Luca Gaurico

He was born to a poor family in the Kingdom of Naples, and studied judicial astrology, a subject he defended in his Oratio de Inventoribus et Astrologiae Laudibus (1508).

Giulio de Medici later was to become Pope Clement VII, who involved with disputes with both Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and Henry VIII of England.

The Tractatus Astrologicus contained the natal charts of popes and cardinals, kings and nobles, scholars, musicians and artists.

Allegedly, Gaurico insisted on his statements, printed in France in 1552, that is, seven years before the well-known joust in which Henry II would find his death.

He suffered terribly, and, despite the efforts of royal surgeon Ambroise Paré, died on July 10, 1559, and was buried in a cadaver tomb in Saint Denis Basilica.

[3] In regard to the birth of Martin Luther, Gaurico found a connection between this date (November 10, 1483, according to the reckoning of the Gregorian Calendar) and a "grand conjunction," that is, a meeting of the planets Jupiter and Saturn.

[4] Gaurico has been identified by the historian Paola Zambelli as the author of an anonymous 1512 pamphlet that predicted a universal deluge to take place in 1524 as a result of a conjunction of the superior planets in the watery sign of Pisces.

Pope Paul III thus used Gaurico to determine the most auspicious time at which the cornerstone of a new building in the neighborhood of St Peter's Basilica should be laid.

An assistant, the astrologer Vincentius Campanatius of Bologna, was commanded to inspect the sky with an astrolabe and cry out in a loud voice the best time when the moment to lay the first marble slab arrived.