Causalité astrale et « science des images » au Moyen Age : Éléments de réflexion / Astral causality and the « science of images » during the Middle Ages : Some lines of thought

Abstract

SUMMARY. — The purpose of this article is to show how, during the Middle Ages, reflection on astral causality could be used to confer a scientific status on the « science of images ». This intellectual elaboration was difficult, precisely because the question of « scientia imaginum », represented a borderline case of astrology and as such, increased the challenges and difficulties involved in the problem of astral causality. Thus, Albert the Great, in his De mineralibus, tried to include the making of imagines (or talismans) in a causal chain initiating in the stars, in order to overcome the difficulty related to the difference between Art and Nature, an essential requirement for producing a naturalistic - as opposed to a demoniac or « destinative » - formulation of this « art of images ». This line of reasoning is based on an idea expressed in several of his works, including the Speculum astronomiae ascribed to this author : the idea consists in subordinating the scientia imaginum to that part of astrology that is related to elections. The gradual shift, which may lead from the latter to the former, can be traced. But does not such a shift entail some risk, as is evidenced by the perplexity of Jerome Torrella, who in his Opus praeclarum de imaginibus astrologicis (1496), is caught in the trap of his own reasoning when facing the unacceptable case an image good fortune ?