...and that they will labor under many and various diseases, and will perform a wondrous deed in domestic affairs. For Venus, the queen of the Martials, is found in a morbid place and is also damned in the pre-forecast figure by the conjunction in the house of the substances of Saturn, and is burned by the lamp of Phoebus. Who, therefore, of the astrologers will deny that this year will be grave and very troublesome to those who have obtained the protection of Venus, such as women, procurers, whores, lute-players, perfumers, and those similar to them?

Concerning the state of the Supreme Pontiff, the Cardinals, the Bishops, and the Jurisconsults. Chapter 6.

We granted health of body to Alexander VI, Supreme Pontiff and best shepherd of the flock of almighty God, in the previous year out of the clemency of the stars, but on the condition that in the following year, if we have accurately received his horoscope, he would migrate from here to celestial joys. There were many arguments for this death, which for the sake of brevity we pass over in silence. Yet who is there among the astrologers who does not know that both significators of the Christians are wondrously damned and disturbed? Moreover, the death which Mercury especially prepares and plots for them will occur from excessive anxiety and perturbation of the mind. And that is demonstrated by physical reason. For Mercury, as Ptolemy writes in the Centiloquy, presides over the imaginative, fantastic, and cogitative faculty; and this is physical, since he is so mobile that he is so easily convertible and formable. Hence that elegant and tidy story of the poets, that Anchises, with Mercury as guide, entered the Elysian fields. Whence Virgil in the first book of poems: "You return the pious souls to the joyful seats and with your golden wand restrain the light crowd," pleasing to the gods of the upper and lower worlds. And Virgil, speaking of Mercury: "Then he takes his wand: with this he summons the pale souls from Orcus, with that he calls them to the lower world." Furthermore, it is not a wonder if his coronation was true for us, that he would end his last day with a violent death. Indeed, Mars threatens this to him. But however it happens, he will by no means escape the most grave labors and hardships. Many Cardinals and Bishops will be entirely imperiled; they will pursue one another with dissensions, quarrels, insults, and execrable hatred, whence the church of God will suffer the greatest loss. Which, indeed, if the best and greatest God did not look upon it, would perhaps be subverted. I already see that very many of the leading jurisconsults are involved in many and various dangers this year, and that many of them will perish.

Concerning war and peace. Chapter 7.

In the previous prophecy, if you remember rightly, we deferred the fury of war to this year. And that, because we affirmed that Mars—whose effect will be manifested in the present—is the triumphator.