Prognostication and Medical Astrology in 14th-Century Italy: Three Case Studies

Abstract

This article examines the late-medieval plague tractate by Augustine of Trento, an Augustinian friar who addressed the matter of plague before the Black Death of 1347/1348. I will investigate Augustine’s astrological approach to the prognostication, prevention, and cure of the plague epidemic. Further, I will compare his work to the Compendium medicinalis astrologiae, composed by the Dominican Niccolò de Paganica in 1330, and to the consilia produced by the master of medicine Gentile da Foligno in 1348. This double comparison will help to better understand the shared intellectual milieu and the different approaches of these three authors.