y, antimony, iron, etc. There were in addition scores
of substances, the parts or products of animals, some harmless, others
salutary, others again useless and disgusting. Minor surgery was in the
hands of the barbers, who performed all the minor operations, such as
bleeding; the more important operations, few in number, were performed
by surgeons.

ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION

AT this period astrology, which included astronomy, was everywhere
taught. In the "Gouernaunce of Prynces, or Pryvete of Pryveties,"
translated by James Yonge, 1422,(26) there occurs the statement:
"As Galian the lull wies leche Saith and Isoder the Gode clerk, hit
witnessith that a man may not perfitely can the sciens and craft of
Medissin but yef he be an astronomoure."

(26) Early English Text Society, Extra Series, No. LXXIV, p. 195,
1898; Secreta Secretorum, Rawl. MS. B., 490.

We have seen how the practice of astrology spread from Babylonia and
Greece throughout the Roman Empire. It was carried on into the Middle
Ages as an active and aggressive cult, looked upon askance at times
by the Church, but countenanced by the courts, encouraged at the
universities, and always by the public. In the curriculum of the
mediaeval university, astronomy made up with music, arithmetic and
geometry the Quadrivium. In the early faculties, astronomy and astrology
were not separate, and at Bologna, in the early fourteenth century, we
meet with a professorship of astrology.(27) One of the duties of this
salaried professor, was to supply "judgements" gratis for the benefit of
enquiring students, a treacherous and delicate assignment, as that most
distinguished occupant of the chair at Bologna, Cecco d'Ascoli, found
when he was burned at the stake in 1357, a victim of the Florentine
Inquisition.(28)

(27) Rashdall: Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol.
I, p. 240.

(28) Rashdall, l.c., Vol. I, p. 244.--Rashdall also mentions that
in the sixteenth century at Oxford there is an instance of a
scholar admitted to practice astrology. l.c., Vol. II, p. 458.

Roger Bacon himself was a warm believer in judicial astrology and in the
influence of the planets, stars and comets on generation, disease and
death.

Many of the stronger minds of the Renaissance broke away from the
follies of the subject. Thus Cornelius Agrippa in reply to the request
of a friar to consult the stars on his behalf says:(29) "Judicial
astro