Will the Stars Control Your Destiny?

It was so great discussing the various Renaissance themes with everyone in our "salon" yesterday.  In our second group, Susan quoted Shakespeare, who said, "The stars do not control our destiny, we do." It made me question what I am proactively doing with what I am learning/have learned here at BYU. All of our knowledge depends on what we do with it. What propelled humans forward in the Renaissance was their ability to connect [and implement] everything they had learned. They didn't let the stars control their destiny. 

Take Da Vinci and Machiavelli, for example. Their ability to follow Ad Fontes gave them greater humanistic understanding. They went back (quite literally) to the sources when they explored and studied cadavers to better understand the human body. Their Ad Fontes allowed them to see "what a piece of work" man was. Martin Luther also used Ad Fontes in his persuasive appeals to his audiences. He turned to the faithful examples of the Apostles to give his followers the strength and hope they'd need in the face of such horrific opposition.

The Gutenberg press also allowed for people to implement their knowledge because the Bible was available to everyone. This giant distribution armed the masses with knowledge, or as Thomas Carlyle said, it "was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world."  

I suppose you could say they just allowed the reformers to decide their religion for them; were it not for reformers' sprettzatura and their ability to preach with so much emotion, people may have never converted. Did all those "normal folk" just learn to read and instantly comprehend the Bible enough to understand it and question the Catholic church on their own? I'd like to think that followers took charge of their own destiny, but it'd be hard for an impressionable follower to resist Calvin's boldness or Luther's bravery. Much harder in fact to resist Erasmus' logic.

Shakespeare did say that we control our destiny, but in whose "stars" was it to control the black plague? Maybe the stars do play some role without our permission. If it hadn't been for that deathly disease, it's quite possible the royals wouldn't have devoided the royals of their power. And if it weren't for that change in demographic, the Renaissance and Reformation wouldn't have come when they did. 

I think there are some aspects of our destiny that are out of our control, but it is true that it is up to us--not the stars--to decide what we do with what we are given. Da Vinci and Michelangelo discovered artistic techniques and scientific theories; the masses took what they had studied and decided for themselves what their religion would be. And I, I have so much knowledge yet to obtain, and I understand more clearly that it will be up to me what I do with it.