Abstract
Misinterpreted and overlooked in its astrological meaning for a long time, the so-called “caricature of the Emperor and the Pope” of the late XVth century is actually a complex stratification of joachimist traditions and at the same time an extraordinary example of how an anonymous and ambiguous engraving imbued with apocalypticism could have left a mark on the history of culture, spreading and adapting across the centuries. I propose here an astronomical and textual analysis, trying to identify the sources of the prophecy and the nature of the star represented on the basis of the earliest german and venetian versions. As a result of the inquiry I trace an evolutionary path strictly connected to the myth of the Tiburtine Sibyl that reveals a complicated and muddy transmission between Bohemia, Venice and Germany and involves personalities such as Johannes Capistranus, Cornelius Gemma and Tycho Brahe. The persistent resurgence of the prophecy at different times and in association to astrology, testifies not only its political role in nationalistic and religious propaganda, but even a symbiotic relationship between cosmologic research and chiliastic concerns at the threshold of the Scientific Revolution.
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Notes
- 1.
Varro codified 10 Sibyls. For a general treatment of the Sibyls see H.W. Parke, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecies in Classical Antiquity, NY, Routledge (1988).
- 2.
On this tradition, connected to the doctrine of the Great Conjunctions, it is particularly useful Pompeo Faracovi O., Gli Oroscopi di Cristo, Venezia, Marsilio (1999).
- 3.
For a recent study see G. Petrella, La Pronosticatio di Johannes Lichtenberger: un testo profetico nell’Italia del Rinascimento, Udine, Forum (2010).
- 4.
Tibullus, Elegiae, II, 5: “[…] quaeque Aniena sacras Tiburs per flumina sortes portarat sicco pertuleratque sinu/haec fore dixerunt belli mala signa cometen, multus ut in terras deplueretque lapis”.
- 5.
An excellent analysis of this narrative is the anonymous El Enigma de la Sibila, pp. 28–45 https://sites.google.com/site/omnedecus/Home/art/el-enigma-de-la-sibila.
- 6.
Holdenried A., The Sibyl and her Scribes, Aldershot, Ashgate (2007), a complete census of all the versions of this prophecy in manuscript and in print.
- 7.
El Enigma de la Sibila, op. cit., pp. 69–79.
- 8.
The third version is preserved in the National Gallery of Washington. For a discussion of all the exemplars see J.A. Levenson, K. Oberhuber et al. (eds.), Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, Wahington (1973), n. 69 and P.O. Kristeller, “Der venezianische Kupferstich im XV. Jahrhundert”, Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für vervielfältigende Kunst (1907), pp. 1–16.
- 9.
The folio 10v of Cod.Lat. III, 177. On this collection see M. Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages, Oxford (1969), pp. 343–346.
- 10.
The others two versions, as explained before, cite the year 1495.
- 11.
This tradition stemmed from the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius. See P.J. Alexander, “The Medieval Legend of the Last Roman Emperor and Its Messianic Origin”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 41 (1978), pp. 1–15.
- 12.
To this evidence could be added the enormous success of the prophecy in Germany, attested by the large number of prints produced.
- 13.
For this prophecy see B. McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, New York, Columbia University Press (1979).
- 14.
The version of the Gamaleon Prophecy reported by Wolfgang Lazius in his Fragmentum vaticinii cuiusdam… Methodi… (Vienna, 1527) mentions explicitly the “patriarchate” of Mainz with this role.
- 15.
Vassilieva Codognet reads this confrontation as the deposition of the german emperor by the pope in favor of the Second Charlemagne (the raised coat of arms with the French lilies would confirm it), but such an interpretation, although seductive is in contrast with the enthusiastic reception of the image in Germany.
- 16.
The Last Emperor Prophecy was incredibly boosted by the figure of Frederick II, as effectively shown in M. Reeves, op. cit. (1969), pp. 306–319.
- 17.
This is the interpretation defended by P.O. Kristeller, op. cit. (1907).
- 18.
On this little studied prophecy see F. Secret, “Cornelius Gemma et la prophètie de la Sibylle Tiburtine”, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, LXIV (1969), pp. 423–431.
- 19.
For this debate see H. Hakansson, “Tycho the Apocalyptic: History, Prophecy and the meaning of naural phenomena”, in Science in Contact at the Beginning of the Scientific Revolution, Prague (2004), pp. 211–236.
- 20.
This prophecy has been systematically overlooked by scholars. It appears prominently in J. Wolf, Lectionum Memorabilium et Reconditarum (1600), pp. 824–831. Some notes are available in O. Bonmann, “Zum Prophetismus des Johannes Kapistran, 1386–1456,” Archiv Für Kulturgeschichte, 44 (1962), pp. 193–98.
- 21.
St. John of Capestranus was actually associated to the Halley comet that loomed over the siege of Belgrade, where he was an absolute protagonist in 1456.
- 22.
Wolf, op. cit., p. 824. The image is evidently a fake Ur-Bild.
- 23.
A useful catalogue of all the relevant images, even of the pseudo-Capistranus Prophecy, may be found in Smahel, op. cit. (1994) pp. 68–69.
- 24.
Active in the decade 1470/80 as reported by W.L. Schreiber, Handbuch der Holz- und Metallschnitte des XV. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig (1926), 4, pp.103–104.
- 25.
But according to the analysis of B. McGinn, “Circoli gioachimiti veneziani”, in Cristianesimo nella Storia, 7 (1986), pp. 19–39, the folio containing the prophecy is not consistent with the other Rusticianus’s images and may be a later addiction.
- 26.
Pius II revoked in 1462 the Compacta, the covenant with the moderate faction of the Hussites (the utraquists), creating many tensions.
- 27.
For the myth of Libussa and its political implications see V. Zurek, L’usage comparé des motifs historiques dans la légitimation monarchique entre les royaumes de France et de Bohême à la fin du Moyen Âge, Ph.D. Dissertation (2014).
- 28.
On this two classics of Czech literature see A. Thomas, Anne's Bohemia: Czech Literature and Society, 1310–1420, Minneapolis, Un. of Minnesota Press (1998).
- 29.
Example, in Cod 537 from the Bern Library. See I. Neske, op. cit. (1985), pp. 56–58.
- 30.
For details see G. Bezza, “Tolemeo e Abû Ma’shar: la dottrina delle congiunzioni Saturno-Giove presso i commentatori tolemaici”, in From Masha’allah to Kepler. The Theory and Practice of Astrology in the Middles Ages and the Renaissance, London, The Warburg Institute, 13–15 November (2015), in press.
- 31.
The incongruence was already noticed by Stanislas de Liubenietski, Historia Universalis Omnium Cometarum, Leiden, (1681), p. 296.
- 32.
Boethius, Historia Gentis Scotorum, (1527), xvii.
- 33.
That is in its domicile sign, a configuration reinforcing the planetary strength.
- 34.
“Fulsit cometa, qui proculdubio significavit cladem regni bohemiae, quae paulo post secuta est”, J. Cureus, Gentis Silesiae Annales, Wittenberg (1571), p. 166.
- 35.
See J. Williams, Observations of comets from B.C. 611 to A.D. (1640) extracted from the Chinese annals, London, 1871, pp. 315 and 354.
- 36.
A discussion of the two relevant Judicia is in D. Hayton, “Martin Bylica at the Court of Matthias Corvinus: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Hungary”, Centaurus, 49 (2001), pp. 185–198.
- 37.
For example in Alstedius: “Duo cometae apparuerunt. [‘…’] Carolus Burgundiae dux adversus finitimos eo impetus movit arma, ut multorum etiam annorum bellum excitaverit: quod finitum est ejus morte” (cited in de Liubenietski, op. cit. 1681, p. 302). The two comets are probably conflated and represented in the Altino image by the lion and the scale, because they appeared respectively in Leo and in Libra.
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Gandolfi, G. (2017). The Star of the Sibyl: Analysis and History of a Late Medieval Illustrated Prophecy. In: Orlando, A. (eds) The Light, The Stones and The Sacred. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 48. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54487-8_13
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