Consolations of astrology: theology, sublunary existence, and the Vulgus at Louvain university, 1521

Abstract

In December 1521, the Louvain arts faculty hosted a public quodlibetica disputation about an astrologically caused world-wide flood that was expected for February 1524. This paper situates the discourse of the disputant Thomas Montis, which produced a critique by the physician Damianus de Fenaco and a subsequent reply by Montis, in the context of the late medieval relations between academic theology and astrology. It argues that Montis's text, along with many other contributions to the 1524 Flood-debate from the Low Countries, is symptomatic of a tendency to interpret the theologian as the representative of a social group, rather than as the privileged voice of a divine teaching, and of a more outspoken tendency to cultivate a direct relation to the Word and theology, thereby emulating some of the basic patterns which Erika Rummel uncovered among the northern humanists of this period.