Imago Signorum: a doutrina do homem microcosmo nas ilustrações médico-astrológicas entre os séculos XIV e XVI

Abstract

The relations that have established between the concepts of macrocosm and microcosm starting from the impact of astrological images for the Early Modern Age (from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries) intertwine with the problem of knowledge and its clash with the problem of freedom. In this way, the iconography of the zodiacal man - contained in cosmological calendars, medical almanacs or even books of hours - shows the necessity of ordenation and cosmic orientation on the part of the human being in an attempt to maintain relations with the unknowable. With the reception of the Sphaera barbarica from the twelfth century and later on in the artistic and scholarly circles of the fourteenth century onwards, the orientation of the cosmos had become essential for the man inserted in that society. The earliest representations of the zodiacal man clearly showed the idea of man as an extension of the cosmos, as a small instance ruled by the firmament. In order to understand the impact of the astral doctrines on Western culture one must look for the survival of the concept of melothesia - from late antiquity - which is the division of the human body by astral influences and how this would affect a whole theoretical debate on the astral determinism in the everyday life. Thus, starting from the attempt to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the astral dictates (gods, demons, stars, planets, and the zodiac), it had somehow verified how astrology was intrinsically related to human actions and vice-versa. Having said that, trying to understand the dark regions of the world that surrounded him, became a primordial question for man and his relation with the cosmos. With this a fierce debate had developed around the applicability of the astral fatalism that every human being was bound to bear. However, this organic process is transformed precisely from the moment when man was impacted by the macrocosm. Thus he had realized that the unseen astral - somehow - impacted and determined certain natural processes from the middle of which it surrounded.