Catastrophes in the sky. Sixteenth-century writers and ominous predictions

Abstract

Common in manuscript form since the Middle Ages, with the invention of printing, predictions, iudicia and almanacs soon reached very high circulations. Much of this forecasting literature concerns catastrophic events, including floods and deluges (the one predicted for February 1524 on the occasion of the great conjunction in the sign of Pisces is particularly famous), earthquakes, plagues, or attempts to explain the unexpected, including comets or the stellae novae that appeared in 1572 and 1604. The contribution investigates the reactions of sixteenth-century (in particular with the ‘novelle sul diluvio’ by Anton Francesco Doni and Ortensio Lando) and early seventeenth-century literati to the ominous predictions of the time, also highlighting the gap between private and public positions. In a variegated panorama influenced by the bulls of Sixtus v and Urban viii on astrology, severe condemnations of iudiciaria alternate with mockery of predicted calamities, but also – in keeping with the etymology of ‘catastrophe’ – there is the recovery of a hope for upheaval or even renovatio, as in the Catastrofe del mondo by the physician-philosopher Giovanni Francesco Spina.