non irrefragabili ratione probatum, aut non saltem certa auctoritate subnixum, totum deleas': CFE, epistola commendativa, iv, p. 11.

48 Abelard, Peter, Opera theologica, V: Expositio in hexameron, Abbreviatio Petri Abaelardi expositionis in hexameron, ed. Romig, M., Luscombe, D. E. and Burnett, C., CCCM xv, 2004, cciii, pp. 49–50Google Scholar.

49 Grosseteste, Robert, Hexaemeron, ed. Dales, R. C. and Gieben, S., Oxford 1982, v, viii–xi, pp. 164–70Google Scholar; Peters, The magician, 85.

50 Eustathius, L'Hexaéméron de Basile, vi, v, pp. 76–7; CFE ix–xi, pp. 15–17.

51 Eustathius, L'Hexaéméron de Basile, vi, vi, p. 78; CFE xii, p.17.

52 ‘Ecce Augustini et Anselmi et Boetii solutiones': CFE xxxvii, vii, p. 43.

53 Astrology is not discussed directly after chapter xxi, with two brief exceptions: CFE lviii, iv, p. 65; lx, i–ii, p. 68.

54 ‘Qui, quamuis uarias pretendant facies, in hac tamen una scorpionis cauda conueniunt, ut nichil libero hominum arbitrio, immo nec ipsum liberum relinquatur arbitrium; et sic omnem peccandi causam sacrilega excusatione sui, in salutis auctorem retorquere presumunt’: CFE i, i, p. 12.

55 ‘Plerique declinantes corda in uerba malicie ad excusandas excusationes in peccatis, omnium que fiunt seu quoquomodo eueniunt, fatalem uel alias ineuitabilem necessitatem conantur astruere': ibid.

56 Augustine, De civitate dei, v, i, p. 191. In De civitate dei, Augustine presented a more nuanced version of his earlier insistence on free will in his anti-Manichean polemic: Augustine, Four anti-Pelagian writings, ed. J. A. Mourant and W. J. Collinge, Washington, DC 1992, 10–11. Bartholomew's use of De civitate dei rather than De libero arbitrio is simply explained by Augustine's treatment of astrology in the former: Karfíková, L., Grace and the will according to Augustine, trans. Janebová, M., Leiden 2012, 267–9, 272CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 ‘Denique docet quod si uera est mathematicorum opinio, nec iustis premia, nec iniustis supplicia iure deberi, omnemque hominum industriam et laborem superfluum estimandum’: CFE xvi, iv, p. 21.

58 ‘Diuini dicti sunt, quasi Deo pleni’: Morey, Bartholomew, 271.

59 ‘Necessitatis uero causam, alii diuine prouidentie immutabilitatem et infallibilitatem, alii siderum positionem seu constellationem, quam et fatum appellant, esse contendunt’: CFE i, i, 12.

60 Augustine, De civitate dei, v, ix, p. 207.

61 CFE i, i, p. 12; ii, i, p. 12; xvii, i, p. 21; xxii, p. 29. Of course, astrology had long been associated with heresy: Hegedus, T., Early Christianity and ancient astrology, Bern 2007, 146–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 ‘Inter zizania que post patris familias semen bonum inimicus homo cum dormirent homines superseminasse perhibetur, nichil, arbitror, terre firmius choaluisse, nichil perniciosius exuberasse, quam fatalitatis errorem’: CFE, epistola commendativa, ii, p. 11; cf. Matthew xiii.24–30.

63 Moore, R. I., The birth of popular heresy, London 1975, 23Google Scholar; Lambert, M., Medieval heresy: popular movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edn, Oxford 1992, 92Google Scholar; Deane, J. K., A history of medieval heresy and inquisition, Lanham 2011, 51Google Scholar.

64 ‘Hos tamquam hereticos post unam et secundam correptionem, secundum apostolum credimus esse uitandos’: CFE i, i, p. 12; cf. Titus iii.10.

65 ‘Si quis ariolos, aruspices uel incantatores obseruauerit, aut philacteriis usus fuerit, anathema sit’: Morey, Bartholomew, 272.

66 ‘Si quis episcopus aut presbiter, siue diaconus uel quilibet ex ordine clericorum, magos aut aruspices aut ariolos, aut certe augures uel sortilegos, aut eos qui profitentur artem magicam aut aliquos eorum similia exercentes consuluisse fuerit deprehensus, ab honore dignitatis sue depositus, monasterium ingressus ibique perpetue penitentie deditus, scelus admissi sacrilegii luat’: ibid. Similar lists of condemned kinds of divination are seen in earlier penitentials: Filotas, B., Pagan survivals, superstitions and popular cultures in early medieval pastoral literature, Toronto 2005, 223–5Google Scholar.

67 Morey, Bartholomew, 260–1, 287–8.

68 Ibid. 260, 271–3.

69 ‘eorum non solum collationes sed et colloquia uniuersa declinare debemus, scientes quia corrumpunt bonos mores colloquia praua, et qui tetigerit picem inquinabitur ab ea’: Bodl. Lib., ms Bodley 482, fo. 1va; cf. Dahan, G., La Polémique chrétienne contre le judaïsme au moyen âge, Paris 1991, 81Google Scholar.

70 ms Bodley 482; Smalley, B., The study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd edn, Oxford 1984, 170–1Google Scholar.

71 Biller, P., ‘William of Newburgh and the Cathar mission to England’, in Wood, D. (ed.), Life and thought in the Northern Church, c. 1100–c.1700: essays in honour of Claire Cross (Studies in Church History: Subsidia xii, 1999), 11–30Google Scholar.

72 Foliot, Gilbert, The letters and charters of Gilbert Foliot, ed. Morey, A. and Brooke, C. N. L., Cambridge 1965, 209–10Google Scholar.

73 This was suggested by R. I. Moore, but contested by Peter Biller: Moore, R. I., ‘Heresy as disease’, in Lordaux, W. and Verhelst, D. (eds), The concept of heresy in the Middle Ages, Leuven 1976, 1, 11Google Scholar; Biller, ‘William of Newburgh and the Cathar mission to England’, 28.

74 Gillingham, J., ‘Events and opinions: Norman and English views of Aquitaine, c. 1152–c. 1204’, in Bull, M. G. and Léglu, C. (eds), The world of Eleanor of Aquitaine: literature and society in southern France, Woodbridge 2005, 73–5Google Scholar; Vincent, N., ‘England and the Albigensian Crusade’, in Weiler, B. K. U. and Rowlands, I. W. (eds), England and Europe in the reign of Henry III (1216–1272), Aldershot 2002, 67–70Google Scholar.

75 Gesta regis Henrici secundi Benedicti Abbatis, i, ed. W. Stubbs (Rolls Series il, 1867), 198–206; Lateran III, c. 27.

76 On the distinction between two kinds of heresy see Fichtenau, H., Heretics and scholars in the High Middle Ages, 1000–1200, trans. Kaier, D. A., University Park, Pa 1998, 1–8Google Scholar; G. Verbeke, ‘Philosophy and heresy: some conflicts between reason and faith’, in Lordaux and Verhelst, The concept of heresy, 173, 179–80.

77 On the association between magic and heresy see Peters, The magician, 46.

78 For a summary of the ‘scientific’ justifications of astrology see North, J. D., ‘Medieval concepts of celestial influence: a survey’, in Curry, P. (ed.), Astrology, science, and society: historical essays, Woodbridge 1987, 5–18Google Scholar.

79 Burnett, Introduction of Arabic learning, 2–16.

80 Daniel of Morley, ‘Philosophia’, ed. G. Maurach, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch xiv (1979), 212.

81 CFE, epistola commendativa, iii, p. 11.

82 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, ms 243, fo. 112r, cited and translated in Tolan, ‘Reading God's will in the stars’, 27; cf. Luke xxi.25.

83 Boudet, Entre Science et nigromance, 205–7.

84 Abelard, Hexameron, vi, clxvi–ccviii, pp. 42–52; Grosseteste, Hexaemeron, v, viii, p. 166; cf. Genesis i.14.

85 ‘O rex siderei quo constat machina celi’: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini, ed. B. Clarke, Cardiff 1973, 114.

86 ‘Nichil enim aliud planetae nisi quod Deus preuiderit aut predestinauerit significant’: Clark, ‘A Christian defense of astrology’, 98, 102.

87 N. Whyte, ‘Roger of Hereford's Liber de astronomice iudicandi: a twelfth-century astrologer's manual’, unpubl. MPhil diss., Cambridge 1991, 17.

88 ‘Qui uero eorum modestissimi sunt nec sideribus rerum pollicentur effectus nec eas necessitati lege dispositionis astringunt, sed quia uenture sunt certisque prenuntiantur indiciis, predicere non uerentur': John of Salisbury, Policraticus, I–IV, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, CCCM cxviii, 1993, ii, xxiv, p. 137.

89 Clark, ‘A Christian defense of astrology’, 95.

90 Abelard, Hexameron, vi, cxcii, p. 47; d'Alverny, ‘Abélard et l'astrologie’, 613.

91 ‘Hanc si quis sibi priuatam facere posset, non modo presentem rerum inferiorum statum, uerum etiam preteritum uel futurum non diffiteretur. Superiora quippe illa diuinaque animalia inferiorum naturarum et principium et cause sunt’: Adelard of Bath, Conversations with his nephew: on the same and the different, questions on natural science, and on birds, ed. C. Burnett, Cambridge 1988, 69.

92 CFE, epistola commendativa, iii, p. 11.

93 ‘non solum laici, sed et plerique literati': ibid.

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96 Russell, J. C., ‘Hereford and Arabic science in England about 1175–1200’, Isis xviii (1932), 14–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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98 Whyte, ‘Roger of Hereford's Liber de astronomice iudicandi’, 25–9.

99 Ibid. 8–9.

100 Callataÿ, G. de, ‘La Grande Conjonction de 1186’, in Draelants, I., Tihon, A. and van den Abeele, B. (eds), Occident et proche-orient: contacts scientifiques au temps des croisades, Turnhout 2000, 369–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bell, D. N., ‘Twelfth-century divination and a passage in the De commendatione fidei of Baldwin of Forde’, Cȋteaux xliv (1993), 237–52Google Scholar.

101 C. Burnett, ‘Hereford, Roger of (fl. 1176–1198)’, ODNB.

102 BL, ms Royal 2 D.xxxii, fos 156r, 163r.

103 Silverstein, T., ‘Daniel of Morley, English cosmogonist and student of Arabic science’, Mediaeval Studies x (1948), 179–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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105 Boudet, Entre Science et nigromance, 89–91, 96.

106 Burnett, Introduction of Arabic learning, 31–2.

107 It has been argued that the Policraticus ‘cannot be taken as any indication that astrology was actively practised at the court’: Carey, H. M., Courting disaster: astrology at the English court and university in the later Middle Ages, New York 1992, 28–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But see Peters, The magician, 47; M. Gibson ‘Adelard of Bath’, in C. Burnett (ed.), Adelard of Bath, 16; and CFE, p. xxix.

108 ‘Plerique declinantes corda in uerba malicie ad excusandas excusationes in peccatis, omnium que fiunt seu quoquomodo eueniunt, fatalem uel alias ineuitabilem necessitatem conantur astruere': CFE i, i, p. 12.

109 ‘qua homines quod cupiunt libenter credunt’: CFE, epistola commendativa, iii, p. 11.

110 Bartholomew's addressee Baldwin of Ford had written about faith and reason, particularly in his De commendatione fidei. However, Baldwin argued that reason led the will astray, rather than vice-versa as Bartholomew contends here: Baldwin of Ford, Balduini de Forda opera: sermones, De commendatione fidei, ed. D. N. Bell, CCCM ic, 1991, praefatio, ii, p. 343.

111 ‘Sunt alii qui definitum per prophetam gradum qui ait: Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis’: CFE i, ii, p. 12; cf. Isaiah vii.9.

112 ‘non solum credere, sed et postmodum intelligere quod credunt, pie cupiunt et humiliter querunt’: CFE i, ii, p. 12.

113 Morey, Bartholomew, 163–6.

114 CFE, p. xxxiv.

115 Bell, ‘Twelfth-century divination’, 249–50; Balduini de Forda opera, pp. xxx–xxxi. The extended section is lxxxv, vii–xvi, pp. 431–4.

116 ‘Permittit autem Deus nonnunquam per malos signa et portenta que futura sunt predici’: Balduini de Forda opera, lxxxv, vii, p. 431. Translation from Baldwin of Ford, The commendation of faith, trans. J. P. Freeland and D. N. Bell, Kalamazoo, Mi 2000, 230–1.

117 Balduini de Forda opera, lxxxv, xiii–xiv, p. 433.

118 Morey, Bartholomew, 11, 20.

119 John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ii, xx, p. 118; cf. Matt. xxiv.36.

120 John of Salisbury, The letters of John of Salisbury, II: The later letters (1163–1180), ed. W. J. Millor and C. N. L. Brooke, Oxford 1979, 392–3.

121 ‘Ceterum artem esse qua quis de futuris ad omnia interrogata uerum respondeat aut omnino non esse aut nondum innotuisse hominibus michi multorum auctoritate et ratione persuasum est': John of Salisbury, Policraticus, ii, xxv, p. 140.

122 ms Bodley 482; Baldwin of Ford, Liber de sectis hereticorum et orthodoxe fidei dogmata, ed. J. L. Narvaja, Berlin 2008.